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In this issue:
Quick clips toward sharper tools
Sharing design ideas worth the cost
Forlorn hope: Overwintering water hyacinth
Words to grow on: Warf, tang, haw
Enjoying simplicity: Ordering seeds, poking about, re-living a
harvest
Clear the air with strewing herbs
The best gardens? Real gardens
This issue here in image-overvew
Introducing Garden images for your
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Introducing Screen savers for
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What do this dancer in Mexico City, a strolling egret and
the autumnal forest have in common? See below or page 15 of the
pdf!
Sharpening basics
Tools for cleaning tools blades before sharpening,
in addition you'll probably need a rag and turpentine to remove sap
from pruning blades. Scotch-brite pads work well and can
repalce the steel wool.
You're reading the image overview; download the
pdf to read the complete text.
Look close at the right side of this photo and
you'll see burrs on this blade. Smooth out those tiny nicks so they
won't reduce the blade's cutting ability and make you work harder
to squeeze them closed.
At the top of the group, a three-square or triangular fine
file and a flat bastard file. Centered below them is red handle
with two tiny, fine files at its business end. The blue pistol grip
sharpener holds a honing stone notched to accept a double-edged
pruning blade. The honing stone (in the Norton package) is small
enough that I can use it to stroke a blade rather than the other
way 'round.
You're reading the image overview; download the
pdf to read the complete text.
Janet's sharpening kit with a pouch that came from...
somewhere!
The file at right is featured
because it's a perfectly acceptable
stand-in that takes a better "how to"
photo for than my honing stone can
(left). Given the grip I use and my stone's size in relation to
pruning blades, either the stone, the blade I'm working
on, or both tend to be hidden by my hand. Notice the wear
on my stone. I use it a great deal.
The Fiskars, right, need cleaning - that's sap on the
opposing blade!
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pdf to read the complete text.
Overwintering water hyacinth?
Water hyacinth are at the right on bottom edge of
the kiddie wading pool in this on-hold collection of water garden
plants. The plant's most distinctive feature is its styrofoam-like
floatation pod, which often remains intact long after the plant has
died. Their most endearing feature is a blue flower -- unless you
live in a region with mild winters, in which case you may not even
care about bloom once you know it's that terribly invasive plant
clogging local waterways and displacing natives.
You're reading the image overview; download the
pdf to read the complete text.
Scrabbling in the garden: To appreciate a fine brume,
comfortable snath, and haws
Left: Brume hangs lightly above this pretty
scene. Right: A brume rake's built to be gentle enough to remove
the mist or dew that clings to grass blades as to this spider web,
without damaging the grass.
Below: Scythe with well worn wooden
snath.
Above: As this hawthorn's haws mellow in
late winter, they will draw crowds of birds.
Below: A viburnum's fruit is also called a haw. And look!
These haws have been touched by brume.
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pdf to read more.
Order plants and seeds. I love this time of year when
everything is perfect in the gardens I plan!
Times are tough but is there a bright side? Are we being
given the chance to rise above adversity and earn a reputation
more worthy of the children of "The Greatest Generation"?
As I looked through seed catalogs I recalled a similar theme in a
vintage catalog. This page from 1941 reads, "The Strength
of the Nation, the Vegetable Gardens of America.... It is patriotic
-- it is wise -- to make a vegetable garden this
year."
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pdf to read the complete text.
Green thumbs up:
to going outdoors every chance you can, even in the Snow
Belt. When Steven needed roots to use in working with the
Cedarcrest Academy fifth grade science class, out we went. We not
only didn't need the pickaxe, we learned that the snow has been
keeping our gardens in fine shape. Look, it was perfectly diggable
on January 15, with just the barest touch of ice at the
surface.
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