Want to keep your garden blooming into fall? Here are seven easy steps to achieve a beautiful fall garden. After all, splendor in the fall garden begins in spring. Part of the back garden in September. 1. Look for plant holes in your landscape. Plant holes, everyone has them. It might be from a plant that died, or, maybe, a perennial didn't grow as expected, and you now have more space than you intended. Install a fall-blooming perennial in that space. In coming years, it will delight you each autumn, and you will be on your way to creating a beautiful fall garden. Goldenrod, Solidago spp., is just starting to color up in the upper meadow. I hope all of the pollinators find it. It is a great source of pollen for them. Solidago rigida (rigid goldenrod) which doesn't appear rigid at all in my garden. In fact, I prop...

This is the first season I've grown white Cuban buttercup, Turnera trioniflora. I planted it in a large container on my back deck as the spiller portion of the thriller, filler, and spiller planting technique. Pretty little Turnera trioniflora, white Cuban buttercup, growing on my deck in a container. Flowers that open and close I love how white Cuban buttercup opens early in the morning as soon as the sun hits it. It closes up shop around Noon or so. Of course, if we have a cloudy day, it stays open longer. Flowers that only open for part of the day add a little mystery to things, and I find I look for their presence in the garden more. Mirabilis jalapa, four o'clocks, Portulaca grandiflora, rose moss, Ipomoea alba, moonflower, and Ipomoea purpurea, morning glories, are other flowers that quickly come to mind with specific opening and closing times. I...

Not much seemed to be blooming, but I was wrong. Not much seemed to be blooming for this August Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, but there were more meadow flowers for pollinators than I first thought. Heirloom Phlox paniculata in one of the beds facing the street and next to my hobby greenhouse. See the Snowberry Clearwing moth in the center of the photo? Phlox is a great pollinator plant. All the usual suspects Many of Bloom Day's usual suspects like tall garden phlox are in flower as the summer garden waits for fall. A lot of rain fell in July--in the last 60 days, 9.84 inches--and the grass remains green. I don't water most of the upper and lower pastures. I do water sections of the upper pasture meadow. The field runs beneath the trees and up by the road.New septic field lies across the lower pasture. New septic field...

I'm in my third year beekeeping. This hobby has such a learning curve. Kinda like gardening when I first started except most plants don't try to sting you. Stinging nettles and poison ivy don't count. L. angustifolia 'Blue Scent' with honey bee. My first year I haven't written a beekeeping post since my first season of beekeeping. In the first year, I learned:  To install a package.To identify the queen and mark her. To manage a small colony of bees that grew to be a large colony. The parts of the hive (their home) versus the colony (them as a group), the super (where the beekeeper's honey resides), frames, deeps (big boxes with eight or ten frames), bottom boards, and inner and outer covers.That if you accidentally squish a bee it makes the rest of them very angry. The dying bee sends out an alarm pheromone that smells like bananas....