After last summer’s bust, people are more eager than ever for the homegrown tomatoes of summer. The favorable weather of spring has paved the way for an early harvest, but even so, if you’ve been to the farmers markets, you’ve been seeing tomatoes for a while now.
The number of roofing-company signs sprouting in the North Riverside neighborhood rivals the flowers that are trying to come back from a hailstorm that hit the area particularly hard last week.
We’re entering the road-trip part of garden-tour season — though we still have a few local tours coming up, too. To me, these tours are an easy and charming way to get a taste of vacation without the long road trip. You just start to relax, too, in a small town.
I love the French gardens that are being sold at garden centers to decorate graves for Memorial Day. Before we take a solemn pause Monday for that holiday, the weekend offers prime gardening and garden-related events. Some of the events start with breakfast Saturday morning, so it’s time to get cracking.
Consumer Reports recently had an issue with a cover devoted to the slacker’s guide to a great lawn. Those of us who have taken care of a lawn are no doubt tempted by the idea — just as we are by pills that burn fat, tapes that teach us while we sleep and offers of a free lunch.
I’ve been kicking myself for not having more plants of orange — the hot color of the year that I’m loving — but I felt rejustified in my selection of mainly pink annuals after seeing the latest incarnation of Linda Courtney’s garden in west Wichita.
May is firmly in place, and Herb Day is here — the fifth day of the fifth month of the year.
As I was shopping for annuals this week, my candy-stripe-loving self ran headlong into my must-plant-for-butterflies self.
As our lush green spring continues, encouraged by mostly warm days and preserved by cool nights, the trend toward full-blown planting moves right along, punctuated by frequent mowing and weeding.
As irises, roses and even peonies bloom in our early spring, I realize I have to take my own temperature when it comes time to deciding when to plant.
Throw roses into the Easter baskets of yards we’ve been enjoying for a few weeks now.
While there’s a bit of a cooldown in the forecast for early next week — temperatures dropping into the 40s at night — nothing is stopping the spectacular show of tulips that continues in the area.
I’ve been living in a pink world this week. When I look out the front windows of my house, my heart skips a beat when I pick out curtains of redbud blooms against a developing leafy green backdrop. A peachy sky backs the scene at sunset, and I can hardly tear myself away from gazing.
It’s now officially spring. We have that much to anchor us.
It may have been a mild winter, but I still felt like Sleeping Beauty this week, waking from a long dark nap to the light of fat white pear blossoms and sunshiny forsythia.
Wichita’s annual “garden show” changed this year, but some opinions about it remained the same.
Good riddance, winter.
The last weekend of February and the first week of March used to be a lot different for people in Wichita’s garden industry.
The snow earlier this week allowed me to follow the tracks of a certain raccoon that I’ve seen visiting my ground bird feeder in the middle of the night.
Don’t get Susan McKnight wrong. After 31 years in the floral business, she can attest to the fact that red roses still rule the choice of flowers to give on Valentine’s Day.
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