Welcome!
I’m Dee Nash, a native Oklahoman, and I’ve gardened here since my teens. I know from personal experience how challenging our prairie climate can be.
But my blog isn’t just for Oklahomans. Gardening can be challenging in other climates too. So, I share how to garden wherever you grow.
Enjoy the garden you’ve always wanted!
Featured posts
Gardening with Alpha-gal Syndrome
Gardening with Alpha-gal syndrome might not be on…
Dear Spring Garden, I love you
Dear Spring Garden, I love you. You are…
Easy plants for your containers
Last year, I wrote my container garden tutorial,…
A quick garden update
So, how is everyone’s garden season so far?…
I’m Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,
And one of my children is sick. Why is it when a mother tries to leave town, she or one of the children usually gets sick? The Diva has been listless for days, but still attending school. This morning, I made her stay home, and she fainted, hitting her head, and jamming her finger and knee. The Diva faints when she's really sick or badly hurt. Now, the poor thing is both. When, she passed out, I was at my mother's house. Mom is better, but still needs help. I picked up some prescriptions for her. Thinking the Diva was safe at home without me, I stayed and talked with my aunt and uncle who traveled from Missouri to perform some household repairs. My cell phone rang, and I couldn't get to it in time. When Mom's phone rang moments later, I knew there was a problem. Several cases of...
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My World is Purple and Gray
In the city, everything is coming up green, but further north and rural, we see mostly purple and gray. No school-box Crayola Spring Green or Fern for us. Native Oklahoma redbuds (Cercis canadensis) dot the countryside with color where they stand against charcoal gray, scrub oaks. The oaks don't trust our warm weather. They've been fooled before. As I write, dark gray storm clouds gather overhead, and raindrops splatter outside my open windows. We had fierce storms last night that spawned nighttime tornadoes (the most dangerous kind) at 1:00 a.m. They danced all around my house, one coming within three tenths of a mile. Another hit part of Edmond causing damage, but no one was hurt. I was asleep and heard nothing until the one land-line telephone we still own rang downstairs. HH and I woke and discovered we'd lost power. Losing electricity isn't unusual where we live. With the...
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Garden Bloggers Book Club: Second Nature
For the months of February and March, the Garden Bloggers' Book Club read Second Nature, by Michael Pollan. The book details Pollan's attempts to grow a garden on the old dairy farm he and his wife purchased in Connecticut in 1983. When, at the beginning of his enterprise, Pollan quoted Henry David Thoreau's Walden, I thought, "uh-oh." In college, I, too, was heavily influenced by Walden, and tried Thoreau's method of gardening without much success. It should be noted that Thoreau's bean field wasn't very successful either. At first, Pollan is a sympathetic protagonist against the various critters who want his tasty vegetables for themselves. I laughed aloud when he wouldn't fence his garden against a marauding woodchuck. When the woodchuck nearly drives him to firebombing its burrow, he realizes he must revise some of his gardening ideals. In the process, he discovers that, at Walden, Thoreau wasn't so much...
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Now, In Print
I wrote an article in the March issue of Oklahoma Gardener. I know, it's late in the month, but I kept forgetting to tell you. It's a profile on Sister Barbara Joseph's garden at her pantry for the homeless of Oklahoma City. This is a photo which didn't make it into the magazine. In fact, I didn't submit it. When I can, I volunteer on Fridays at the pantry, and you can guess where I help. Several of us work in the garden, keeping it watered, fertilized and trimmed. However, my friend, Katie, is the creative force behind the photo below. If you live in Oklahoma, you might consider subscribing to Oklahoma Gardener because it has great photos and information particular to our region. In the March issue, Steve Owens, owner of Bustani Plant Farm in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and former host of the Oklahoma Gardening television program, wrote a plant...
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