Gardeners and farmers are gamblers at heart. Nothing is really guaranteed. Farmers in the Mid-west spend millions of dollars of seed corn in hopes of a crop in the fall of the year. All manner of things can get in the way- drought, monsoon rains, wind, and pestilence- but each year the farmer plants in…

I love living in East Texas. You and I live much closer to nature than do the city folks up in Dallas/Ft. Worth or down in Houston. The ‘woods’ are just outside our door and all the wild life that goes with them. Songbirds, raccoons, possums, foxes, deer, hawks and eagles can be seen in…

Have you seen this month’s copy of Southern Living? There’s a wonderful article in it about the right way to prune crape myrtles. Steve Bender, the garden editor of the periodical, has been a long time foe of the practice of topping crape myrtles; but in this month’s issue, he pulls no punches in his…

As I work my way through my New Year’s Resolutions, we come today to my resolve to have a few plants in my garden that are a bit out of the ordinary. I hate it when I’m predictable, and I hate predictable gardens.  It is a wonderful thing to be walking through a garden and…

Let me formulate a philosophical question. How can a person involve himself in something as trivial as horticulture, especially ornamental horticulture, in times like these? We live in the shadow of wars and rumors of war, the shadow of potential plagues (SARS), and the even deeper shadow of weapons of mass destruction. Discussing the fragrance…