Cloudy
57°
Cloudy
Hi 75° | Lo 58°

Home / Garden

Trim a Tree, Train a Tree

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

This has been a great year for flowering trees and shrubs. My Merrill magnolia had many hundreds of white blossoms in late April. The crabapples everywhere put on a spectacular display. My fothergilla (a shrub with great fall leaf color) is in bloom now with its tidy white bottle-brush flowers. My “Olga Mezitt” rhododendron (one of the parents of the popular PJM rhodie) is looking great and my wild azaleas are getting ready to bloom. And now the lilacs are blooming and I am overwhelmed with the large purple, blue, white and pink panicles (clusters of flowers). Spring has definitely sprung. All these blooms this …

Cheap and Easy Closet Organizing

Sunday, May 19, 2013

There’s only one thing more satisfying than organizing your closet: Doing it on the cheap. Sure, I love those closet glamour shots as much as anyone. I’m a sucker for solid cherry shoe shelves and rows of matching canvas bins identified by adorable hang tags. I just don’t want to spend my money on them. Besides, those photographs of tricked-out closets invariably show …

Bloom Time

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Peg Davis arranges a vase of fresh-cut lilacs from her yard in Enfield on Friday. “We’ll put them on the table and take off my make-believe ones,” she said while replacing a bouquet of plastic tulips. “I like fresh flowers.” Valley News — James M. Patterson …