My Besuited Home

Stop me if you’ve seen this before: you spend a fortune on a beautiful paver driveway, but the edges look like a neglected construction site. Or worse, you’ve got that “landing strip” of weeds and gravel that makes your whole house look tired. I’ve spent fifteen years trying to tame … Read more

My back still aches when I think about the year I tried to haul three-hundred-pound limestone troughs into my backyard just to get that “English cottage” look. I nearly broke my spirit and my favorite shovel before I realized there’s a much lighter, cheaper way to get that weathered stone … Read more

Your neighbors probably think I’m a bit eccentric because I spend more time talking to my snapdragons than my actual family, but after fifteen years of mud-caked boots, I’ve learned one thing: a beautiful garden and a productive cut flower garden are two very different beasts. If you try to … Read more

Your container garden probably starts strong in spring and then slowly turns into a sad lineup of crispy stems and regrets. I’ve been there. One summer, I planted five different flowers in one pot because Pinterest told me to. By July, it smelled like a compost experiment gone wrong. After … Read more

My first balcony garden was a mess. Pots tipped over in the wind. Basil fried in the sun. Cherry tomatoes staged a full rebellion and died dramatically in week three. I remember standing there with a watering can thinking, Why does Pinterest make this look so easy? If you’ve got … Read more

I’ve spent the last decade engaged in a silent, muddy war with my front yard. I’ve survived the Great Aphid Invasion of ’12 and that one summer my zucchini grew so fast it nearly swallowed my neighbor’s cat. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that people want a front … Read more

Over the last fifteen years, I have lived with dirt permanently lodged under my fingernails and a back that groans every time I see a 40-pound bag of mulch. I’ve killed more “unkillable” plants than I care to admit, including the time I accidentally turned my backyard into a swamp … Read more

I’ve spent the last fifteen years with a permanent crescent of soil under my fingernails and a recurring dream that my tomato plants are staging a coup. I’ve killed more “unkillable” succulents than I’d like to admit, and I once spent an entire July trying to convince a wilted hydrangea … Read more