March 20 is the first day of spring. It’s hard to believe, since the temperature is supposed to drop to 26 degrees here tonight, but we’re less than three weeks away from that first day of spring. That means garden season is just around the corner. If you’re planning to grow some food this year [...]
Thanksgiving may have been only a week ago, but we’re already in the throes of Christmas around my house. And while I certainly don’t want Christmas to be all about buying and getting, I have to admit that finding cool gifts is part of the fun. (And it’s nice to have “Christmas shopping” marked off [...]
Our Big Boy was sent home early from preschool one day last week. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t biting other kids. He just couldn’t stop scratching. He’d clawed his arms and legs to the point of drawing blood in some places. What I’d thought were a few bug bites that morning turned out to be [...]
Please join me in welcoming guest blogger Jodi Torpey! Jodi is a Denver-based garden writer, master gardener and nonfiction author. Her articles are published on gardening websites, in national gardening magazines and regional newspapers. She has special interests in creating backyard habitats and gardening with her dog, Rufus T. Smudge. Read more of Jodi’s writing [...]
Gardening is a lot like parenting; they both involve guilt. More than once this summer, I’ve left a couple of tomatoes or cucumbers on the windowsill above my kitchen sink to ripen, and before I know it, I’ve neglected them until they’re overripe, brown and spotted, and have to be thrown away. I’ve been too [...]
Several weeks ago, I wrote about our experiment to see if caged tomatoes or free-roaming tomatoes would yield more fruit in our garden. We’ve been harvesting tomatoes for a few weeks now, and I thought I’d give an update.
The results are unscientific, and we’ve gotten fewer tomatoes this year than usual anyway, but I [...]
When we’re not spending time outside (in the garden or otherwise), my kids and I love to read books together. Not only is reading together fun, but of course it’s educational for kids, even very young ones: According to this research report from Child Trends DataBank, children who are read to regularly display by age [...]
For my little boys, nothing makes gardening more fun than having cool tools to use. And while we’ve gone through our share of plastic shovels, rakes and hoes, a recent discovery of kids’ garden gear from Melissa & Doug has brought my kids’ gardening style up a notch. Even better, these tools are much more [...]
