MINI + Donzell’s = Bad Idea

We really enjoy going to Donzell’s in Akron. It’s a neat & tidy greenhouse with a pretty good selection of plants. This Sunday, while out and about, we stopped in to look around. They were having a sale on hydrangeas, so I ended up leaving with 5 new ones. I also bought a bunch of past-prime plants for a great price. When we were checking out, we realized that we had driven our MINI Cooper (funny, we never buy much when we are driving our big car).

We are pretty good at packing, so we managed to fit it all in.


Mr Chiots with a crown of hydrangea blossoms.

We made it home with only 1 casualty, a hydrangea blossom broke off when we were getting it out of the car, but it’s in a vase on the table. Looks like I have a lot of work to do this coming week!
I’ll let you know which plants I bought later this week.

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Inspiration: Trumpet Vine

I’ve been thinking about training a trumpet vine up the electric pole that at the front right corner of our lot. I already have one growing on the light post back by our garage, so I was going to try to propagate it. This past Friday I dropped my niece off at a friend’s house to swim and I saw this. Just what I was hoping to do. Granted, it will take a long time for mine to look like this, but I want to get it started right away so it will look like this soon!

Oh yeah, here are my two nieces swimming in the pond (aren’t they cute).

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Chamomile at Dusk

My Chamomile is blooming. A couple nights ago, I noticed how they glowed at dusk. They’re just waiting to be picked & dried for tea this winter.

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Great Gardening Books: Kitchen Gardens

I’ve been reading as many books on kitchen gardening as I can get from the library. Some are good, some are bad, some have great photos, some have none.

Taylor’s Weekend Gardening Guide to Kitchen Gardens: How to Create a Beautiful and Functional Culinary Garden (Taylor’s Weekend Gardening Guides)is a great book. It’s small so it’s a quick read. There are a ton of great photos of real gardens, not perfect magazine gardens here, just real gardens with weeds & imperfect plants. It highlights a bunch of different kitchen gardens in different zones. This is a great book for photos of gardens that can be translated into your own garden. I found a sapling fence that might be in my garden next year.

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Ironic

The spigot on my rain barrel system.

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