Welcome to the new YouGrowGirl.com homepage! Please clear your cache or it may look a bit crazy. Back when we launched the site with a new design, one of our longterm goals was to eventually roll out a format that allowed relevant seasonal content to come back up to the front page where you can …
I’ll be the first to admit that my banter this winter is grating and repetitive, a broken record stuck on a particularly whoa woe is me whine. “This winter is brutal. It’s too cold. It’s too dark! Waaa!” While I don’t believe in the notion that you can magically make everything better by begging the …
It’s not a particularly good photo, just a quick snap of some houseplants sitting on a table on my back patio. There’s bits of grit on the table that had been earthed by the squirrels, water rings on the metal table, and volunteer geraniums underneath the bay laurel tree — little messes that I might …
Inside this box is something that perhaps we all could use, a small validation that our efforts in the garden — all of our triumphs, failures, attempts to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone — are worthy of praise, support, and a little self-congratulation.
Some years ago, my friend Barry gave me a large jade (Crassula ovata), an extra that had become crowded in with another in the pot they shared. Through the years since, I had been caring for this large-trunked succulent much like I do many of my other tender(ish) succulents. They spend winter in the south-facing …
The smaller African amaryllis ‘Graffiti’ I mentioned last week has produced a second set of blooms. Only two of the three bulbs put out a second stem, and they’re not quite as colourful as the first set was, but as you can see they’re still pretty fabulous. More photos after the jump…
I started the week out on the good foot with a reinvigorating morning at the community greenhouse I visited last winter in the suburbs of Toronto. Oh that good air and the smell of warm soil and life. The smells! There were smells. I left feeling energetic and doing air punches in my head. Suck …
Header hand drawn by Davin Risk Over the last year I’ve posted about some of my experiments in dyeing fabrics and threads with plants gleaned from my garden to be used in my winter, off-season stitching projects. Since then I have expanded beyond my own garden to use plant materials foraged from the world beyond. …
Maybe it’s just me being a big baby, but it feels as if this winter has been especially cruel. Ice storms, weeks of darkness, power outages, damaged trees, and “extreme cold” are just some of the events of the season. The days locked inside have jump-started fantasies about the coming growing season. What am I …
Just in time to bring some colour into a painfully cold and white world, the amaryllis ‘Rio Negro’ bulb that I potted up in late November is now in full bloom. As predicted, it reminds me of the Butterfly amaryllis aka Hippeastrum papillio. It presents the same thin red veining and a shaded green interior, …
I was browsing through some of my old photos this morning and happened upon this one, taken on a trip to New York City back in May 2005 when I was promoting my first book. Looking at this image now, on a cold winter day, the soil long ago buried underneath snow, fills me with …
I found this hand painted postcard at a vintage paper show. It is dated on the back, December 18, 1941 and was sent to Long Island, USA from New York City.