On the wings of a first season

What a debut! Our backyard butterfly bush has certainly turned out to be a success in its first year in the ground after we brought it home from favorite local nursery Ballantyne Gardens. Each step of its process makes my more and more thrilled.

Behold the multi-colored butterfly bush

The last of our big three butterfly bushes pushed out its blooms. Behold, to the right, the multi-colored beauty. We loved the completed trifecta in the triangle garden in the backyard of the cherished Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Yeah, I love the look back there, for sure. No question about…

Here come the butterfly bush blossoms

It’s August. The butterfly bush blossoms are pushing out in the triangle garden in the backyard of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwoood. In the two of the four, anyway. The tall one has purple flowers showing. And the white one has the biggest cone-shaped blossoms out for the world to…

3 pretty bushes all in a row

In the last week, my three sturdy backyard garden butterfly bushes have changed personality a bit. The white, in fact, became the loudest of the bunch, with blooms so big, so long, so wide, they threatened to drown out their neighbors. But the pink indeed morphed chameleon-like into the multi-colored beauty of seasons past, and…

This time Good Neighbor Tim’s got the butterfly

By mid-July, I’d hoped to be able to proudly show you the purple blossoms on my most mature of butterfly bushes in the backyard garden of my dear wife Karen and I at our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Yes, I can, but not in the striking manner in years past. Here’s…

At this huge nursery, it’s easy to welcome spring

Last Saturday my dear wife Karen and I walked the aisles of Chuck Hafner’s Garden Center in North Syracuse for more than an hour, and I was a lot closer to getting bushed than I was to getting bored. Every year we take the drive from our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood to North Syracuse…