Gilmour Hose Meets the Test

  • Post published:07/29/2015
  • Post comments:2 Comments

I don't usually get garden equipment to test, but I was happy that the Gilmour Hose Company thought of me as a tester. Gilmour sent me their gray Flexogen Premium Duty hose, guaranteed not to kink. We have been using the hose all summer at the Greenfield house, dragging it around the garden, around the house out to  the hellstrip to water all the new plantings. While there have been a couple of heavy rains there have been…

Bruce’s Homemade Potting Bench

  • Post published:03/25/2013
  • Post comments:6 Comments

Last summer I visited Bruce Cannon's fabulous garden. His potting bench is one of the elements that impressed me.  He took an old stainless steel sink and built his potting bench around it  in the shade. The faucet does work, but the water just drains out onto the ground. Yesterday I was talking to my friend Bob who is one of our town's volunteer fire fighters. Last fall the fire department  held a practice and burned down an old…

New Goals For the New Year

  • Post published:01/07/2012
  • Post comments:4 Comments

“What news? What news?” was often the cry when E. F. Benson’s delightfully pretentious Lucia met her neighbor Georgie coming across the Riseholm village green in “Queen Lucia,” the first of several books about the life in an English village before WWII. When I return from Saturday morning rounds in my own rural village my husband always wants to know what news I bring home. “What’s new?” is our inevitable query of neighbors at local gatherings. The desire…

Hozing Around

  • Post published:12/22/2010
  • Post comments:4 Comments

I have never used a hose guard, and I have certainly damaged plants as I have pulled the hose around the different beds. Hozearound sent me a sample of their product and I am looking forward to trying it out in the spring.  It is made of really sturdy steel and the stake that goes into the  ground is long. It can go 18 inches or a little more into the ground - assuming you don't hit any…

We Have a Winner!

  • Post published:12/05/2010
  • Post comments:3 Comments

Layanee of Ledge and Gardens is the winner, chosen at random by a disinterested party, of the Fiskars tool organizer. Congratulations Layanee! On the next three Mondays, December 6 (which is the actual anniversary of my first post, the 13th and 20th, I'll have a new Giveaway.  Plenty of time to win a present for yourself, or for a gardening friend.

Celebratory Fiskars Giveaway

In December of 2007 (!) I began my career as a garden blogger.  I hardly knew what a blog was in those days. I had just discovered Garden Rant, and my friend BJ Roche at Fiftyshift said that as a writer I had to have  a blog. And so commonweeder was born. What I knew about garden blogs - a blog was a place to share information and experiences and opinions through the Internet. I did not imagine…

EcoSpout

  • Post published:10/12/2010
  • Post comments:2 Comments

I was at a dinner party recently and one of the guests confessed that she liked 'toys.'  The toys we had been discussing were Kindles and iPads and who knows what all. They hold no fascination for me, but when I am at a nursery or garden center (or browsing a catalog) I confess I am tempted by all the tools and doodads that abound. When I was at Nasami Farm this fall I saw this EcoSpout for…

Plant Sales Coming Up

  • Post published:05/01/2010
  • Post comments:3 Comments

So many groups hold plant sales in the spring. They give us a chance to expand our gardens AND often  support any number of worthy community organizations. Nasami Farm of the New England Wildflower Society is now open in Whately on weekends, Thursdays through Sundays from 10 am - 5 pm. until June 13. Nasami sells native plants that will thrive in our area, support birds, bees and butterflies - and our whole eco-system. Friday, May 7  9…

Avery’s Comes Through

  • Post published:10/21/2009
  • Post comments:6 Comments

The joy of living in the country is that the men get to have neat toys. Henry has a complicated relationship with his Allis Chalmers tractor, which needs constant tinkering, born as it was in 1950, but it is good for working with a grandson and taking care of big chores. But there is that tinkering. Lately Henry has been fighting with the carbeurator and the gas tank, both of which have rusty interiors. The rust flakes off…