How a viral hoedown got started
It didn’t take much. As I noted in this July 7 post, Facebook removed three or four comments in WNY Gardeners, a 8k-member group I co-admin, for various uses of [...]
Elizabeth Licata
Puce is not a good look for flowers
You can call it bronze all you like, but basically, we’re talking brownplus or—old-school—puce. I love to experiment with unusual annuals and have long mail-ordered old-fashioned tall nicotiana from companies [...]
Oh Facebook, really? We can’t say hoe?
We’re in danger of losing our WNY online garden group because of one word. Hoe. Sometimes, Facebook seems to understand that this is a garden tool and leaves it be. [...]
Philly flower show sees the light of day (UPDATE)
It’s better to be outside. That is surely one of the central takeaways from the past year. Rather than simply cancel its annual late winter event, which has been held [...]
Call me mellow yellow
I’m not exactly mad about saffron, but I do love the seasonal yellows I am seeing throughout the garden. As it happens, a yellow shade, Illuminating, is one of the [...]
This package might work against its purpose
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my fellow gardeners, it’s that they lean toward frugality on the micro level. On the macro level, they might be spending half [...]
Ellen Biddle Shipman, restored
For decades, it was an overgrown tangle of weed trees and buckthorn, with its few original plantings nearly strangled by years of neglect. When attention was finally paid to Graycliff, [...]
I like thug plants and I cannot lie
When I saw this quote/paraphrase from Sir Mixalot's 1992 hit in my local gardening group, I thought, “Finally. Somebody gets me.” My gardening life is punctuated by love/hate relationships with [...]
Relax, it’s just weather
Where would we be if we couldn’t complain incessantly about the weather? Such whining is harmless, as it has zero effect, and it’s fun. I do it all the time. [...]
You gotta love a floricycle
Even the name makes me smile. And now I am on a mission to document a floricycle at every stage of its development. In 2019, the final step in [...]
I cleaned up my garden. Fight me.
Spring in Western New York is fleeting, maybe just a little bit more than a state of mind. The actual gardening season from early summer to mid-fall is more substantial, [...]
They better not be coming after my bulbs!
Who isn’t ready to see spring flowers? I appreciated Susan’s enthusiastic survey of April blooms in Capitol Region public gardens. I’m also eagerly awaiting my own bulb display (shown here [...]