Simple Ideas for Better Homes, Gardens & Outdoor Spaces
You raked, you bagged, you hauled six trash cans of leaves to the curb, and you patted yourself on the back for a job well done. Then April rolls around and your hostas are lace, your tomato seedlings have aphids before they even hit six inches, and there’s a vole tunnel running straight through what … Read more
You pulled the last zucchini off the vine, hauled the dead squash plants to the compost pile, and figured you were done for the season. Then you flip over a piece of old mulch or lift a stray leaf near where the plants used to be, and there they are. Dozens of squash bugs, just … Read more
Your grass looks fine from the porch. Then you walk out barefoot, step into a patch of clover, and suddenly there’s a bee three inches from your toes. Or maybe it’s not the bees — maybe it’s just that your lawn looks patchy, with these low, three-leafed clumps spreading faster than anything else out there. … Read more
You finally got your lawn looking decent after a brutal summer, and now there’s a fresh wave of weeds crawling in like they own the place. Dandelions popping up where you swear you pulled them in July. Clover spreading across the back corner. Some weird low, spreading thing you can’t even name yet. Here’s the … Read more
You cut your tomato plants down, rake up most of the leaves, and call it a season. Then April rolls around and your “fresh start” garden gets hit by the exact same aphids, squash bugs, and slugs that wrecked your zucchini last July. Sound familiar? Here’s the thing nobody tells new gardeners: most garden pests … Read more
My front porch used to be the saddest spot on the block. Three plastic beige pots, a leggy geranium, and a garden gnome that had seen better days. Then my neighbor Rosa invited me over for coffee and I saw her patio for the first time — cobalt blue Talavera pots stacked with marigolds, hot … Read more
My neighbor Carla once looked at my front bed in July, squinted at the wall of orange, pink, and magenta, and asked, “What did you do, rob a piñata factory?” That’s Mexican flowers for you. They don’t do subtle. They do loud, they do bold, and they keep doing it long after your delphiniums have … Read more
Crows picking apart your tomato seedlings the morning after you plant them. Pigeons treating your blueberry bushes like an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you’ve ever walked outside to find your lettuce bed stripped down to nubs, you already know the frustration I’m talking about. My neighbor Carla used to joke that her garden had a “birds … Read more
My third summer of gardening, I bought six “weatherproof” resin planters from a big box store. By October, two had cracked down the side from a single Kansas hailstorm, and by January, the other four were basically confetti after one hard freeze. I stood in my driveway holding a piece of broken plastic shaped like … Read more
My neighbor Carol used to stop by my porch every June just to stare at my pots. Not because they were fancy. Because they were blue. Real, honest, sky-colored blue, not the washed-out lavender that garden centers try to pass off as “blue” every spring. She’d point and say, “Okay, what is THAT, and where … Read more