Schiddygarden
Welcome to Schiddygarden—the garden that's much worse than yours. If you’re expecting useful gardening information and advice, you might be disappointed.
On second thought:
If you do ANYTHING ELSE than what occurs in Schiddygarden, then your chances of achieving awesome results should increase exponentially.
Right there is pretty good advice.
John R
- 4 min
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Winter is just around the corner and this is very good news for me because most growing things are dormant and the chances for a plant...
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John R
- 2 min
More Pepper Dreams
This year one thing we grew successfully was chili peppers. We had what I’d call an overabundance of chili peppers—overabundance in...
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John R
- 2 min
Bad Pepper! Bad, Bad Pepper!
Blossom end rot tries to crush my naive hopes for a trouble-free harvest.
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John R
- 2 min
Cabbage Whites Save Summer!
They're happy little butterflies, but maybe they have a dark side? Pretty doldrummy around here what with the dog days of summer laying...
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John R
- 4 min
Swamp Grass
Adding a raised bed for growing chilies meant confronting the swamp grass.
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John R
- 3 min
Slings and Arrows
The Tree Guy tried to pin this one on me. I’m not buying it. After all, it was The Tree Guy who planted this zelkova in our yard many...
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John R
- 3 min
Tater-rific
Welcome to the Blind Pig edition of Schiddygarden. You know, like when something fortuitous happens that seems more dumb luck than skill?...
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John R
- 3 min
A Few Words from the Peanut Gallery
Jays have a bad rap. In some ways, deservedly so. Among various noises they make, they have a brain-rattling squawk that sounds like a...
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John R
- 3 min
Flickers of Hope
Flickers love to hammer on things. They have tough beaks and (apparently) remarkable cranial resiliency, and they will hammer away on...
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John R
- 3 min
Camellia, We Feel Ya
How to grow incredible camellias without even trying. At all. I wanted to share my prized gardening achievement. There are two enormous...
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John R
- 3 min
Ivy Be-leaguer-ed
I like it. She doesn’t. At all. I’m talking about ivy, Hedera helix, that green creeping thing that covers stuff whether you want it to...
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John R
- 2 min
It's Going to Be a Scrumptious 2021
As 2020 rushes toward conclusion—and not a moment too soon—I thought it a healthy exercise if, rather than dwell on the schiddy, I...
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John R
- 2 min
Are Those Bulbs in My Pants?
(or am I glad to see you?) I’m so happy! Like deliriously giddy. Maybe it was those two Excedrin with caffeine I took to ward off the...
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John R
- 2 min
Mutiny of the Bounty
It’s toward the end of the growing season—sometimes referred to by certain spouses around here as the “stunted season”—and it’s time to...
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John R
- 3 min
Memento Mori
Surprise! Just when I thought life boiled down to mask shopping, binge streaming, binge snacking, and mucking about in the yard, along...
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John R
- 2 min
Ridin' the Wild Leon
It’s the doldrums of summer (in so many ways, n'est-ce pas?) and time to point with a certain amount of pride to the things that are tres...
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John R
- 3 min
Attack of the Tiny Tomatoes
Is too much of a good thing a bad thing? We put in a salsa garden. This is a big deal because previously we’d only put in flowers and...
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John R
- 2 min
The Beauty Thief
I envisioned a garden full of flowers, a garden overwhelmed with billowing blossoms and rippling waves of color. I imagined bringing cut...
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John R
- 3 min
Sticky Proboscises and other Sex Toys
Hummingbirds are stupidly fast, which explains a lot.
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John R
- 4 min
The Three Amigos Throw Down
A ruthless, no-limbs-barred dustup is slowly taking place in the back yard.
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John R
- 3 min
The Water Whores' Tale
This is the tale of the Water Whores. First, I should explain that when these plants refer to themselves as “whores,” they certainly...
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John R
- 2 min
Don't Foodle with Your Doodle
As a wildlife aficionado, I can say with unmitigated pleasure that our outdoor environment is fairly crawling with wildlife. Literally...
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John R
- 2 min
There's a Hole in My Hope
See that brown patch? That blotch of bare earth and unrequited mulch? That’s the lily garden. Except… I don’t see many lilies. In fact, I...
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John R
- 2 min
Nature's Schiddiest Garden
There isn’t much funny to be had in this stupid virus, except for the fact that I took my temperature, orally, with what turned out to be...
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John R
- 3 min
Kiss My Ash (goodbye)
This tree is an ash. It’s located at the corner of our property to the southeast, and it throws a lot of shade. It’s a good 3 feet across...
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John R
- 3 min
Wisteria Hysteria
After several unsuccessful attempts to grow vining clematis and morning glory on our backyard arbor, I finally planted a wisteria. Many...
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John R
- 4 min
Reginald, My Dear
This is Reginald. He was the greatest pet you could ever want. First of all, he was virtually maintenance-free. That is a huge plus when...
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John R
- 3 min
Me Ignore Plain Facts
There are fundamental gardening tenets that you shouldn’t ignore. In fact, they are so basic, so common sense, that you couldn’t possibly...
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John R
- 4 min
The World's Clumsiest Tree
This sad, twisted clown of a plant is just crying out for love...
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John R
- 6 min
Return of the Murdered Valerian
The toughest plant in the garden meets its match—Deb and a pair of clippers.
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John R
- 3 min
The Drunk Robins Are Coming!
This annual event always creates a big kerfuffle.
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John R
- 4 min
Let's K-Vetch
The Cersei of the front garden is a cunning, ruthless, and good-looking adversary.
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John R
- 5 min
Bugs Buddies
Industrious creepy crawlies act as if the property is their own private domain. Well, it is.
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