The aging gardener

If we’re lucky, we get older. 🙂 I’m grateful for this ‘mature’ chapter of life, but it does come with a few challenges and adjustments.

I garden about seven months, sew the other five, and read and work on a laptop in between along with routine household chores. Sewing, reading, and computing only require a little more light these days, which is easy to handle.

Gardening is physical which requires all the joints to be working, and at this point the brain needs to kick in to remind me what I can and cannot do anymore. About four years ago, I added an 8’x10′ shed to my garden which continues to provide a great place for all of my tools to be close at hand.

The shed was made by Gem Construction in Maine and brought down and put on site. On the inside of the door, I painted a New England quilt block pattern.

A two-wheel hand truck is now pulled out to move large containers, bags of fertilizer, soil, or rocks. The reality is I can’t and shouldn’t try lifting things over about 30 lbs.

I use shovels, rakes, hoes, well, you get it, and they all weigh different amounts depending upon the manufacturer. These days when I shop for a tool, I’m checking how heavy it is because it’s a lot easier to spend my energy digging versus lifting the tool.

Getting down on the ground to weed is out of the question unless I have the Fire Department on speed dial to provide a lift to get me back up. 🙂 So, I have a combo seat and kneeler that provides for getting down and up, and I have a rolling tractor seat with a basket. Options are what we are looking for as we age so we can continue to garden.

The one tool I pull out every day is my garden cart. Over the years, I’ve used a variety of styles and sizes, but the one that works the best for me is one with two bicycle wheels up front. It will go anywhere, carry anything, won’t tip over, you can dump it right out, or put the front on the ground and roll or push something into it.

This is also why I’ve been digging up certain perennials and moving to flowering shrubs. Flowering shrubs might need a slight pruning once a year, but there is no dead heading or cutting back, and there are less weeds because they spread out. We haven’t been able to sell Iris or Daylilies regardless of how lovely they are for several years at our May MG plant sale. Why? Well, I think it’s two fold in that they are considered old fashioned, and they bloom for a very short time, need deadheading, result in limpy leaves when the blooms are done, and need cutting back in the fall or spring.

Gardening is a passion just like playing the piano, birding, playing tennis or pickelball, or playing Mah Jongg, and I want to do it as long as I can so I have to be smart about how I approach each new gardening season. I will be adding a page at the top for shrubs and salt retention bed where I’ll make notes in case you are wondering how both those projects are going.

So, if you are trying to figure out what type of gift to get a ‘mature’ gardening family member or friend this Christmas, think tool that will help them stay in the garden longer.

Happy November folks, stay healthy, and enjoy the season.

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October 2025

Fall has arrived in New England, leaves are falling, asters are blooming, flower seeds are being collected for next year, and up north the traffic is at a standstill as all the leaf peepers check out the color.

We are still in severe drought conditions, and the weather has been all over the board including the upper 30’s in the morning to as high as the mid 80’s this afternoon.

I’ve been working each day on fall chores including putting outside things away for the winter and moving plants around that will do better in a different spot. After you have spent several years gardening, you realize and accept that some plants just don’t like certain places that you put them. I move them until I hit about the third time, and then I bank them for the MG plant sale in the spring and acknowledge that they weren’t meant for my gardens.

This year, I’ve also accepted that I have too many needy perennials that require maintenance throughout the season and am actively replacing them with small flowering shrubs. I’ve planted ten so far including two each of: Bloomerang Showmound Reblooming Lilac, Czechmark Trilogy Weigela, My Monet Purple Effect Dwarf Weigela, Proud Berry Coral Berry, and Yuki Kabuki Deutzia.

The end of September also saw me putting in the salt retention bed that we hope will keep some of the road salt runoff from getting to our remaining huge maple tree. It is planted with salt tolerant plants such as hydrangea, spirea, catmint, columbine, coreopsis, lambs ear big ears, honeysuckle, daylilies, sedum, and yarrow. Only time will tell if this works or not, but the bed looks nice.

Fall DIY and cleaning has also been interspersed with the gardening chores. I’ve sorted and cleared out several areas in the garage and barn, repaired some vinyl siding as a result of the new hvac system, replaced the garage door top and side seals, treated some rust spots on the inside bottom of the door, sealed some asphalt cracks, leveled some pavers, and replaced weather stripping on two storm doors. I have a couple more winterization jobs, but that should about close out this list.

Before I end this post, I have to tell you about a very special day in September when I headed north to Stonewall Kitchen in York to meet Laurie at Notes from the Hinterland from Maine, and Dorothy at The New Vintage Kitchen from Vermont. We had the best time. The food was good, but I’m not sure we would have noticed if it hadn’t been because we were having such a good conversation. We’re already looking at a visit for next year.

As I work through my to-do-list this month, I’ll be hoping you all are having a great month whether you’ve got a good book to read, heading to see a new movie, birding, have a trip to plan, or just enjoying your days. Have a great month.

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End of gardening season

Happy last week of August as we head to the Labor Day weekend and into September. We’re having a cloudy day today that will find me outside digging up some grass and extending a mulched area around the blueberries.

As we close out the 2025 gardening season, I will admit it has been challenging with the heat and the drought conditions. It has caused me to consider several things for next year including a few more drought tolerant shrubs versus perennials.

I lost several plants including well established clematis and several failed to work out like three red twig dogwoods and three hibiscus that I really wanted. At this point, I don’t have years to wait and see if something is going to work. I gave the dogwoods three years and the hibiscus two, and now I’ll find something I know has worked in the past – grasses.

Our fake paper bee hives worked extremely well to ward off carpenter bees without using harmful pesticides, and the hummingbird nectar defender additive my gardening friend told me about has made changing the sugar water solution easier. We had a lot of hummingbird visitors this summer, and that’s a good thing.

We’ve been buying plants on clearance racks, dividing them to make more and holding them in a shady area so they can be planted in a few weeks in the new bed we’re hoping will stop some of the road salt runoff. It’s a real kick when you can divide one plant into 15.

Containers planted with perennials once again worked well and in a couple of weeks I’ll take them out, put them back in the ground for the winter, and reuse them next year as needed. The planter on the left includes a boxwood, hosta, heuchera, and Japanese forest grass all shade perennials that I really enjoy. The shade garden did much better than the beds in the sun.

Zinnias, nasturtiums, and tithoia planted from seed have excelled through the heat and drought conditions. Annuals in containers that needed constant water and deadheading became a chore.

We had the best crop of blueberries in quite a few years, but it required a fence and silver tape to ward off the deer, turkeys, and birds. So, for next year I’m putting up a little more permanent fence and adding hoops so I can throw a net over it.

The raspberries were eaten by the turkeys and the insects so I’m going to keep the temporary fence around them and spray with an organic spray. If that doesn’t work better, it may be time to bid them adieu.

The climate has dramatically changed and the increase of houses near us has driven the wildlife in our direction. Some things you can fight, but weather and wildlife aren’t two of them.

One of the raised beds is also infected with the invasive jumping worms leaving castings similar to coffee grounds and indicatting the soil has been depleted of nutrients.

When I saw this, I applied tea seed meal, watered it in, and picked out the worms as they rose to the surface.

Picking up worms is not a fun job, but it is actually pretty effective in this situation because they do not like the tea seed meal and come right to the surface.

It’s tough gardening out there, folks. 🙂

We had a visit from family this summer which was a lot of fun. I’m still reading every day, but the only one I’d recommend is “We Are All Guilty Here” by Karen Slaughter. Good read with a lot of twists. I’ve watched two episodes of “Hostage” on Netflix, and I’m looking forward to “Thursday Murder Club.”

I hope August was a good one for you and that September is even better. Stay well, take care, and happy fall gardening, reading, writing, traveling or whatever makes you smile.

Hot and Humid

Wicked hot and humid as a matter of fact. Working outside has been a real challenge. We are about to have a week of less humid temps, and I am going to try and accomplish as much as I can without needing Aleve and ice.

The daylilies, hydrangea, zinnias, and mexican sunflowers are prolific and enjoying the heat. The roses except for the Knockouts are tired and are also trying to survive their leaves being totally devoured. I’ve tried organic sprays, but they don’t seem to make a dent.

We’re also challenged by wildlife this year – deer and turkeys. The turkeys got a good portion of my raspberries, and the deer have devoured the hosta, hibiscus, and sedum. They’ve never eaten the sedum before, but they must be hungry this year. I put up some temporary fence materials I had. It was a lot of work and it’s a pain to work around, but I’m hoping to eat every one of my blueberries and not share.

We had to have two very large trees removed. They were huge specimens – a horse chestnut and a maple. The trees were taken down, stumps ground, and a nice pile of chips left in the driveway. The arborist thought the road salt had contributed to their decline and that we should do something to protect a beautiful sugar maple that is remaining.

So, we’ve been researching plants that can tolerate salt and buying some on sale, dividing and potting them to keep for the project. When fall rolls around, we are going to create a planting area that hopefully will absorb some of the salt runoff before it gets to the maple.

Here are some photos from the garden. It’s still pretty colorful out there despite the heat and humidity.

We had family visit and took a couple of day trips to Maine to enjoy the sights and the food. If ever in Portland, stop at Duckfat Frites Shack. They have the most amazing frites and donut holes. Yes, strange combo, but oh so good.

Photos: Tugboats in Portsmouth, Portland Head Light, Nubble Lighthouse, and Duck Fat frites.

I’ve been reading, but the only book I’d recommend is Linda Castillo’s “Rage.” Good read. We been watching Ballard on Prime and Untamed on Netflix.

Hope July is treating you well, and you are all healthy and happy.

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Pride Day

June 28, 2025, is Pride Day.

For me, this is an opportunity to stop and think about those who don’t always feel accepted.

It is a time to express understanding, kindness, and to extend a hand with a message of hope that each person reaches their own authenticity and potential. Life’s journey is an individual path, and we have a choice as to how we accept others.

My generation defined themselves by where we came from. My ancestors on my father’s side were from Canada, and my mother’s family was from England. It was fairly simple.

Today, life is more complicated because we have progressed beyond what our DNA results look like and what race box we check.

So, I’d like to just take this moment and say peace, acceptance, and blessings to each person who may be finding their way.

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June garden

It’s green, its lush, and its soggy. We’ve had rain, and a lot of it, including twelve Saturdays in a row. Along with the rain, we’ve had temps as low as the mid 40’s and a real feel of 102℉ one day.

Everything is blooming – Dwarf Korean Lilac, Viburnum, Lupines, Clematis, Allium, Iris, Peony, Iris, Clematis, Iris, and Peony.

The raspberries and the blueberries have blossoms. Fingers crossed we get to enjoy some of the fruit.

I worked a plant sale, and I’ve been to so many others I’ve lost track. I’ve found some interesting plants, which I brought back home and in many cases found I could divide and gain more than one plant. I always interview plants for division which means I check the base of the plant to see if it can be pulled apart safely. I check them all sometimes. 🙂

Last week I had a lovely lunch with Laurie at Notes from the Hinterland out on the patio of Stonewall Kitchen in York, Maine. We had a delicious meal and a nice conversation.

Over the weekend, I enjoyed the beauty of Portland Head Light at Cape Elizabeth, Maine, and the culinary delights at DuckFat Frites and exceptional coffee at Bard Coffee. Portland, Maine, is a fun place to visit if you ever get the chance.

I’ve had a good choice of reading materials including Craig Johnson’s “Return to Sender,” James Comey’s “FDR Drive,” Jeffrey Deaver’s “South of Nowhere,” Michael Connelly’s “Nightshade,” Tess Gerritson’s “The Summer Guests, and “Robert Dugoni’s “A Dead Draw.” I really do love my library.

Before I get started on today’s to-do-list, I’m going to deliver a tray of extra vegetable plants to a local charity where they provide gardening opportunities for fellow residents with disabilities. Most vegetables come in four or six packs which results in some that we don’t end up needing. I’m fortunate that I already knof of an organization through a fellow Master Gardener that could use them, but I’m sure you could find one also with a little checking online.

Once I get back, I’m going to pull some weeds. It rained last night and this morning so pulling will be easy. I’m also going to lay down some wood chips so I can free the truck bed up to go get some loam and compost. It’s a good thing I have a truck and only live about 2.5 miles from the landscape company where I buy in bulk. 🙂

I hope your weather is good and that you’re enjoying your passion whether it be reading, sewing, gardening, exercising or just relaxing.

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Hello May

Gardening season is finally here, but it still involves working between the showers which are frequent, but the plants are loving it.

The rain and then the occasional sunshine are allowing the spring bulbs and plants to shine.

Top left to right: red maple tree, daffodil, pulmonaria, bloodroot, daffodil, bleeding hearts, grape hyacinths, and hellebore.

It also makes for a good time to move plants so I moved ten Dwarf Korean Lilacs, and they are all getting ready to bloom.

Spring is always such a welcome season with all its handsome colors after a long winter.

33 bags of leaves have been moved out of the beds, and we’ve unloaded three loads of wood chips so far with many more to come. I also trimmed up multiple pink gold spirea and several big leaf hydrangeas, and applied Epsoma Soil Acidifier to the blueberries and hydrangeas.

A raspberry row was brought back into line, staked, and is ready for the season to produce both red and blackcap raspberries. The row was rather large so it was reduced a few feet to allow for three new blueberry bushes, two Patriots from Monticello, and a Blue Jay. Fruit abounds.

An old hoop house was covered in plastic, and new seedlings for this year’s garden are enjoying their new spot. Lawn furniture has been brought out from winter storage, and pots and garden decorations are finding their seasonal homes.

We have carpenter bees that want to set up residence on our old barn, but when they do there are so many that it limits walking in that area and they damage the old barn wood. So, last year we tried a decoy hanging wasp nest, and it worked so another one was put up this year.

Our indoor Red Robin tomato plants update includes the fact that we actually have small red cherry tomatoes.

It has been an interesting experiment, and it certainly proves you can grow small tomatoes indoors.

These are five of my twenty seed snails with annuals planted.

They have been on my windowsills since planted, but I just moved them out to the hoop house where I can separate them and get them closer to being planted in a couple of weeks.

Using seed snails is a lot easier and takes so much less space and effort, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to planting in tiny cells.

I checked out some annuals this week at a local box store, and a ‘single’ plant is running around $3.99 to $4.99 each. The days of buying a six pack seem to be in the distant past. I may be using a lot more perennials in my planters this year.

We feed the hummingbirds each year, and we saw our first one yesterday. Cue the applause.

We have regular feeders, so when it rains, the water dilutes the solution and it needs to be changed frequently.

We watched some YouTube videos, and used a frisbee and a few pieces of hardware, eyebolts, coupling nut, and washers, to make a cover for the feeder.

It won’t keep all the rain out, but will help and will also provide some shade from the sun during the heat of the summer.

I just finished James Patterson’s “25 Alive,” and it was a good read. We finished watching season three of Dark Winds, the second season of 1923, and the last season of Bosch Legacy.

We have rain in the forecast four of the next seven days. It’s really soggy out there. Wishing you all good May weather so you can enjoy getting some outdoor time.

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Welcome spring

The snow has melted, and it’s wonderful to move from a white landscape to a brown one because green cannot be far behind. Of course, this past weekend we had rain, sleet and snow. I hope Mother Nature lets go of winter because our annual Master Gardener plant sale is in seven weeks.

My orchid has sixteen blooms right now with another six buds. It’s a beauty. I have eight Red Robin tomato plants in two window boxes. Each plant has blossoms and tiny green tomatoes set. It has been fun watching them progress. I’ve shared tomato plants with a fellow MG and with three local residents through a plant exchange group. This local plant exchange group is on Facebook and allows me to share or find plants in my local area. It’s a nice community option.

While I’m waiting to get back into the garden, I’ve joined a local garden club that offers some excellent winter workshops. I’ve attended sessions on pollinators, pruning, and cutting gardens. We are fortunate that there are several active gardening groups in this area so it was a challenge to pick just one, but the fact that this one has really good workshops and meetings in the morning swayed me.

Native plants are getting a lot of press because of pollinators. I borrowed a book from the library, ‘The Northeast Native Plant Primer.’

It is a wonderful encyclopedia of 235 native plants. This book, I’ll buy and keep for reference.

I did some spring blog cleaning and experienced a wonderful trip down memory lane while deleting some old posts and photos that were taking up a lot of space and moving me toward a higher priced plan. Deleting a post that includes photos is not a one-step process. Rather, you have to delete the post and then go find the photos and delete them. WordPress keeps tweaking all kind of things, but I guess freeing up space is not a topic they are interested in from a financial standpoint.

I’ve read some good mysteries lately including C. J. Box’s ‘Battle Mountain,’ Mike Lawson’s ‘Untouchable,’ J. D. Robb’s ‘Bonded in Death, Sandra Brown’s ‘Blood Moon,’ Tom Clancy’s ‘Weapons Grade,’ and John Sandford’s ‘Lethal Prey.’

As a quick follow-up to my library post, our NH libraries are still wading their way through the current situation of losing federal money and trying to find solid ground. After my post, our state reps announced they were set to vote to shut down our NH state library, which was the first state library in the nation. They received so many calls and emails, they shelved that idea. Although the state library avoided shutdown, their budget will take a huge hit, and they will need to find a path forward as well.

As I watch the landscape change, pull my containers of bulbs out of the barn, get ready to do seed snails tomorrow, I am excited for a new gardening season. I hope your weather is moderate, spring is approaching, and life is as good as it can be.

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American Library Services

It’s a challenging time here in the United States, and wading into the current political firestorm is not something I enjoy or choose to do if I can avoid it.

I am, however, a huge fan of my local library and use its services to feed by passion for reading and learning. This past week our local library posted the following notice.

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An executive order issued Friday, March 14th, 2025 calls for the reduction and elimination of functions of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) which is an independent federal agency that supports libraries and museums in all 50 states and U.S. territories. This decision will greatly impact all Granite State residents.

The New Hampshire State Library currently has $1.5 million of IMLS money to fund its interlibrary loan program (ILL), as well as the online catalog and van service to support it. In 2024, Our Public Library loaned out 1,546 items to other libraries using the ILL service, and borrowed 2,263 items from other libraries to support the needs of our patrons.

The State Library also uses IMLS money to provide you with Talking Book services and Libby (Overdrive), the eBook, audiobook, and digital magazine platform. In 2024, Dover Public Library patrons borrowed 59,988 digital titles from Libby.

Elimination of this funding will dramatically affect the above-mentioned services that we currently provide, crippling the collaboration among New Hampshire libraries and drastically reducing patron access to library services.

If you would like read the executive order, please check out https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy/.

If you would also like your opinion recorded, you can send a message here on the American Library Association website.

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I am closing comments because my sole purpose in posting this is for any person who values and utilizes their local library and is unaware of the issue.

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Note: Yesterday, March 25, 2025, our NH representatives in Concord announced they were closing our first in the nation state library. Within 24 hours, residents expressed such opposition that they took it off the table. I wouldn’t have imagined that holding on to our history and having the ability to access books and other learning materials would be such a struggle. My good friend, Dan, at NoFacilities, had a wonderful quote by David McCullough today, and it included this fact: “During the worst of the Depression not one public library closed their doors.”

Snowy February

Seventeen days into the month, and we’ve moved about 2′ of snow so far. The snow banks are almost up to the windows of the shed and barn.

In between, there has been just enough melting to have seen some of the biggest icicles ever, and turning areas into icy patches several inches thick. Part of the driveway looks like the header shot.

We are definitely having a ‘regular’ New England winter. The winter sports enthusiasts are loving it. ⛷️⛸️

No snow post would be complete without repeating that my little Toro Power Clear works great. It’s a small, simple little machine, but I love it and the ability to get ready, prime it, plug it in, press start, and it’s ready to go. There is no cord pulling although it does have a cord just in case.

A friend and I went to a workshop sponsored by the Portsmouth Garden Club and Pollinator Pathways NH last week, and it was fun to talk gardening and come home with native plant seeds. This week there is a pruning class.

Although, outside everything is buried under piles of snow, I have been enjoying the Amaryllis and now the Walking Iris which has produced fifteen blooms so far. My two orchids are also budded.

I also have tomatoes growing. I know, I know, it is way too early for tomato seedlings, but I read an article on growing determinant Red Robin cherry tomatoes indoors so I thought I’d give it a try.

I started the seeds in a seed snail instead of a tray. It takes up much less space, and they develop wonderful roots for transplanting. I have not been using grow lights but just moving them into sunny windows when available and putting them under a sewing light in the evenings. Yes, unconventional, but the light seems to work, and it gives me something to do in between storms. 🙂

I’ve gone through a lot of books, and these are some of the better ones: Robert B. Parker’s “Buried Secrets,” James Patterson’s, “Paranoia,” Michael Connelly’s, “The Waiting,” Jonathan Kellerman’s, “Open Season” and “The Lost Coast.”

The temperature is not going above the mid 20’s today, the winds are high, and there’s no reason to go out so I’m not. The last of the snow can wait, and I’ll enjoy the beautiful sunshine streaming in the windows and find some sewing to keep me busy.

Hope February is treating you well, and you’re keeping busy while enjoying a few smiles. I think I’ll bake something this morning that I can share with family because that always makes me smile. 🙂