SWEET HOME AND GARDEN CHICAGO

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From Sweet Home Alabama to Sweet Home Chicago I am an artist, garden designer and avid gardener blogging about the things I love. Carolyn Choi

September 5, 2010

Blame It All On My Roots

The long labor day weekend is my first vacation this summer.  Did I go to Michigan and sit on the beach and go shopping as invited?  Nope.  I stayed home and played in the dirt.  That's what garden geeks do.  Yesterday was a gorgeous 70 degrees so I toiled gardened from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m.

Blame it all on my roots because I am returning to the garden of my youth, one that combines flowers, fruit, herbs and veggies.  I get very sentimental when I think of how our family was sustained by the good earth's bounty and the fruits of our labor .

Here's my new raised herb bed which I made with stones left from a previous owner.


The rosemary topiary in the center is the first I've kept alive with a grow light over the winter . The hen contains golden oregano and the other pot, thyme.  I plan to use seeds in the Spring to fill the bed with basil, cilantro, chives, garlic and sage.

I couldn't resist these two cone-shaped boxwoods and will add long-blooming roses and other flowering plants to the border below.


Why is it that a garden seems small until you start digging?  Clearing the area, removing and transplanting , hauling the stone from storage and filling the bed took me 7 hours.  I thought I'd be sore the next day because I haven't been able to work outside much this extremely hot summer but the ole' bod rose to the task.

Although there's a lot of work yet to be done I think I've made a very good start.





Written by Carolyngail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago All rights reserved

September 1, 2010

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day




"It is a sad moment when the first phlox appears. It is the amber light indicating the end

of the great burst of  early summer and suggesting that we must now start looking

forward to autumn. Not that I have any objection to autumn as a season, full of its own

beauty; but I just cannot bear to see another summer go, and I recoil

from what the first hint of autumn means."

- Vita Sackville-West

Vita and I are in complete agreement on our feelings about the first signs of autumn.  Even though this summer has been one for the record books, both in the amount of rainfall in early summer and the lack of it in August, combined with consistently hot days, we still hate to see it go.

Early this morning a gentle rain began falling . September's song is welcomed by gardeners everywhere.



 










Written by Carolyngail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago All rights reserved