In continuance of my pledge to keep it real, and influenced by Margaret at A Way to Garden and Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening, I'm showing you my garden's soft underbelly. It isn't all blooms and ripe tomatoes here. There's also compost, leaf mold and other rotting stuff. Not pretty, but essential. Sure, you can grow veggies and flowers without improving your soil. I recently watched a NewsOK.tv story about a woman who does. She grows her veggies in what looks like straight Oklahoma red sand, and if you listen closely, you'll hear the words "Miracle Gro." Now, I'm not going to fault her for using the blue crystals. It's just not my way.   Above is my compost area. I have three compost bins and a leaf pile. The leaf pile was once three piles, but I've used most of the leaves, and over the winter and summer, they've...

The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee, a clover, anytime, to him, is aristocracy. - Emily Dickinson All gardens are full of insects and other wildlife. Most of them go about their business with little thought to humans. Butterflies roam from flower to flower, and caterpillars feast upon host plants, like parsley, dill or tropical milkweed. In the middle of summer, depending on the time of day, I may see bumblebees, paper wasps, honeybees, carpenter bees, hornets and flower flies feasting upon nectar while spreading pollen on every flower they touch. At night, moths come out to play. Inevitably, when a bumblebee gets too close, visiting friends ask with an involuntary shiver, "What do you do about the bugs?" I give them a knowing smile and say, "Not much." I try to garden as organically as possible, and so a lot of wildlife other than insects also exists...

On this Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, I'm going to focus on one plant: my 'Annabelle' Hydrangea arborescens. Until I met 'Annabelle,' I didn't have much luck with hydrangeas. Their performance was just so-so. We have extremely hot summers, and even in the shade, my hydrangeas often sulked. Once again, I must credit my friend, Wanda, for my love of 'Annabelle' as she introduced us two years ago. Her shade garden was bordered with these beauties which she grew from cuttings. Thank you, Wanda. For several years, I grew an old fashioned mophead hydrangea (I don't know the variety,) and it did pretty well, except that we also have cold winters, and late freezes. The mophead often had beautiful leaves, but no flowers due to being nipped late in the spring. Because 'Annabelle' flowers on new growth, she is never badly hurt. I also grow the Everblooming series of hydrangeas. Thus...

Warm southern breezes touched by the sun. Just enough rainfall to make the perennial border sing with color; the vegetables abundant and crisp; and the Bermuda grass still green in July. Dragonflies and butterflies zip and swirl in an acrobatic dance above the flowers, while their plant eating cousins only nibble, not destroy. This summer, I don't think there is anything I could do to hurt this garden. For this moment in time, it is as close as Oklahoma comes to paradise. Summers like these fool many into thinking gardening is easy. Those of us in the trenches know better. Gardens are lovely, artificial creations which take time and effort to design, plant and maintain. Summers like these don't often come. Another half inch of rain fell this evening. That's not normal for July, but there is no normal here. When I moved to the country, the first few years,...