Home Garden Companion

Ilona's Garden Journal




just about me

The Small Stuff

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First snow of the season. A couple inches. I noticed the other day that I had left my large red geranium outside. Totally frozen. It had been on the screen porch and I have no idea why I simply forgot about it…. oh well.

It wasn’t a special sort, just big. I had carried it through several seasons. I put it in the basement -but I know it is totally gone. I don’t know why I do things that way. Like leaving rotten bananas on the counter because I WILL make banana bread…. and then asking my son to dispose of them in the compost out of my sight.

Weirdness, pure weirdness…..

My children made one of those huge snowballs that get so big that the three can’t move them…. after which the oldest son had fun tormenting them that he would break it up with a snow shovel. I sent my husband out to make sure that was no more than a threat.

The kids want to make a snow fort with a snow roof. I explained why that won’t work ( having tried this as a kid) but they can try if they want.

I am nursing a sore back from all the stress in my life. I took some gardening books out of the library….. might get a chance to look at them tonight. It is relaxing to look at pictures of beautiful gardens and think about spring. I think I will make some tea and go do that now.

A few notes on nothing particular

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Blogger is working again, but I forgot what I was going to post.

Lots of ponding around the area, no real cold yet. We purchased our Christmas tree yesterday, it is not as nice as last years. But nice enough. This year we have a balsam fir called a “sno-fresh “, I think. Something like that. I have a mixed green swag for the front door. So we are getting ready for Christmas!

OH YES! Almost forgot. I am reading more garden books again, so I will have things to discuss on that once I finish. They have the connection of traditions and the traditional in gardening. Perhaps as the week goes on I can manage some serious blogging. Maybe include some of the plans formulating for the garden of next season.

Not going to garden, just opinionate

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Not going to garden much today, even though the day is perfect for it. I had eye surgery this morning and I don’t really feel like doing anything particularly.

September Is Good for Planting

September is the best month to plant and transplant. There has been just the right amount of rains keeping all the new things happy.

Garden Book Reading

I am looking through some garden books. One on plants from certain habitats that seems helpful in knowing where to situate plants and what grows well in my garden’s conditions. I don’t think it is the primary means of choosing, but seems like a sort of “second opinion”. I’ll list it when I feel like spending more time on the computer. Today is not the day.

Campanula ‘Wonder Bells’

I had started a double-flowered campanula in the garden early in the season. I think it is called Wonder Bells. It is slow to take hold, but I am hopeful. I tried some last year from a plant I had bought for indoors, but had waited too long to plant out.

Timing in the Garden

Procrastination is the enemy of the gardener -get those plants in the ground, sow those seeds! You don’t get anything until you do. Timing is important, but timing is not everything. Getting started is the main thing.

The First and Second Post

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My Garden Journaled

This is the beginning. I have to learn how to work this, but if I can create webpages I certainly can do this! Learning curve ahead…. but am looking forward to new avenues of creativity.

 

I know I have the g-word here alot, but I am trying to get started in learning exactly what works. This was merely written to see the code illustrated.

Second post- Me Stuff

ok. I obsess. Already some things look a little junky. But it’s not my fault! I was given too many choices…I am a collector/experimenter and I just want to try on things.

Don’t go shopping with me.

Now besides all this, I have been looking over other people’s blogs the way I do websites. Actually it is the old web-surfing revisited. Whiling away much too much time just to say this:

I did not like retro the first time around. I remember Betsy McCall cookbooks ( yes there was such a thing with a Betsy McCall doll featured). I loved the doll. I hated the design. I hated clunky shoes. I hated weirdo, stylized prints in gawky colors and juxtapositions.

The early sixties and the early seventies were really no good design-wise. Ditto the fifties. I am sorry. Just do not like it. Some of the best design was arts and craft movement and eighties luscious richness. The new millenium minimal is wonderful, too, but perhaps that is why the retro has crept in. People chafe against all the disciplined editing that minimal demands. They start to crave whimsy.

But you know, no one did whimsy as well as the late sixties. I guess no one has that real naivete and freeform of feeling that came with the hippies, now. Maybe that explains the stilted whimsical fifties retro. Blah. I get really tired of deliberate ugliness. Ugliness that is unpremeditated can be wonderful. Much of the naive has that quality. Like real folk-art. Rustic in the basic, intrinsic way that comes with utility and the natural .

(There are exceptions to *every* rule…even mine)

I don’t care if I sound pretentious right now… I will care later, after I reread this.

Like I am the arbiter of *what?*. I need to journal the garden. There have been many times of beauty that are only recorded in my memory. I need to attend to that.

Tomorrow.