The Garden Before the Storm

The snow is on the way. Our local meteorologist is confident that we're in for a big winter storm. All you gardeners up in the snow belt, please don't laugh - seven inches of snow is forecast! That's a lot for a southerner.

We did the usual things that southerners do before a storm. We went to the grocery store and bought bread and milk just like we're supposed to do. My husband has the generator ready to go in case of a power outage. We're excited about snow, but if this front moves slightly, we could get an ice storm. That wouldn't be any fun at all.

I am convinced that we're in for a snowstorm because it was 60°F here today. The worst snowstorm that I can remember followed a 75° day. So, I took advantage of this warm day to do a bit of tidying up in the garden as well as sow a few cornflower seeds.

It's rather interesting to note how many perennials retain green basal foliage during the winter in zone 7 - achillea, western agastache, coreopsis, gaillardia, mums, nepeta, rose campion, shasta daisy, stachys hummelo, solidago and verbena bonariensis.

Scabiosa 'Butterfly Blue' has just started producing buds and blooms. This little perennial is evergreen here in zone 7. Unless the snow sets it back, it will bloom vigorously through the end of spring, and sporadically through fall.

Rated for zones 4-8, scabiosa (pincushion flower) is a good, carefree, short edging plant. The plant in the photo is the oldest perennial in my garden. It is growing along my stream inside the cottage garden fence. I added several more along a path, only to find out that the bunnies will eat what they can reach. I will relocate the new plants to the same area by the stream, away from little bunny noses.

While scabiosa is not deer or rabbit resistant, it is a cheerful little perennial and a fantastic butterfly magnet!

If the snow comes, it will cover all the signs of spring. I will just have to sit inside and browse the big stack of flower and seed catalogs that arrived in the mail recently!

Scabiosa blooms in winter

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel.

Chair Design

I have started working on potential chair designs for a new Dinning Table Set that I am going to be building in the near future.  My plane is to build the majority for the framing structure from 2x4’s.  The picture below is a rough sketch of what I am thinking about.  The sketch is not to scale or size currently.  I will post those once I get that taken care of and I also have a third design I am going to work up.  It will be the same principal however I will change the skirting just a little bit.  Here are the first two designs.  One thing to note is that the backs will be curved and slanted, I have not figured out how to do that yet in SketchUp.

To Indiana and Back in a Weekend

On Friday we decided to head to Indiana. Why? Well as I mentioned before the hubby found out we would be moving there later this year so we wanted to check out the cities and see what town near Indianapolis we'd want to move. I've moved enough in my life that I know that you really want to research, especially when kids are involved. So we looked up a few places we wanted to visit and decided

Wordless Wednesday: Welcome to Indy

I absolutely love this picture, honestly SoccerBoy doesn't always let me catch him so this made me very happy. We had just gathered a bunch of data from the visitor's center for Indiana since we are moving there later this year. Look at the three of them. :) Happy WW!

Holy Readers Batman

Thank to all the fans of Knock Of Wood who swung by.  I am very delighted to have you here.  If you don’t mind leave me a message and tell me what you would like to see on the blog.  If you want custom designed pieces that you can build I can get into that or if you want to just continue to see the stuff I am doing in the shop that’s great as well.  I am looking for ideas to make this a fun and informative blog for the new woodworker, aspiring woodworker, and even you old pros. 

I am a fairly new woodworker.  I have always wanted to have my own shop.  I really enjoy the process of taking raw lumber and molding it into a piece of art or a functional piece of furniture.  My secret desire well okay maybe not so secret is to start building guitars.  I am a guitar player but I think I am more of a woodworker and that leads me down the road of wanting to build the instrument that I enjoy playing. 

I am hoping to start a couple new projects in the coming weeks so stay tuned.  I am going to start working on a couple of plans for some chairs and a Farm Table.  It will be something similar to what you can see at Knock Of Wood but my goal is to make it expandable for the holidays when the family comes in.

Feel free to comment or shoot me an email.

A Pen for my Father-In-Law

My father is a captain with a major US airline.  I had made him a pen a year or so ago and he wanted another one.  I let him hunt through my stash of blanks and he found one that looked like it could be clouds.  The more I turned it the better it got and finally came out with this.

Substitute Pulmonaria for Hosta in Deer Country

Once upon a time, I grew beautiful hostas. I lived in the shady woods, had fertile soil and could keep their roots moist with little effort. There were no deer problems at that home, so my hosta garden looked fabulous. I miss those hostas.

My growing conditions now include deer. I don't expect a hosta to survive and flourish planted in my open garden. It will be eaten - guaranteed! I don't want to take heroic measures using spray repellents nor fencing in the shady area of my garden. The cost of doing so would exceed the cost of a few hostas.

I have learned to substitute and love the plants that are happy in my growing conditions. So, what perennial can I grow instead of hosta?

Pulmonaria! Yes - there's a big pulmonaria world out there that sounds just as exciting and interesting as growing hostas.

I am putting Pulmonaria 'Silver Bouquet' PP through deer resistant trials, totally unprotected from deer, rabbits and any other critters. This is my first experience with pulmonaria and all I did was follow the growing condition suggestions on the plant tag.

The trial pulmonaria plants from Terra Nova Nurseries arrived as small plugs and were planted out in late September. After watering the pulmonaria for the first month, I have totally ignored the perennials since.

The deer and rabbits have ignored the pulmonaria, too. As a result of all this neglect, the four plants are thriving!

Pulmonaria are herbaceous, so they should die back in the winter. The fragrance garden is a protected area in winter, located on the east side of my house and I've not had the die back yet. Which means, that if the deer and rabbits were hungry enough this winter, they have sniffed out these pulmonaria as possible food and rejected this menu.

Growing conditions for Pulmonaria 'Silver Bouquet' are similar to hostas:

zones: 4-9
light: part sun to shade
size: 20" wide/7" high/10" high w/flowers

In my zone and summer sun conditions, I decided to plant the pulmonaria in a spot that is full shade with a bit of dappled morning sunlight. The soil needs to be moist, but well-drained.

The silver leaves really brighten up the ground beneath the sweet bay magnolia tree in my fragrance garden. With a mature width of 20 inches, I have spaced the plants to make a ground cover in this spot.

We use the fragrance garden in late afternoons for dining in good weather, especially in spring and fall. The pulmonaria should bloom in April - in my favorite colors, changing from pink to blue. The understory in this area is also planted with Spanish bluebells. I look forward to seeing the impact of combining these two deer resistant spring-blooming plants.

Words and photos by Freda Cameron, Defining Your Home, Garden and Travel.The pulmonaria plants were provided for free by Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc. Deer resistance may vary in your garden.