Gardening at The ToadShed

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Everyone!! My, I didn't realize that it had been so long since I last posted. I have been busy with the holidays as well as spending a great deal of time at the hospital. My Daddy had total knee replacement, so I have been involved in helping him and my Mama. One week before Christmas my brother-in-law had a life threatening episode and is still in the hospital. The doctors have still not found out the cause, which is very frightening, considering that he is only 39 and never had any health problems. So all of this has kept me quite busy. I finally got the chance to venture out in the garden today. I raked some leaves and pulled some ground ivy that was beginning to take over. Often during the winter my attention focuses mainly on bird watching and feeding. I had the opportunity to go out a few weeks ago and do some bird watching. Checkout the formation the birds had made against a Hawk, you can see the Hawk if you look closely. It reminded me...

Well , it won't be long now until the last leaves will fall and the trees will stand naked. I love fall, the crispness in the air and beautiful colors of the landscape. I often find myself collecting fallen leaves. Why, I don't know, because they are beautiful and I can't resist I suppose. However this fall I did make a collage of some leaves I had gathered. I made a frame of twigs and acorns. I thought it would look nice hanging in my garden shed.

While Googling the other day I came upon a web site of a Gardener/Author, Art Wolk, some of you may be familiar with him. I however had never heard of Art or his book, Garden Lunacy. After visiting his website I knew that I had to have a copy of this book. The website gives the reader a glimpse of whats inside the book. I am sure most of you can relate to the symptoms of Garden Lunacy, http://www.gardenlunacy.com/symptoms.htm I certainly could. You can place an order from his website and receive an autographed copy, or you could cheat like me and go to Amazon and order a slightly used copy.

The garden shed has been finished for months now, but I have been so busy in the garden that I haven't had time to get the inside organized. So, I devoted an entire day to this task, and I actually enjoyed it! I wanted to create a cozy inviting place to sit and read, or hide, for taking pictures of the birds as they visit the garden for a tasty treat. I also wanted it to be functional, so that I can attend to my gardening projects such as repotting, starting seeds and overwintering some of my plants. I have a few more things add, but for now I think it will do. come on in and take a look. I love this pillow, I picked it up at an estate sale. cozy reading nook storage for some of my tools Grazle, My first visitor, just checking things out. My Barn Star

Old Compost Bin New Compost Bin I am so excited!! Dewayne, (my wonderful Hubby) finally got my new compost bin built. I have never used this compost maker before, but thought I would try it . He built a two bin system so I can transfer the finished compost over. Now, for the cold frame... My Gardening friend, Kay, picked up these old windows for me. They should work fine for my cold frame.

I stumbled across this article a while back, it touched me so deeply that I saved it. This morning, as I was so called organizing my collection of gardening resources I found myself reading it again and wanted to share it with my fellow gardeners. I hope you like it. Why Garden? By Paul McKenzie, special to HGTV.com Most people separate work and play into separate boxes--eight-to-five in the cubicle, weekday evenings watching sitcoms or carting the kids to ballet rehearsal, and weekends of golf or waterskiing. Not so the gardener. Digging holes and pulling weeds could hardly be called recreation. But gardening doesn't fit so neatly into the work box either. Although at day's end you're left with sore muscles and more weeds to pull, you also find that your soul has been nourished and your spirit rejuvenated. Gardening is the most popular hobby, but the term seems pitifully inadequate. What term could be applied to a pursuit that takes so much of you and yet gives so much ba...

Kay, My gardening friend from work, gave me this pretty sedum "Dragons Blood" I had spotted one several years ago at a plant sale and have always regretted that I didn't get it. I had mentioned this to Kay in casual conversation, and she surprised me with this the other day. Isn't it wonderful to have gardening friends? This is what it looks like when in bloom .

Puttering- pass time with trivial things: to do trivial or unimportant tasks in a random, leisurely way v. intr. To occupy oneself in an aimless or ineffective manner. v. tr. To waste (time) in idling: puttered away the hours in the garden. I guess this is what I spent most of the weekend doing, pulling a few weeds here and there, raking up leaves for the compost bin. I spent, or should I say wasted a lot of time walking around looking for my misplaced bypass pruners. I also went through all of my plant tags. Do you save plant tags? Some plants were long forgotten,these were the ones that just didn't make it. I have tried to grow some things over and over vowing that this time, I would MAKE it live. I ammended the soil, made sure that it was watered and fed and was receiving the proper light conditions, yet still it would die. I think this makes a gardener even more determined, so we try again. I had one plant that I became so displeased with, that I literally yanked it up and bega...

I was up bright and early this morning, long before the sun. If this had been a work day I would swear that come Saturday, I'm sleeping in. I really enjoy the early morning when the rest of the world is still fast asleep, yet I rarely get to enjoy it because usually I am on my way into work. I was already out and about when the little Hummers began to buzz about, the feeders were almost empty so I made up some fresh sugar water and boy were they ready for it. I then took a little stroll around the garden, I noticed some things are beginning to look a little tired, and I think this year I want to take a few cuttings and try rooting them for next spring. I am really pleased with the performance of several annuals that I tried out this year. Sutera - Giant Snowflake, this little flower really outdid itself, here it is planted with Purslane. It however is only an annual in zone 7. Here Purple Queen is planted with Lantana, a combo I will repeat more of next year. Spider Lily, and I ha...

Cuttings taken from tomatoes in August. I put them in water for seven days and wala! roots. Now, I must not take the credit for this, I learned it from a nursery owner that was a guest on the local news. now, I already have little tomatoes. Your fall tomatoes will tend to taste better than those that you’ve harvested in the heat of the summer from your spring planting. And there is also less insect and disease pressure. Tomatoes take around 60 days to grow up, mature, and start producing fruit. That means if you get them in the ground by August 1st, then you’ll start producing tomatoes in early October, just as the heat begins to break. Also, many times, that first freeze or two are actually light frosts. By protecting your tomato plants through that first frost or two, you could actually be harvesting tomatoes for the Christmas Dinner table!

You can find so many wonderful deals this time of year at local nurseries and home improvement stores. In fact I went on sort of a plant binge this week, it started on Thursday after work and went on into Saturday. I never stopped to think as I was loading up my cart with so many shrubs that I would actually have to dig holes for all of these! Well, I guess I had better get started.

I recently stumbled across this item in one of my gardening magazines (you see what trouble these can get you into). Anyway, I really think it would come in quite handy. I don't believe it is designed break up new ground, although, I think it would be wonderful to use for mixing in compost or digging small holes. I have looked in Lowe's and Wal-mart and ,apparently, it is not carried in the store. However, site-to-store shipping is available. The price is good too, only $99

I try not to be so critical, sometimes I just can't help myself. I walked out today and all I could see was ugliness. My poor flowers, they looked so sad. I wanted to cry. My mother called, and she quickly decided I was just to ill to talk. She couldn't believe it when she learned that the cause of my "bad mood" was that my flowers were wilted and scorched from the brutal sun beaming down day after day with absolutely no rain at all. When she and the rest of the county get rain, I get none. It somehow dissipates before it reaches my garden. So yes I would say I was a little upset. I wanted to rip them all out by their little dried up roots and swear off gardening forever. Thankfully I refrained from doing so.

As I was driving in from work today I was debating with myself whether or not I should drop by Lowe's to see if anything had been added to the Clearence shelf. I just couldn't decide I was really tired and there was probably nothing new anyway, I am getting closer to the entrance, yet I still haven't decided. Well, here I am so I make a sharp right turn on two wheels. Boy! am I glad I did. Those racks were full, and I loaded up. I managed to get $75.00 worth of plants for 35 buckaroos!! I got Coneflower, Dead Nettle,Lysimachia,and several more of the Mona Lavender Swedish Ivy plants. I was so excited. When I arrived in Athens I decided to do a drive by at our local store, and the clearence shelves were loaded there as well, but I decided I had better get on home. In the morning I will head out to Lowe's once again. Ugh, that means I gotta get up early, oh well.

It's Monday, and after a lovely weekend it was really hard to go back to work. I went though, I just left early. I stopped off at a few nursery's on the way home and lucked up on some great bargains. I think my new favorite flower is Plectranthus, sounds prehistoric doesn't it? It is a beautiful plant with wonderful purple blooms that actually like the shade. I plan to put them under a tree along with Pachysandra, I wanted to get them in the ground today, but I have got to ammend the soil and after all, I did work half a day.

Yes, believe it or not, good insects do exist in the garden. I cringe when I hear folks say that their spaying for bugs in the garden. Don't get me wrong I, shamefully will admit that I too have grabbed for the insecticide in a moment of sheer desperation, but let me say that has been years ago, before I knew better. Now that I have done away with the sprays and retired my bug zappers I have seen a plethora of good bugs. I now have several orb spiders, I remember as a child seeing these in my grandparents garden. Usually when I find an insect that I can not identify, I will snap a picture then research it on the web. I thought I would share some of these with you. This is a Hummingbird Moth. It closely resembles a Bumblebee. This Is a Bumblebee. Swallowtail This is the bug that ate Susie. I still can not identify it. Some kind of weevil, I suppose a moth or butterfly I found this quite amusing . This moth reminds me of a B-52 stealth. This Hummingbird Moth seems to think he needed ...