First cut of the season puts a hop in the dog’s step

No rain. A tiny break in the schedule. The mower came out of the shed late yesterday afternoon at last. I do believe May 4 is the latest I’ve pushed the cutter around the lawn to start the spring season at our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood in the 10 years since…

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…

Our porch Christmas spruce is in the ground

We knew when we purchased the potted blue spruce in December and proclaimed it our side porch Christmas tree that we wanted to put the baby in the ground after the ornaments were packed away and spring thaw arrived here in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. Here’s the pre-Christmas post where I shared the…

First color in our yard beats the return of snow

It’s been awhile coming this spring. With the winter we’ve had here in our Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, it’s seemed like forever. Flower power arrived yesterday. We received the first burst of color. It came from the plant above, the one that we thought was from a tulip bulb that Karen missed when she…

Renegade bulbs shoot us some green

My dear wife Karen remembers digging up the tulip bulbs at this particular corner of a front garden last fall. They didn’t get along well with the juniper-come-lately as it grew. And they’d been there coming up on 10 years. Karen says they’ve been looking more and more scraggly each year. A couple little buggers…

A green rose bush and a white snow pile, together for a little while

Mother Nature gives us little reminders that she might be a little busy at these borders between the seasons. In my front garden in my Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood, there is a rose bush that just won’t give up. Everything else around it is as brown as the dirt in the garden. This bush,…

Syracuse and snow, together again

We walked up the Syracuse University hill to the Carrier Dome yesterday in the fall. The temperature was in the 40s, the grass was holding onto some green and there was a bit of blue in the sky. We walked down the hill from the Orange’s bitter 17-16 loss to Pittsburgh in the winter. The…

One last mow turns fallen leaves into something smaller

Welcome to Mulch Madness. Most of the leaves around our house in Syracuse, N.Y., are down. Oh, there are some stragglers still up on the most stubborn of trees, but to my eyes, they’re far enough from our lawn proper to remain off our little piece of the earth after they fall. Saturday was indeed…

A butterfly bush sends lone purple blossom high into the Syracuse autumn sky

Our butterfly bushes have always been the late bloomers. Slowly but surely in this backyard garden in Syracuse, N.Y., these babies become big achievers, too. The purple-blooming bush has always stood tallest as the growing season progresses. As autumn falls deeply at last upon this city neighborhood of Eastwood, one single branch has taken its…

A newly dug addition to our Syracuse front-yard garden will be ready to accept new occupants come spring

As our growing season here in Syracuse, N.Y., winds down for a long winter’s nap, my dear wife Karen and I have noticed what a really big year it’s been for the mid-yard garden in front of our house. In fact, It may have been too hardy of a second year for the forsythia. In…