I was about to write an article at this post today that tomorrow, October 10th according to records, is the average date for the arrival of frost in these Twin City, America environs. However, when I stepped out onto my gardened grounds, I spied frost covering the here and there. This frost had not been predicted by the pundits. In the upper regions of my bit over a half acre gardened grounds, frost arrived for...
Read More >>I have been very delinquent regarding my recordings of landscape garden arts at this Masterpiece Landscaping blog site. That I admit and regret. However, Nature has had something to do about that on two fronts this season: First, I reached my 80th year of life this past Summer.....Second, the pond along which more than two hundred feet of my gardened property abuts, flooded beyond anything previously recorded from the countless torrential rains of this past...
Read More >>What is a weed? To the druggie victim "weed" is something that knocks one out of reality in order to act stupid. This is a landscape garden art website. Hemp is weedy, but lots of plants are weedy but in no way a weed. So, what is a weed? Lawn grasses are weedy. We want them to be weedy when growing in their place for the weedier they are, the thicker mat they will be....
Read More >>It snowed here last Thursday evening. We had only 8" here in my territory, two-thirds of an acre just west of Hopkins, Minnesota. By sunset yesterday, if the sun had been seen while setting in the rain, there was still some unmelted snow in the woodsier part of my grounds. Looking down from my office window as I write this note, I still see a portion of last December's snowdfall on the north side of...
Read More >>I have long rooted for global warming....well, not so much global warming as Minnesota warming.....up to a point, of course. That point would occur when the Earth around where I live enters Horticultural zone five.....No warmer, and certainly no cooler. Why would I want to slip back into the dark ages of landscaping in Horticultural zone 3.5 or 4.0? I'll never see the day, but I have craved to be able to landscape in a...
Read More >>I love deer. My hunter-son hunts them during hunting season. We both are devoted to our occasionally gainful occupation in life, landscape gardening. My home, therefore my landscape gardened grounds which surround it, is located in the third tier of middle, very middle class Minneapolis suburbs. Streets here were planned to curve when homes were built in the late 1950s. The lots are bigger, more often the 250 by 120 foot irreglarly-shaped kind rather than...
Read More >>We receive notices from city 'officials' in a monthly bulletin. City officials are politicians and want people to re-elect them. Here in Minnetonka where I live city officials are officials for life..... In our horticulture world they rail against wild mustard and buckthorn nearly every month during the growing season. A few years ago purple loosestrife was on the city officials hate list. Now that European insects which suck the life out of purple loosestrife...
Read More >>In our modern America such a question might have been asked in a court room, school room, a family kitchen, office room, or laboratory. I, thank God, arrived at a different generation with far different thoughts, beliefs and values. I was very lucky. "Weed" when I was young was more like an order. "Time for you to go out and 'weed' the garden", Mother used in verb form. The word in noun form referred to...
Read More >>In all of my years of gardening various political religious sects have deified things organic. Sixty years ago and beyond, much of the worship emanated from Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Now city folks and others who blaspheme America's oil industry have picked up the chant. There is no doubt in my mind the best of all fertilizer additions one can apply to outdoor growing things in general, is good old 1-1-1 well rotted cow manure. But, ow...
Read More >>The Art of Landscape Garden is, of course, a Visual art form. So is 'Magic!' These are similar expressions, both being visual 'trickery'......The 'artists' want to control what the eye is to see, or what the brain thinks the eye preceives. In the ideal the art of landscape gardening should be to the eye, what Beethoven's compositions are to the ear. To the vast majoirty of home owners the grounds around the home they own...
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