Remember my cut flower garden plans last spring? I thought I would give you a cut flower garden update in the middle of the hottest week in Oklahoma this summer. My very hot but beautiful cut flower garden as I look north from the kitchen border. Gardening is hot sweaty work. Why? Because we all need to see that gardening isn't all rainbows, filmy dresses and unicorns. It is hot, sweaty, and quite dirty, and this time of year, the entire garden, including the cut flower beds, is full of disease and biting and stinging insects. The stinging ones usually won't hurt you unless you accidentally squish them. They're too busy trying to fill their tanks before fall. African blue basil is a pollinator magnet. I love the photo of this bee. Look at that fierce face. Pollinators like this bee love African blue basil. I planted these in my...

It's August, and it's hot outside. The weather has been in the 100s for three weeks straight, but good news is on the horizon. A couple of cold fronts are going to barrel into Oklahoma and reduce our temperatures to the 90s. Whoopee! The upper pasture looked beautiful and moody this morning with the cold front that came through. Meadow grasses and partridge pea. I saw a lot more partridge pea this year after the wildfire burned the meadow. By the way, it didn't hurt the meadow one bit. In fact, one came through this morning, and it made things less hot, but the tiny amount of rain created a very muggy atmosphere. I weed-eated the upper pasture fenceline with our new Stihl weedeater while it was cloudy outside. I took these photos of the upper pasture, which is full of beautiful swaying grasses. I also weed-eated the Johnson grass...

For the first time in my life, this year, I realize there is not enough time. One of the sunflowers I grew from Sunflower Steve's Van Gogh mix. It is small but mighty. Not enough time to grow everything I want to grow. Not enough time to garden. If I’m lucky, healthwise, I’ll live and garden into my 80s, but that’s only twenty years away. There’s also a strange phenomenon that as you grow older, time moves faster, so twenty years to a thirty-year-old is completely different than to a 60-year-old. Lower back garden with my signature purple chairs. Pretty soon, the crapemyrtles in front will be covered in red flowers. I turn 61 in September. We replaced the split rail fence, but we'll need a bulldozer to take down the charred trees across the street. Not enough time to fix everything that is broken. After the wildfire in March,...

We opened our garden a week ago Saturday, and people had lots of garden questions. I figured my internet friends do too. And I have answers. A special thanks to everyone who came out. We enjoyed the visit. We put a lot of love and work into the garden, and it's nice to share it. Blue larkspur in the kitchen border. It was a glorious day. We even had a rain shower that lasted about ten minutes. People huddled in the garage until it was over. I wish I had taken photos of the visitors, but I forgot. I was busy answering garden questions. If you plant it, they will come. This beautiful artwork is from my good friend, Dana George. I love everything about it, especially the bluebird. As I'm writing, I hear a male Eastern bluebird singing in the trees. Male bluebirds have a very distinctive song. When...