Lessons in the Dirt

On the forested property where hubby and I live there is a wide variety of shrubby groundcover and undergrowth:  sword ferns, deer ferns, bracken ferns, Oregon grape, salal …    … salmonberry bushes (which I call “nasty prickle bushes”…

In today’s background photo you can see the 50 Pacific Dogwood trees hubby and I are planting this fall.  Dogwood trees take a long time to grow!  Years!  According to Google, it takes 18 months (or more) just…

Throughout my daughter’s high school years she worked in the dining room of an Assisted Living place.  Here she developed many close friendships with many dear people.  This cobalt-blue jar with water plants was a gift to my…

I was sitting calmly on the back deck enjoying the sunshine when the gravel on the front drive crunched … then the doorbell rang.  Much to my surprise it was my neighbor down the street, whom I had…

This beautiful, variegated rose is “footprints across my soul” … precious memories of dear friends, and the wonderful times we have had together!  Our friends brought this small rose over to us as a gift one evening, when…

This past February I came across this wonderful set of garden pruners and shears at Costco.  We could most certainly use those!  The blackberry briars, sticker bushes, and Big Leaf Maple shoots are aggressively trying to overrun the…

As I was walking past the living room, I noticed the clerodendrum (tropical bleeding heart) had grown off its support post … and was reaching still further.  Immediately the verse popped into my mind:  “Forgetting what is behind…

My daughter had a small cactus of which she was quite fond.  It had a beautiful red bloom on the top … so she planted it in a bright red pot to match the bright red bloom.  Eventually…

Three years ago, my daughter gave me a small aloe vera plant as a birthday gift.  It was a very small plant … but it grew.  It grew and grew, and before I knew it, there were multiple…

When I first came across some little blooms like these, I was about to admire them … but then I realized they were on sticker bushes and I therefore deemed them unworthy of being awed over.  But afterwards,…