Is my boxwood dead or does it just look like it? Well, that depends. In Chicagoland, we had a rough winter. That polar vortex descended rapidly, froze the ground, stayed for way too long, and leafy evergreens paid a price. Perhaps your boxwood looks like this: Or this: Or even this. Tell-tale symptoms of (1) […]
Today I’d like to introduce another friend—also an author—whose friendship has been formative in my Christian walk. Her name is Mary Ethel Eckard of Dragonfly Ministries. Her new book, “The Making of a Dragonfly: Following Christ Through the Winds of Change” was recently nominated for the Henri award in the motivational category of the 2018 […]
God has blessed me with friendship with some amazing women. One of them is Karen Loss, author of Trekking Through Cancerland . She is a survivor of Stage 4 lung cancer though she never was a smoker. Today, I’d like to share our friendship with you, my readers, so you might be blessed and encouraged […]
God loves a good garden. God loves farming. And God loves using horticultural and agricultural imagery and analogy. From the very beginning of the Bible (Genesis) to the final chapter of Revelation, there are gardens and agricultural imagery which God uses to teach us about Himself and about the world in which we live. Mankind […]
Wishing all my gardening and theology friends a Happy New Year! Isn’t it amazing how many flowers look like fireworks? I was thinking about that this morning as I was watching the westward setting of the biggest, most beautiful full moon I can ever remember on a New Year’s Day. Looking eastward over Lake Michigan […]
Here you go: How to edge your bed better than a pro in 10 easy steps. “Pretty arrogant,” you might say! Q: What makes you think you do it better than a pro? A: Because I hate edging and I don’t want to do it more than once a season. Pros don’t mind coming back every […]
Time for a few gardening posts (yes, birding is an extension of gardening). This has been on my mind for a while now. Given that we’re 16 degrees below normal temperature-wise and the steady rain has made the soil unworkable, I don’t want to be in the yard. Writing about it is almost as good. […]
What follows is the text of the self-guided garden tour from my March-to-November garden in last week’s charity garden walk. A number of people asked if I could post it for the plant names. Welcome to my garden! Ready to take a walking tour? Mailbox. Part of every garden is the first impression. I hand-painted the […]
One of the blessings of a lifetime of gardening–even before I was Seminary Gal–has been developing little tricks for keeping my garden looking nice. Enjoy these hacks for a million dollar garden at a budget price. How many of us want self-watering planters, but don’t want the wallet-draining prices that come with them? Today, you […]
I often get compliments on the beautiful hanging baskets on my front porch. They are large but proportional to the elliptical archway under which they hang. They are not round, but squarish, important so the pair doesn’t look like eyes staring at you. Every year, I do something slightly different, but the result is always […]
