Snow was on the ground and a chill was in the air as people made their way indoors for the first day of the Outdoor Living and Landscape Show on Friday at Century II. It was perfect weather to go looking for an early taste of spring, on display at the show in blooming tulips, baby ducks, tomato plants and deck chairs.
Wichita’s latest version of a garden show debuted last year and will expand just a bit this year when it is staged next weekend in Century II’s Expo Hall.
Last week, standing alongside the rock garden in Botanica, at the base of the curved wooden bridge, I gazed around me and was astounded at the number and variety of plants I saw.
I had a sense of deja vu as master gardener Janie Chisholm made one of my favorite observations of all time on Facebook: “Love, love, love waking up to the birds singing!”
As I wrote a story for last Sunday’s paper about the drought and the possibility of water restrictions in Wichita, it seemed that a different attitude was being brought to the use of water.
One of the benefits of a walk through Botanica on a warm, sunny afternoon in January: two sightings of red foxes – one in the children’s garden, the other from the heights of the pavilion.
A few days after Christmas, Susan Cooper was standing at the large window in her living room that looks east over a bend in the Little Arkansas River, getting ready to take down her Christmas tree – a concolor fir that she’d bought at Johnson’s Garden Center.
Like Lucy from Peanuts joyously shaking a can into which Charlie Brown has deposited a nickel, I’ve been shaking my first packet of seeds of Garden Season 2013.
As much as I love Christmas, the clean freshness of the new year and a return to post-holiday routine are always refreshing and consoling.
On the verge of Christmas, I always have miscellaneous snippets of holiday information lying about, like pretty pieces of ribbon left over after wrapping a gift, threatening to become unceremoniously outdated by next Saturday. (I’d be happy to keep celebrating the 12 days of Christmas anywhere and everywhere, but society won’t play along.)
Some Christmases turn out to be more Charlie-Brown-style than we might imagine, even when we’re adults.
More than any Christmas before, I’ve been thinking of which causes I want to help and which businesses I want to see stay in business while doing my Christmas shopping.
For people wondering last week, with our early Thanksgiving, whether a live Christmas tree can survive the long haul through Christmas, the answer is yes.
It’s a little early for the Christmas tree for me, but even if you aren’t getting your tree this weekend, you probably are planning where you will buy it.
Thanksgiving is as early as it can be this year. Yet somehow Christmas has arrived even earlier.
When the rain pools in a low spot or the dogs dig where they’re least wanted, the yard can become a hole where our hope drains out.
How about a flower show this weekend to chase away those standard-time blues? I will love the extra hour of sleep Saturday but will be looking for that lost hour of light every day until we get it back.
The spooky scene in the garden comes the morning when we wake to find that tender new mum buds, white tomato flowers and succulent green leaves on the purple sweet-potato vine were snatched away during the night by the cold, leaving summer only a warm memory.
Most of us have areas of our yards that are more of a challenge than others. When I asked people to send in their landscape problems, several of them spoke of areas where nothing would grow. Such is the case for the Kirkharts of Andover. In this installment of Landscape Solutions, landscape architect Kurt Huiras of GLMV Architecture addresses their case of the dreaded clay soil on the north side of the house.
Back in May, I went on a tour of some of Wichita’s community gardens, now spread all across town.
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