Every year more and more Americans live and work indoors. Every year more and more Americans know more nothing about their outdoors where they live. I was lucky being born 82 years ago. I was raised in the city, in a house on a ninety by forty-five foot lot taught to know the outdoors, both at home and at school. It was in first grade before World War II when I was first...
Read More >>El Nino is a Pacific Ocean current event. The powerful primary Pacific currents normally in early winter make their turn North after hitting the American continent somewhere around southern Mexico. Occasionally they begin their northward turn much farther to the South bringing greater warmth from equatorial cloud and water which has a warming effect from western United all the way to Gopherland cakked "El Nino". Winter 2016 in...
Read More >>Spring is not, by calendar, that far away from today's February if you are a devoted landscape gardener.....in particular one who is devoted to express this love as it classically is supposed to be......from one's soul. Throughout the history of mankind, there are two 'far superior' spiritually-driven artistic forms of human expression above all others....."Paradise from beautiful music....and paradise from beautiful Earth. Religiously....."One is closest to God..in the Garden," so truthfully discovered by and...
Read More >>This Twin City Autumn has been the kindest extension of Summer ever in my remembrance. Warmth without heat, rain without snow and wind. Leaf fall is merely one stage in the cycle of plant life here in our Northland. This is the season our Earth is being replenished with Earth's yesterday foliage in order to continue life's cycle. The health of our trees and shrubs ideally relies on water and its relationship with rot,...
Read More >>When, at what season, does, should, your landscape garden radiate its most inspiring beauty? The answer is simple......Whenever you enter your Garden of Eden. I have lived at my grounds for over 40 years, long enough to be able to do, genetically, mentally, physically, and culturally, what I was driven to do, planting and maintaining a beautiful landscape garden in some form or another. I have been very, very fortunate in life, and have many...
Read More >>Not all Springs are equal. Almost two decades ago a measured thirteen inches of snow fell upon our population center this past week. Although I am a devoted fan of continued global warming, hoping for horticultural zone 5 to become our Twin City standard, I'll take this present Spring's mood any day of a decade. We are a bit short of regular spring waterings, but the temperatures have been quite modest, cool, not cold,...
Read More >>The Spring lacing of deciduous tree foliage is about to begin in a day or two here in our Twin City landscape gardening area. It's the time when our major evergreen conifers no longer overwhelm our winter's six month landscape dominating the deciduous ghosts of Winter. My 60 foot Red Maple is already overwhelmed with young leaves and countless bloom clusters causing the first sign of casting its shade. A taller cottonwood, one-third of...
Read More >>There can be no doubt that a well manicured lawn on one's outside home grounds is as beautiful as a stunning Oriental Carpet is on the inside of a person's domain. Yet, if left alone in a vast room of nothing else, how winsome can they really ever be if they lie alone in their space? One carpet requires great human effort to maintain its beauty, which actually includes another art form, the clipping of the...
Read More >>Fewer and fewer Americans engage in 'monkeying around ones grounds' these days. Fewer and fewer Americans can identify five plants growing on their property or grounds near by. Fewer and fewer people bother tending to 'gardens'. More and ever more Americans live all of their lives just a few feet above asphalt. Fewer and fewer Americans have children.....We now import them for political as well as economic reasons. Botany is no longer taught at school....at...
Read More >>Most homeowners in our Minnesota communities ignore landscape gardens. Lawn and a shade tree in the middle of the front lawn, mud in the shadier depths, and the foundation plantings habits fits their needs for the duration. Probably most homeowners are poorer now than they have been for more than a decade. They endure living in their sterile environment. More females mow lawns these days than ever. The American husband population from coast to coast...
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