Diamonds in my dreams

We stepped off the top step at NBT Bank Stadium Saturday and I looked across the concourse and out over the beautiful green grass. It hit me again. Every time time I go to a baseball game at a professionally kept field or watch a major league game on TV. I have lawn pattern envy.…

What a good day for the roses

While my dear wife Karen and I spent a week in Cape Cod, the roses came out to play at our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. In one spot in our hourglass front-yard garden, you can see a yellow rose, white rose, pink rose and red rose. They are of different sizes…

The garden cycle works out just right

The peony in the corner of the front of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood gave us its all during a furious week of budding and beauty. A full 15 flowers shot out of that one sturdy green plant in one week. They lasted slightly longer than that. I let the petals…

Now we await butterfly bushes and butterflies

The team gardening effort for my dear wife Karen and I focused this afternoon on the butterfly garden triangle in the backyard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. I planted the last two newbies, a pair of lavender plants to take the place of a previously hardy spreader that up and…

The day of the peony

Today three peonies opened wide. My dear wife Karen and I said aah! We know the blooming period is short for these beauties at the corner of the front garden of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, so we always count down their arrival and admire their dramatic full effect. Most happily,…

Mulch to remember on Memorial Day Weekend

My dear wife Karen wielded her mighty little hand shovel to place the two Gerber daisies we’d purchased Friday night — the only color she’d found at the apparently picked-over big box — into the hourglass shaped front garden. I pulled out the bags of red mulch and poured liberally. Karen placed and patted, lovingly,…

Come out and play

Winter held on. Spring was sleepy. The Robinson flowering crabapple in the front yard of our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood shook all that off and made its grand entrance, as far as I’m concerned, this very morning. Hello to summer two, you hardy and hearty blooming beauty.

A dirty job no matter how you look at it

Four plants now are ready to sprout in the new section of our hourglass front-yard garden in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, the portion I dug out last fall. My dear wife Karen and I teamed this glorious and sunny Sunday to dig in the dirt. I used a spade to make holes for…

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…