I slept through the actual moment of Winter Solstice, when because of the Earth’s tilt, the Northern Hemisphere leans farther away from the sun than at any other time during the year. It happened just after midnight here in the central U.S., and thus began the first day of winter.
To celebrate, Mother Nature brought [...]

I’ve been using floating row covers in the greenhouse lately to add an extra level of protection on cold nights. Jugs of water around what few tender plants remain in there help a lot, too. The water warms with the day’s heat, and at night, when temperatures drop, the heat radiates from [...]

Photographed November 30, 2007 – one very confused, but delicious ripe strawberry. You’d better believe I washed it off and ate it.
Variety: Jewel
Planted: September 2007
My supplier kept the dormant plants in cold storage for the summer, so they arrived in the usual state of bundled roots I’ve always dealt with in spring plantings. The warm [...]

I always grow purple petunias, not because I like them, but because my younger daughter liked them so much when she was small. I think she still favors them, but not with the single-minded exhuberance she exhibited a decade ago. She’s grown now, and she no longer spends summers weeding at my side [...]

My favorite spring lettuce mix comes from Pinetree Seeds. It’s a colorful mix of red, pale green, medium green, and even red-freckled leaf lettuces in a variety of shapes. I love the visual variety almost as much as the tasty salads.

Behold the new fence for my herb & perennial garden. My genius husband unearthed and moved many large rocks while digging those postholes. Here at the edge of the Ozarks, we grow rocks really well. The fence needs another coat of stain and some chicken wire around the bottom to keep the chickens out, and [...]

Finally, the ice is melting away. By 2 p.m. today, this patch and a few larger sections in the shadows of the woods remained, but the rest of the farm had gone to mud. The ducks are happy. They love mud. They love puddles. We have plenty of both now. I don’t mind the mud [...]

It really looks like a greenhouse now that the plastic covering is on. We used a special 6 mil greenhouse plastic that’s UV treated to resist sun damage. It’s supposed to last 4-6 years.
It’s not a fun task to maneuver a sheet of plastic this size (32′ x 60′-plus) over 10 ft. tall arches without [...]

The doors, windows, and peak vents are in, and the genius husband is finishing the framing so we can put up the plastic.
The black tarp over the center section is the old, leaky tarp that covered the above ground pool when we moved here. We salvaged it and have found various uses for it, most [...]

My genius husband got the side rails and the arches up for the new, improved greenhouse here at the farm. The arches themselves were purchased used a few years ago and already have been through one incarnation at our last home. This time, it will be taller, longer, and sturdier, thanks to the adaptations [...]