Back working in the garden!

This weekend I tackled several of the tasks that were making my garden a place I wasn't excited about visiting. If you remember from my last post, travel has made it difficult for me to connect with the garden this year -- I was worried that I wouldn't be motivated to get out there and enjoy it. I'm glad to say that a couple of days of beautiful weather changed that for me. On Saturday I mowed the back yard and cleaned up the veggie beds, and those two tasks made the garden instantly more welcoming for me.

The veggie beds cleanup was quite a chore, but I'm not going to tell you about it yet -- I'm too excited about a project I tackled yesterday: this not-level-at-all planter box.

Read more »

Read more...

What garden?

Yesterday on an airplane high above the eastern part of this country, I was recounting the things that I was looking forward to at home: my own bed, the cats, a familiar TV remote, preparing my own meals. I realized there was something missing from that list: my garden.

This was a startling realization, as I have a bit of an obsession with my garden -- if you haven't noticed. So I started thinking about why the garden didn't make the short list of things I missed, and I think I know the answer.

Read more »

Read more...

Resting

I need a little break.

I'm not flying thousands of miles to my wintering grounds...

Read more »

Read more...

Devils Tower, the next day

The evening bike ride really tired us out, but after a good night's sleep we were ready to break camp and see the tower up close with sufficient light.

We left pretty early as we knew from the previous evening that there were limited parking spots for RVs up there. (That's the view from our campsite with the tower lit by the morning light. So nice!)

Read more »

Read more...

Devil's Tower National Monument

Arriving at Devil's Tower somewhere around 7:00 PM after a long day of driving, we were excited to see this famous monolith of stone up close.

And close we were -- it's really surprising how close the campground was to this.

Read more »

Read more...

Leaving Grand Teton NP, seeing Wyoming

The next morning (after the hike) we left Grand Teton National Park as early as we could, which was around 7:00 AM. We knew we had a long day of driving ahead of us and as we learned the first night of this trip it's no fun pulling into a campground late at night.

After an hour of driving or less, we started getting a taste of what central Wyoming has to offer, with wonderful views everywhere!

Read more »

Read more...

Grand Teton hike: Swan Lake

Yesterday I shared with you the haunting sound we heard before we got to the lake. Now, here's Swan Lake:

Actually this is just a small sliver of the view we were greeted with when we stepped out of the trees. If you look closely toward the right-middle of the photo you can see a couple of the sandhill cranes that were the source of the eerie forest sounds.

Read more »

Read more...

Back to Grand Teton NP -- What's that sound?

We now return to our roadtrip vacation to Yellowstone and back, taken last month. We left off in the middle of a hike in Grand Teton National Park, where we had seen a small lake, some hot, dry fields, a wonderful creek, and were now approaching another lake.

This is where we heard a strange, haunting sound... but more on that a bit later.

Read more »

Read more...

Planting Peonies

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my gardening friend Michael letting me know that he's going to be digging up some of his peonies very soon, and wanting to know if I was interested in a couple of divisions.

Since I don't currently grow any peonies, and since they're a plant that my wife really likes, and since they're free -- I said yes! Since it's Mike I should have known that "a couple" really meant six.

Read more »

Read more...