Red and green.

They’re complementary colors. Think back to those early art classes, you probably learned complementary colors sit opposite each other on the color wheel...remember the color wheel?

They are also the colors of Christmas.

There are three primary color pairs: blue and orange, purple and yellow, and of course, red and green. The cool thing about them, each color makes their color pair look better. That’s good info.

A flower bed full of …

Have you heard of Taylor Swift?

I guess she’s kind of a big deal. In fact, apparently, she’s such a big deal that people will actually travel internationally just to have a chance to see her perform. I know several that have done just that during her most recent world tour.

Now, those are fans! I think they sometimes call themselves, “Swifties”.
Well, not to be outdone by the dedications of the “Swifties”, my wife and I recently hit the road to take in a musical performance of our own.

Our musical dedication led us to a jazz/rock/fusion band called…

We put our Christmas tree up the Friday after Thanksgiving. The lights went on a couple of days later.

The lights are always white...warm white to be exact.

Back in the day, I think all lights were warm white but with the LED lights, you get to choose between warm or cool. Everyone has their preference, but whatever you do, go one way or the other, don’t mix them. Trust me.

Growing up we always had....

The weather in this part of the country is always...well...interesting.

We are the land of five seasons: too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, and too windy. That pretty much sums it up. If you’ve lived in the area for any length of time, you know what I mean.

But every now and we catch a break.

The last few weeks have felt like that. We’re finally getting some rain after a brutally long dry spell. Lawns that had gone brown and dormant have greened back up giving the landscape the look of new life. And during this last stretch......

Well, we knew it was coming...but that still didn’t make it any easier. We had to put our dog down.

His name was Potter, and he was a faithful...and somewhat stubborn...family addition for over fifteen years.

He joined our family when our kids were still fairly young. Our kids, like so many others, were obsessed with Harry Potter and his magical world. They devoured the books and watched his movies over and over, so I’ll give you one guess as to what prompted his name......

That was the name of the air show held recently out at Forbes Field here in Topeka, and I got to attend for the first time since I was a kid. And like a kid, I was excited all week!  

I’ve always been into planes. Growing up, I had numerous books on aircraft of all types and I would pour over them for hours on end, memorizing the pictures and reading all about the various airframes they documented. I loved to build model airplanes too. I could spend hours gluing and painting my aeronautical projects. My model airplane display filled that corner of the basement for many years. I even enrolled in.....

Last month was wedding month.

We attended three in total. We’re used to a wedding here and there, but three in one month...that was a first for us. But they were all fun to be at...beautiful venues, beautiful brides, beautiful ceremonies. They gave me an excuse to dust off the suit and dress up for a change.

Luckily it still fits!

The festivities also gave me a chance to.....

Plants come and go in a garden. That’s one of the unavoidable lessons we all have to learn…and yes, we ALL experience these unfortunate losses.

Case in point. A few weeks ago, I noticed a slight discoloration on one of my favorite specimens in our conifer garden, a Weeping Serbian Spruce I helped plant twenty-plus years ago.

When I first spotted the slight discoloration on the first needles, I knew right away things weren’t good.....

It was a lucky find.

I was walking around the yard the other day, just checking things out, when I noticed it... a pawpaw fruit lying on the ground at the base of one of our pawpaw trees.

I couldn’t believe it! I had seen blooms on several of my trees this spring, but somehow I had completely missed that one had developed into a fruit, growing bigger by the day for the entire summer. I felt like a bad parent!

I’m just glad I noticed it before something else got to it....

I was traveling for work last week. While sitting at one of the airports I passed through, I caught myself doing a little reflecting. Here were my thoughts...

First of all, flying is pretty amazing. That we can just buy tickets to fairly economically and fairly easily travel by air to almost anywhere we want to go is really nothing short of amazing... despite flight delays and computer failures!

Second, smartphones own us. I don’t think that one needs much of an explanation.

And third...

I’m a bit of a plant nerd. I think that’s already been pretty well established. 

Gardening has been my thing for just about as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I gardened. Whether trailing behind my dad in the veggie garden or helping mom in her perennial gardens, I was always getting my hands dirty and learning how to grow things. My folks even gave me my own little plot of land to create with each spring. 

See, I was even a plant nerd back then! So, it’s probably no surprise that….

She had a good life. My lawn mower, that is.

It was a bright red Craftsman brand mower that I purchased at Sears seventeen years ago... remember that place? This one was a small, self-propelled push mower and it was all I needed for the small lawn we had. It kept the lawn looking tidy and did an equally good job at helping me keep the maintenance simple on my landscape. It chopped up huge crops of leaves in the fall and mowed down the dried-up residue of last year’s perennial gardens early each spring….

So far, we’ve been pretty lucky. For the most part, we’ve managed to pick up enough rain to keep things green and happy without too much extra help. But, odds are pretty good, that drier weather is in our future... July and August do have their reputations, after all. And that means watering is likely in your future.

I talk with customers all the time about watering, especially this time of the year. It might seem like a pretty straightforward activity, but I can tell you from experience, that…

I’m bald. 

Now, I’m not Kojack bald (if that reference doesn’t mean anything to you, you may be too young... Google it...it will make sense), but let’s just say, the grass is pretty thin up top.  

I used to have hair. I even sported a mullet for a brief period in my younger days... but that was back when mullets were cool. Trust me, they used to be seriously cool! Nowadays, they’re more “funny” cool.

But now I definitely need to wear a hat to keep from sun-burning the roof. I didn’t go bald all at once. Things up top have just slowly faded away over the years.  

Ironically, just because you’re bald, doesn’t mean you don’t still need to get haircuts. And that brings me to the point of all this nonsense…

It brought tears to my eyes. Last weekend I had a chance to attend the Symphony in the Flint Hills. Attending this event has been on my bucket list for years. I’ve always enjoyed music, but I really love the prairie, and I always figured this event would be a fun combination.  

It didn’t disappoint! 

The day was beautiful, and so were the Flint Hills. The native prairie was…

I was surprised the other day when I got an apology from a customer. They were apologizing for getting a late start on their garden season. To that, I responded,” You don’t need to apologize. You just need to get started!” The questions come in a lot of different ways: “Is it too late to plant?” “Is it too early to plant?” “What’s the best time to plant?” “When should I plant?” There are three simple rules to planting I tell everyone. You plant...

We still have a lot of spring season ahead of us. This next stretch from now until July is great for enjoying our gardens and great for adding to them. Take advantage of it! Maybe make some changes of your own… Now that things are starting to fill out with leaves, buds, and blooms, a gardener’s eye not only plots for this season, but looks ahead at what would be good to get into the ground this year, with the hopes of showing well next year…

When the starting gun was fired last fall, the tentative completion date for our new greenhouse was early March. But things never go exactly according to plan, do they?  The reality is things like permits, weather, shipping delays, and conflicting schedules force plans to change. 

It was obvious early on in the project that the March date wasn’t going to happen, but luckily that didn’t stop things from...

Datebook: April 18, 2024. Today, I’m taking advantage of a rainy day to do a little writing. I look forward to rainy days to get caught up on things. I always have a list. Unfortunately, we haven’t had many of those recently, so I was excited about the opportunity that presented itself today. I had a lot I needed to do... and we needed the rain! First a quick business update...

I was in charge of the tenderloin. I found a recipe that looked pretty good. I did all the detail work; I’d trimmed the silver skin, folded over and tied up the thin end, I prepared a garlic herbed butter and I timed the cooking schedule out to finish things off right before the scheduled dinner time. I had it all under control. And of course, things didn’t go as planned.  …