by Keri Byrum | Jul 21, 2017 | Garden Visits |
On a perfect summer day last week, Mike and I made the trip to Decorah, Iowa to visit the Seed Savers Exchange. I’ve heard about Seed Savers Exchange for many years, but since our trips to Iowa were often very short, we just didn’t have time to include this in our itinerary. Not so now! Seed Savers Exchange Mission: We conserve and promote America’s culturally diverse but endangered garden and food crop heritage for future generations by collecting, growing, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants. The very charming Lillian Goldman Visitors Center was our first stop. I probably should have taken a photo of the inside of this building, with walls filled with their seed offerings and various gardening books and tools, it was a little bit of heaven!… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Jul 16, 2017 | Plant Spotlight |
What a way to start a blog post, eh? “What does poison ivy look like?” has been heard a few times around here lately. We are clearing out an area of old trees, shrubs and underbrush and my lack of familiarity with some of these plants is prompting this question. So, what does poison ivy look like? Leaves of three, let them be… Leaves of five, let them thrive. This little rhyme is keeping me in check these days with my poison ivy “sightings.” Look for plants with leaves in groups of three as an initial indicator. Not to get too technical, but I have to put in here that technically these are leaflets, comprising a single leaf. As a vine, look for hairy roots that are holding on tightly to a tree or wall.… Read Full Post
by Keri Byrum | Jul 11, 2017 | DIY Garden Projects, Small Spaces |
Its been a crazy busy time for us– there seem to be an unending number of projects and tasks for us to take on in our new home. Nonetheless, this DIY retaining wall project has been one of my favorites! We spent about two hours working on this and I couldn’t be more please with the results. Just see for yourself… We were lucky to have a pile of this limestone already on site. Before starting we decided to use what we had, not to buy any more, but hopefully to get the height we needed. The old railroad ties originally used for this retaining wall have seen better days. This is on the backside of our house, and the saying “out of sight, out of mind” was probably never more true than here.… Read Full Post
