Sue and I are doing the migrant-grandparent thing and moving to the Pittsburgh area to be closer to our grandkids. We’re both semi-retiring, too. We’ve just had our offer accepted on a century-old, Craftsman-style, farmhouse on 3½ acres of land in Monroeville, so if all goes well, we’ll be moving there later this […]
A year ago, I got tired and old enough to down-size my way out of the Garden House-Calls home-consulting business. Since then, I’ve still been doing a limited number of scale drawings for those who send me measurements and photos. Now I’m sliding another step toward semi-retirement by knocking off the drawing […]
No wonder Norwegians survey out as the world’s second happiest people. (They were No. 1 in a 2017 Gallup World Poll before the Finns beat them out this year.) Despite the long, dark, cold winters, it’s hard not to have a joyful heart when you’re surrounded by the natural beauty of Norway. […]
So many of you were interested in doing a foliage trip this fall that our Oct. 25 Lowee’s Group Tour to Bucks County sold out. So we’ve added a new, second option for Fri., Oct. 19… this time to see the fall foliage in the stunning Pennsylvania Grand Canyon of Tioga County. […]
I’m not a big fan of all of those house-hunting/house-fixing shows that run one after the other on HGTV these days. I liked HGTV better back when the “G” in the name meant something, and the network actually ran some gardening shows. They ought to call it HHTV now. Anyway, I’m apparently […]
In a scenic Finger Lakes valley best known for New York state wine, Petra Page-Mann and Matthew Goldfarb are growing home-garden seeds the old-fashioned way. Their Fruition Seeds is a throwback to an earlier era when people got their seeds from small farmers growing varieties best suited to their home regions. Like […]
Besides the mulch and soil washouts and rotting tomatoes from last week’s record-setting rains, we could be looking at some additional subtle and long-term water-related issues in the yard. Yet to be determined is the effect that all of that water had on plant roots — not to mention how much more we’re […]
I know it sounds counter-productive, but sometimes, whacking a plant almost to the ground during the growing season is the best thing you can do for it. Near-total whack-backs seem like a bad idea, but done at the right time with the right plant, they can lead to better performance – or even […]
Sue and I had a couple of hundred visitors tour our yard this past Saturday as part of a Penn-Cumberland Garden Club tour. We didn’t go to a whole lot of extra trouble to make the yard look better than it really is. But we did do a few things ahead of time […]
Plants with variegated leaves offer beauty all season, not just when flowers are blooming. That’s a main reason why you can count me as a variegation fan. Although variegation can involve zones of assorted different colors, the most common blend is green and white. Variegation isn’t terribly common in nature since the […]