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This year, spring felt like a gift. Plants seemed to be growing larger than usual, verdant and lush. My lawn was bedazzled with bright pops of color from all the blossoming flowers. Birdsong tolled day and night, joyful and loud. At the end of May, I wrote on my Instagram: “everything is in bloom: peonies, roses, columbine, sage, dandelions, henbit, clover. We went for a walk at dusk last night and the air was perfumed with the scent of irises. The worlds a mess, but at least there is this spring, opulent with flowers.” At first I wondered if spring had always been this beautiful. Was I just getting to appreciate […]

Step into my garden, baby! ♬♪ Welcome to my 2020 Garden, in all its messy, rambling and unexpected glory. Truth be told, I didn’t think I would get to garden at all this year. Zine Con planning really ramps up during the summer, and I knew that putting together this year’s festival would be especially taxing: we need to find a new home for the event on a shoestring budget, which not only means scouting venues, but also drafting brand new table maps and seeking out additional sponsors to help cover venue costs. Keeping plants hearty and healthy through it all seemed like just one more commitment to add to an […]

Between the bougie plant names (e.g.: Madame Emile Debatene, Little Miss Daisy, Abraham Darby) and a seemingly never-ending list of “necessary” tools, gardening can feel like a rich man’s hobby reserved only for those with the money to “do it right”. It doesn’t help that books such as The $64 Tomato are contending that it costs upwards of $16,000 dollars to get a garden going! That’s bewildering—16k is over half of my family’s yearly income, and we aren’t spending anywhere close to that on our garden. Here’s the truth: gardening can be dirt cheap. Sure, at first the raised beds and heirloom seeds are going to set you back a bit, but in the long-run, gardening […]

It’s finally starting to feel like spring in Kansas City… rainy, bright grey, sweet-smelling spring. While March was warmer and sunnier, the regrowth and renewal were missing. It felt like we had skipped right into the comfy days of late May, the edges of summer. The air was warm, but the ground still felt dead. All that has changed! My city has been reborn: lush, muggy and verdant, floral-scented and noisy. While my daffodils are long gone, the tulips have bloomed, as did my grape hyacinth. The family of house finches that built a nest on my patio last year have returned. Each morning I awaken to the the cackle of grackles, the song of starlings, and […]

When Tom and I moved into our home in August of 2013, we knew that we wanted raised garden beds. Our house sits on the northwest side of our property, leaving us with plenty of land in the path of the sun. We’re also lucky that we live on a hill and our backyard is relatively tree free. It’s a gardener’s dream! We are unlucky enough to have dense, rocky soil, so a raised bed where we could control the soil density made sense. Unfortunately, we had to put our raised bed dreams on the back-burner. Purchasing a house is stressful, not to mention all the painting, packing, planning and unpacking that comes with moving. As if we […]