Celebrating Eight Years of Blogging – Giveaway

This year Cool Springs Press is helping me celebrate my eight years of blogging with a Giveaway of Terrariums: Gardens Under Glass. These have been rich years for me be cause my blog has brought so many wonderful gardeners into my life, and so many beautiful gardening experiences. With other garden bloggers I travelled to Buffalo and to Seattle and saw beautiful gardens, large and small and all different. This past summer I attended a Garden Writers Conference…

Giveaway to Celebrate Six Years of Blogging

Six years of blogging and I'm celebrating with a Giveaway. It hardly seems possible. Six years of documenting my garden, mostly, but also family events. Because of my blog I have met gardeners from around the country at Flings.  All you have to do to meet some of them is click on the Buffa10 badge on the right side of the page. Over these six years and 1,406 posts I have learned that gardeners have a wide range…

Bloom Day May 15, 2013

Last spring was early and hot and on Bloom Day there was a lot of bloom. Things are moving slowly this Bloom Day. This is an  area of my lawn reduction project. Waldsteinia has spread over the past three years and I'm underplanted with daffodils. Waldsteinia is a beautiful plant and it is just coming into bloom. It is not  any kind of strawberry plant. These miniature daffodils are some of the daffs growing amid the barren strawberry Some daffodils…

U is for Unless on the A to Z Challenge

  • Post published:04/24/2013
  • Post comments:1 Comment

  U is for Unless. I was trying to find a good botanical U word, but I could locate very few. Umbel is "an inflorescence with pedicles or branches arising at the same point and of nearly equal length." Think Queen Anne's Lace. Ulmus is the whole family of elms, and Urtica is the stinging nettle. Stinging nettle made me think of the problems we can face when gardening. And that made me think of an alphabet book by…

B is for Bee Balm on the A to Z Blogger Challenge

  B has to be  for Bee Balm because a post I did about Bee Balm in 2009 is one of the most popular posts I ever did. I don't know quite why. Maybe I did some SEO magic without knowing? Maybe because ABC Wednesday still remains very popular, running through the alphabet for six years now? In any event, bee balm, more properly known as Monarda didyma, is an American native that has it's own place in…

Happy Fifth Blogoversary to Me – and Giveaway

Today is my fifth blogoversary. Five years ago, on the Feast of St. Nicholas, with  a lot of help from my husband, I gave myself the gift of the commonweeder blog. I had no idea where it would take me or the gifts it would give me. Because of this blog I joined 60+ other fascinating garden bloggers in Buffalo and Seattle for Flings that took us to amazing gardens, meetings with creative gardeners, and gave me lively…

CISA -The Power of We on Blog Action Day 2012

  • Post published:10/15/2012
  • Post comments:2 Comments

On this Blog Action Day where many bloggers are describing and celebrating "The Power of We" I give thanks for our local Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture - CISA. I live in a rural area and like many people I have become more and more concerned about the food my family and I eat. About 20 years ago, farmers producing vegetables, fruit, fiber, maple syrup and dairy, businesses, politicians, and consumers got together to talk about how to…

Chicken Encyclopedia – Storey Blog Tour & Giveaway

The chicken is a familiar farm animal, but even those who are setting up backyard flocks may not be aware of the more arcane facts of their life. Some may not be aware of the most basic facts of their biology. I cannot count the number of times people have told me they would love to have chickens producing eggs in the backyard, but they just cannot stand the thought of having a rooster. BASIC FACT: Hens, like…

Foliage Follow Up – January 2012

  • Post published:01/16/2012
  • Post comments:2 Comments

I rarely participate in Foliage Follow-up, but Pam Penick at Digging has prompted me to take a good look at the foliage around me at this time of the year. I have owned this orchid cactus (Epiphyllum) for a number of years. I pay almost no attention to it which is shameful, because it would bloom regularly and magnificently if I did. You can see I don't even give it the pedestal it deserves. For the past year…

Bloom Day, January 2012

  • Post published:01/15/2012
  • Post comments:4 Comments

This Bloom Day is the coldest day of the winter so far. -4 degrees at 7 am. Still I have a few blooms to enjoy. This Christmas cactus is becoming quite magnificent and sits in the corner of our bedroom where it is one of  the first things I see when I wake up. We are still a little disorganized from the nearly completed work on our kitchen so this Christmas cactus is sitting it out in the…