Family Day At Kingwood
Kingwood Center in Mansfield is a real gem, it’s a beautiful garden that’s small enough for a quick trip on a nice day. It’s only an hour away from my parent’s house, so we often take an afternoon to visit the gardens when I’m back in Ohio visiting. It’s also inexpensive, only $5 per car to get in, which makes it doable for my sister and her four kids to join us.
The weather was perfect that day, sunny and 75 degrees, amazing for the end of October. My mom felt well enough to walk around the gardens with us and we had a nice afternoon enjoying what will probably be the last warm day of the year. It was a beautiful day at a beautiful garden.
Do you have a favorite outing as a family?
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Friday Favorite: Fall Cleanup
I love fall, the cooler temperatures, the colorful leaves, the garden cleanup chores. There’s something soothing and relaxing about cleaning up the garden in fall, none of the harried nature of spring. I guess that’s because you know there aren’t 100 chores still left to do when you finish one. As you check them off the list, they’re finished until next spring when the snow melts.
I love mowing the leaves, mulching the gardens, building the compost piles, clearing out the garden, etc. There’s something wonderful about seeing the earth ready for a rest, I always wonder if the garden looks forward to the winter rest season as much as I do.
What’s your favorite fall cleanup chore?
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Composting in Situ
Earlier this summer I talked about my experiments with composting in place in the garden. Since they were such a great success, I decided to continue using this method since it saves tons of time. As I’ve been cleaning out the main garden I have been building giant compost piles at the lower end of the garden. This area is much lower than the rest of the garden and the soil needs to be built up about a foot or 18 inches to help level the garden a bit. Eventually, there will be large rocks put in place here to hold back the soil and improve water runoff issues in the garden.
Instead of hauling in topsoil, I decided it was easiest to take the patient way and simply start building up this lower end of the garden with compost. I now have a rather large compost pile that is growing larger and longer by the day. At the moment it’s about four feet wide, three feet tall, and fifteen feet long. Eventually it will span the entire length of the garden at seventy feet. Next year I will plant pumpkins and squashes on these pile to help compost them down even more, then they will be raked out a bit and more will be built here if the soil level needs to be increased. I love this method because I don’t have to turn and maintain compost piles and I don’t have to bring in soil from elsewhere to increase the level. Overall, it’s a win/win because it saves me tons of time and labor.
What time/labor saving methods have you discovered recently?
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So Many Dahlias
My dahlias are blooming like crazy, it’s like they know that they only have a week or two of blooming left. They have been blooming nicely since August, but now they’re really putting on a show. I was happy to see them welcoming me home from my travels over the past two weeks. There’s nothing like seeing some final colors in the garden.
I’ll be digging these tubers after the first frost, if you’ve wondered how to overwinter dahlias in a cold climate stay tuned. I’ll make sure to take lots of photos and write up a post about the process.
Do you grow dahlias? Do you have a favorite variety?
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Fleeting Beauty
Every year in June, I wonder if my hardy hibiscus survived the winter. Then, just as I start mourning that it’s gone, up come the little green shoots from the soil. In August it starts blooming and only lasts a little while before the weather turns too cold for it. This hibiscus came as a seedling from my mom’s garden. She has dinnerplate hibiscus in white and red, the pink color is a cross-pollination between those two.
Even though it only blooms for a very short season, I’m always happy to see these lovely blooms. They remind me of my childhood in South America, we had hibiscus growing in our back patio. This season I purchased another hardy hibscus with dark leaves and red flowers to grace our front stoop. Hopefully it survives as well as this lovely specimen.
Do you have any plants that surprise you with their hardiness each year?
