Boxwood Winter
Folks around here have taken to calling it the “Boxwood Winter.” Named for that fabled Dec. 23, 2022 day when we were all waiting for Santa Claus and an artic [...]
Bob Hill, Ranter Emeritus
A peony and the shovel
Somewhat less than Sports Illustrated cover material, this proud pink peony has a story all its own. Literally separated from friends and family by a guy with an errant shovel, [...]
Stuck Between a Stone and a Happy Place
Being a stone kinda guy, I spent a few happy hours the other day rescuing a rock garden just outside our shaded side door that had been buried in time, [...]
The Roots of Box Store Fondling
Twas Spring Fever that led a relatively sane man to be rummaging around deep into skinny cardboard boxes at the New Albany, Indiana Home Depot. Although still February - the [...]
Froggy Went a Courtin’ for Spring
I am sitting in our back porch on my first official visit of 2023. A half-dozen frogs have broken into the porch over the winter. One is reading, two [...]
My 800-mile trip to get a cheap greenhouse, and the neighbors who showed up for it
Maybe 20 years ago while visiting family in Mississippi I got word of a guy, somewhat of a local character, who had a greenhouse for sale. The guy, the story [...]
Supreme Friends and a Pair of Witch Hazels
This is to connect our Southern Indiana farmhouse, built in 1860, to England’s famed RHS Garden Wisley, founded in 1878, to the legendary horticulturist Mike Dirr, his age doesn’t matter, [...]
The Little Daylily That Could
I know there is a children’s garden book here. Working title: “The Little Daylily That Could.” The based-on-a-true-life-tale would begin in a former Southern Indiana nursery where the owner, [...]
The AAA of Autumnal Adventure
If pushed to admit it, and without ranting too much, autumn is my favorite gardening season, maybe about two horticulture notches ahead of spring. It is a close call; [...]
Seed Sowing Success: Nature and The Odds
With plant seeds now being around for roughly 365 million years – beginning about the time life first crawled out of the ocean to give dry land a try—my steady [...]
The Robin’s Empty Nest
We all deal with empty nests at some point in our lives. In the world of robins, that book opens as they create their nests in stages requiring hundreds [...]