Look, Mom, I'm blogging!

I've always thought of gardeners as "hands on" people, so I have no idea how you'll react to this new (to me anyway) form of communication.

I'm wondering what it is that gardeners find interesting about other gardeners. Is it why they garden or how they garden or what they grow?

Well, one thing that I can tell you about myself is that I don't 'do' vegetables and fruits anymore. I'm strictly an ornamentals girl. Have been ever since my family and I tried our hands at 'self sufficiency' back in the '70s. I planted a 100-foot by 200-foot plot of Missouri clay with everything from peanuts to potatoes and rhubarb to raspberries. No power equipment. No chemicals. Everything from seed.

What WERE we thinking?

The goats got out of the electric fence and ate all the fruit tree seedlings. Insects and birds devoured most everything else. I did manage to glean about a quart of peanuts from the two enormous rows that I'd planted. I sent them to my brother for Christmas. (My husband still complains to his friends about that...)

That's the thing about growing food crops. There's all that canning and freezing and cooking to do after the thing is grown. I'll stick with flowers. Flowers ask nothing in return. Only to be appreciated.

I can do that.

One of my favorites this season is Veronica "Pink Damask." I saw it in some high-priced catalog or other last year and succumbed to the advertising copy. (I do that quite a bit, though not as much as I used to.) It's actually lived up to the hype. Its soft pink spires have been in continuous bloom since May--without any deadheading. And it's looked great with everything that's bloomed around it: the Asiatic lilies, lady's mantle, campanula, balloon flowers. I highly recommend it.



Veronica "Pink Damask'