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Monthly Archives: October 2021

USDA Hardiness Zone and Frost Dates

The leaves are changing and the days are growing shorter. Autumn is a great time to plan your garden for next year and enjoy the last summer blooms before winter sets in. As a new grower there are some more jargon heavy phrases that I hear quite often. The first of these was “zone.” While I clearly know the word zone I did not fully understand what it meant in terms of growing. I would watch videos of fellow growers on YouTube and they would say things like, “I am growing in zone 7” or &#8220…

Trader Joe’s Flower Arrangements #1

This last week I went to my favorite place… Trader Joe’s! I know that is likely a regular occurrence for most folks but when the closest one is over an hour away it is a real treat. While I was there stocking up on all the things I noticed that there were so many beautiful bouquets of flowers. People were buying lots of bunches and it was fun to see what everyone was buying. Lots of yellows and bright colors! When you run out of flowers in your yard one of the best substitutes are Trader Joe…

White Sunflowers

What a week! I took some time off of my full-time job this week to just take some time off. I work in education as a counselor and activities manager and the last two years have been intense. It has been pretty nonstop since before the pandemic hit and the pandemic has just made things more urgent, more difficult, and more intense. So I gave myself my own little fall break and took time to just be. I didn’t do much. A bit of exercise, going to Trader Joe’s an hour away from home, and…

Seed Order Fail

So here’s the story. When I decided to start planting flowers in abundance I was looking for white sunflower seeds. i had no idea where to look for seeds and just googled “white sunflower seeds.” I then went to the first hit and looked over their merchandise. I was super excited to find that the website had white sunflowers and there were only like $4 for a pack of 50. All of this was amazing. I then surfed the site and found some cosmos and zinnia seeds, both of which were flowers I had heard about…

Sunflower Fails and Successes

It turns out that you can be the worst at growing what is deemed “the easiest flower to grow.” In case you hadn’t heard sunflowers are supposedly indestructible. You just stick the seed in the ground, cover it up, give it some sun and water and like magic you have a giant flower a few months later. Apparently, the ease of sunflower growing skips a person every now and then. I have had a real heck of a time with this guys this summer. This summer I was captivated by a post of the most beautiful…