Brookside Gardens

Last Saturday PM we went to Brookside Gardens for the "Winter Garden Walk". This spectacular holiday lights show in the garden was so much fun, especially since we went with family and kids! We had great weather and were the last ones to leave because we were just having so much fun and taking our time looking at all the wonderful decorations. They have a welder that makes many of their features and most of the flowers like the sunflower below are made by taping bundles of lights together to create all sorts of different things.




This was the best part, the huge rainbow could be seen from almost any part of the garden, then as you walked under it they had a branch lit up like lightening and thunder booming along with the beautiful clouds and rain. The whole thing was magical and made me feel childlike.

Coneflower with Ice

Coneflower with Ice
Originally uploaded by we98bees

Our first snow was on Wednesday which at our house ended up being about 4 inches. It seemed like fall just ended (hasn't yet technically) and we had about 6 glorious weeks of fall foliage color. Now, the snow has come and the garden is hibernating for winter but a few things haven't quite died back yet. I loved this Coneflower with the ice.

Long weekend

This has been a busy long weekend and it's not over yet. Wow, two parties, picking up Ebay furniture and a quick trip to NY to drop off the desk Brendan has built for Ryan. We got a dining table and chairs from EBay and we picked them up locally. To our supprise they are better than we expected but will still require refinishing and re-upolstering of the chairs. I'll upload photo's of the finished project once completed. I went to water the Master Gardeners Demo garden and took a peak at the gardens "next door" of the National Capital Dahlia Society and was blown away. There seriously were "dinner plate" size Dahlia's there, they are spectacular! Last PM we caught up with Highschool friends at Glen and Angies annual Margaritaville party and I made the cats play along... Will post photo's of the great desk Brendan built once we have it in place at Ryans. Enjoy the long weekend!

Gardening Community Volunteering

I've been spending quite a bit of time on the weekends volunteering at my CSA (Red Wiggler) and the Mo. Co. Master Gardeners . I've been shocked to discover there are really NO Community Gardens in the DC Metro area (specifically Montgomery County). In my opinion the reason for the lack in this area may be due to the general perceived "value" of the land. I don't see too many empty lots sitting around in the upper areas of Mo. Co, this may be a common problem with urban sprawl. I tend to associate community gardens with cities but I think there is just as much need in "suburbia". People can be disconnected from the land and have no place to garden even outside the city. Along this train of thought I've also recently come upon the idea of Guerrilla Gardening and have found a few blogs and websites devoted to the idea of nocturnal beautification of barren spots in urban areas. It is quite a great idea. I'm going to start scouting spots for either a Com. Garden or some Guerrilla Gardening. Do you have a community garden? Do you have a small plot of land you could plant some herbs, flowers or other plants? Gardening is good for the soul and reaping the rewards of locally grown food/flowers is reward for all the hard work that gardening requires.