At the end of March, birds hunt for suitable nesting sites to raise their brood. It is the time of year to clean out the birdhouses and make them livable, or erect new ones for the next bird couple. Until humans decided to provide homes for fowls, cavity-nesting birds mainly depended on the pileated woodpecker […]
Debbie Teashon
A garden writer, author, garden speaker, and award-winning photographer, Debbie Teashon's career spans many decades. Her speaking engagements include the Northwest Flower & Garden Festival, Tacoma Home & Garden Show, and at garden clubs across the Northwest. She's been a guest on Garden Time television show in Oregon, and radio programs such as Gardening with Ciscoe on 97.3 FM KIRO radio, and Poppy Tucker's Louisiana Eats on NPR. Online since 1998, Teashon's web site Rainy Side Gardeners (rainyside.com) focuses on regional gardening west of the Cascades. Her articles and photographs appear in local, national, and international magazines, and newspapers. Gardening most of her adult life, she is always on the hunt for new varieties of plant material, or creating new container designs using beautiful pottery or repurposed items.
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Beat the Winter Blues, Plan a Dream Garden
Today the wind is blowing the rain sideways. West Sound has not seen the temperature rise much above the low 40s for over a month. After the winter solstice, many people turn their thoughts to their garden. Every day there are more minutes of light added to the day. The garden season is almost here […]
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From Garden to Glass — and a Spoonful of Sugar
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. So goes the famous song, “A Spoonful of Sugar,” sung by Julie Andrews in the classic Disney movie “Mary Poppins.” Not intended to be about liqueur; however, the song hints to why liqueur came to be. Liqueur was the result of monks and alchemists trying […]
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Consider the Leaf
Consider the leaf as the breath of life, for without plant foliage, there would be no life. The most important living components on Earth contain life-giving chlorophyll. Every breath humans take is possible because chlorophyll synthesizes the energy of the sun, water and carbon dioxide. The next time you select a plant for its great […]
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Love of Flowers Travels from Holland to the Key Peninsula
From not being able to afford flowers when she moved to the United States to having a business designing gardens large and small, Patricia Ruff has traveled far. Her love of flowers and her need to create helped her begin digging in the dirt. In turn, her artistic aspirations using nature as her canvas brought […]
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Some Cush for Your Tush in the Garden
Have a seat, not just any seat. Be it a throne fit for a king or a lowly stool to plant the body down for a quick rest. A garden seat has many purposes in the garden. It comes in all shapes and sizes and is made from a variety of materials. An artist wants […]
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Go from Garden to Glass with a Beverage Garden
Where does alcohol come from? If you answer from brewers and distillers, you are correct — yet before the intermediary, the ingredients originated from a garden. Growing plants for adult beverages is all about freshness and flavors, since freshness equals flavor. Consumers choose the best homegrown edibles for better flavor. Supermarkets sell mostly tough, tasteless […]
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The Daffodil Spring
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils; Beside the lake beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. ~ William Wordsworth In the last throes of winter, a sight of sunshine-yellow flowers is sometimes enough to […]
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Scents and Sensibilities of the Fragrant Winter Garden
“If our sense of smell is sluggish … we shall have missed more than half the ecstasy. We shall have missed, for instance, that winter day in January or February when we step out of the door and suddenly smell the spring.” ~ Louise Beebe Wilder Winter is a fickle old friend to gardeners. It’s […]