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Yep. The first light frost of the fall hovered over the garden last night. We covered up the things we cared most about saving for the weeks of warmer weather ahead, but the writing is on the wall. Fall is upon us, and then fall’s mean cousin, winter. We didn’t take any long trips this summer, and my retirement meant no work travel, so we had time to mostly keep up with things and even make some improvements. There’s still a lot of autumn work to do to prepare for spring, but it doesn’t feel as overwhelming as it does some years. It seems that the magic of gardening fades slowly from spring to fall, reaching a very low ebb as the short days and cold mornings descend. I wanted to share a few photographs from various times during the summer partly because I like looking at them. Here’s to a few more weeks of garden weather for us all!  

If I had a dollar for every Japanese beetle I picked off our trees and plants last summer, I’d have $6,000. Well, to be fair, that’s an estimate. I stopped counting after 237 on the first day, but the “season” went on for more than a month. So, 6,000 is a pretty fair estimate. This year there seem to be fewer, but they are still plentiful. Japanese beetles are an invasive species that originally came from… you guessed it… Japan, where they are kept at bey by natural predators which the USA doesn’t have. They are known to eat 300 different plant species, but in our yard they prefer our fruit trees, raspberries, grapes and – depending on their moods – green beans, potatoes, currents, and certain types of marigolds, into whose flowers they bury themselves. So, for an hour or so each day I patrol the yard and garden with my plastic convenience store soda cup half-filled with water. I either grab the little buggers or flick them into the cup. It may be futile, but I figure every one I g...

Some summers it seems that the rain never stops. Planting in the mud isn’t much fun, nor is pulling weeds from the wet soil. At least that’s true with whatever kind of soil we have at our house. For the past couple of weeks, it has seemed like rain was just around the corner, but frustratingly far around that corner. We watered some – usually just enough to keep things alive until the rain comes. Despite our meager watering efforts some new plants succumbed to the heat and dryness. Today it is raining. Maybe it will rain a lot. The last time we expected rain we were told to expect multiple inches but got only one-tenth. This time the rain total will be much higher, judging by what I see out the window. In Wisconsin we are fortunate to get a good amount of rain. I feel bad for the people in Southern California, among many places around the world, where drought has become a way of life. The biggest drought I can remember here was in 1988, I think, where it didn’t rain from Mothers’...

Sometimes I think it would be good if gardeners got garden-amnesia each spring. It would help us enjoy the enthusiasm we have with our clean slate of soil without throwing in last year’s memories of weeds and deer and Japanese beetles. Or maybe we do have a little amnesia already. Where I live the mosquitoes won’t be a problem for a few weeks. We do have little insidious flies that bite behind our ears and itch a lot. When the mosquitoes come out, we’re always a little surprised, even though it happens every year. Selective memory. There are about a dozen things I really wanted to get to last year but didn’t. Guess what? There are still the same dozen things. Since we’re in the rain-every-other-day season, those 12 things aren’t getting done yet, but I still hold out hope.  One of these days I’ll bring home some plants and really get things started, keeping in mind that it’s not recommended to plant until Memorial Day where I live. For now there are still lots of things to cl...

There it is. My April Fools' Post.  Well, it isn't from April 1st, but from some time in April some year in the pasts. I think it's a pretty good April Fool's Day joke to have snow on the ground two weeks after having a 70 degree day. Mother nature either has a great sense of humor or none at all. I earmark this day each year to start my plants indoors. As I look at the labels, some should have been planted a month ago, and some probably shouldn't be planted for another month, so I figure I've got it about right. My success with plants started indoors has been spotty. Some survive, and thrive. Some get too spindly and collapse under their own weight like a seven foot tall 8th grader playing basketball. We have new grow lights this year, so I hope that will help. One year I had six trays in one of those little greenhouses covered with heavy plastic. I put them outside on a sunny day which, unfortunately, was also a windy day. Many of those survived after I stuck ...

 ( This post is from a newspaper column I wrote in 2015) Last Friday we went to the Wisconsin Public Television Garden Expo in Madison.   It was a much needed journey into the realm of green things, and the possibility that perhaps winter will someday end. If you haven’t ever been there, I recommend it.   In addition to lots of exhibits by people who would like to help you and/or sell you something to make your home and garden nicer, there are tons of workshops on gardening, composting, landscaping, preserving foods, and all sorts of related topics. This year I went specifically to see a fellow talk about back yard maple syrup production.   He wasn’t a botanist or anything, but just a regular guy who has way more energy and initiative than I do, and who wanted to make maple syrup from two silver maple trees in his back yard.   My father-in-law, who passed away last June, had been making maple syrup for a number of years.   In fact, though he was very ...