I have once again been a bad, bad blogger. No posts for 3 weeks! I should be ashamed. I will go right now and flog myself extensively with a wet noodle for my blogging transgressions.

But, I promise that I have good reason and that I will reveal to you what that reason is in just a few weeks. I am very excited about it but I need a few more weeks to get everything in place.

In the meantime, we need to give away this $100 Home Depot Gift Card. Thank you to all who entered. I wish I could give you all gift cards for your projects and I hope that another way to complete your projects find you. I got 100s of great entries and I was simply unable to choose the best 3, there were so many. Instead, I had my kids randomly select 3 from all the entries and you the reader will help choose the Grand Prize winner.

To tell the truth, even with the random selection, these are all good projects. Our 3 finalists are:

#1 – Jackie – A Bog Garden of My Own.

#2 – C.N – Raised Beds For Garden Recovery

#3 – Laurel – Home for Baby Chicken Little

Read their projects and vote for the one you like the best. Voting will close 7/13 and the winner will be announced then.

Entrant’s Name: Jackie

Jackie’s Project:
My garden project is this ugly drainage ditch I have running through my front yard. It’s always full of water that overflows from a pond up the road. My idea is to turn this ugly thing into a pretty bog garden. Part of it holds water year-round and the rest stays mushy and kinda swampy and nearly impossible to mow.

Click through to the post to vote for this project!

Entrant’s name: C.N.

C.N.’s Project:
I would like to complete two raised beds. Three and one half years ago my back was broken by a disturbed patient at my job. The pain became unbearable, so last year I finally succumbed and went through three major surgeries to repair it. It eased the constant pain tremendously. Last summer, realizing surgery was looming and I would be unable to garden, I created a vegetable garden in five gallon cat litter buckets collected from friends, and was able to sit down and garden. It helped, and was actually fun! It wasn’t my 1600 sq. ft. garden, but it did help keep my hands dirty!

So, after five months of PT, I was able to return to work. It felt great, and was looking forward to–finally–being able to garden “normally” this year, to complete all those garden projects that had been building up, both real and wishful.

Then it happened. Someone at work thoughtlessly let go of the stretcher I was holding on a ramp… causing the still healing bones in my back to refracture. My first thought was for my garden, not my back, and all those seedlings sitting outside, waiting.

Here we go again. So, I have since resigned to the conclusion this will be my Murphy’s Law sticking point in life. Accept it, move on. Anyway, whoever said Murphy was too big to tiptoe around? Raised beds might help me keep the love of my life, instilled by my beloved grandfather who never let possibilities get stuck by ole’ Murphy. Thanks for your site. Rascals are essential to life, Grandpa always said, and he was never wrong.

Click through to the post to vote for this project!

Entrant’s Name: Laurel

Laurel’s Project:
If I am the lucky winner of the $100 Home Depot card I will build a chicken coop. I had chickens at our last home and my first successful garden. I miss them at my new home. Chickens are a wonderful addition to any garden. They eagerly eat any weeds pulled for them, which makes weeding less of a chore, because someone appreciates it. The biggest benefit next to the eggs is the manure for the compost bin. After many failed gardens in my dessert clay the chicken’s compost gave me my first successful garden. I discovered what a joy gardening can be.

My daughter found a day old chick the last day of school wandering around the high school parking lot. We need to either build a coop or find a good home. My vote is the coop and a few more chicks.

Click through to the post to vote for this project!

Oh, I have been a bad, bad blogger lately, not posting much. Too much to do and too little time. Tomatoes to be planted, flower beds to be mulched. Then there are the half dozen projects I have been meaning to do for the past… oh… 5 or 6 years now.

Like the Grass Couch. I have had a spot picked out for years now, a key focal point in my back yard, in fact. Every year, I vow that I will get too it. But by the time the beds are all cleaned up and the veggie garden is all planted, well, I just want to take a break. Then it is too hot. Then it is too cold. Then, just like the year before a year has gone by with no very hip grass couch appearing in my yard.

Of course there is a never ending line of flower beds that I would love to put in. I do make progress every year in my eventual goal (and my husband’s hope) that I turn every bit of lawn into a flower bed but it will be a long, long process.

And if it is not time standing in my way, it is money. One of these days I will win a small lottery (all I need is a small lottery, say a million or so, it is not too much to ask) and I will build a greenhouse in the back yard.

Almost every gardener I know has this problem. Time and money are like evil worms that work against the fruits of our labors. Unfortunately, I have no magic cure for the issue of time. But, for one lucky person out there, I can help out with the money part. Home Depot has generously offered to give one of my readers a $100 gift card to help them start (or finish) their gardening project. You just need to tell me what that gardening project is. I will choose 5 and post those projects on my blog and you all will be able to vote for the one that wins.

Click here to enter and tell me what Gardening Project you would like to complete!

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This giveaway is sponsored in part by Home Depot Garden Club. Visit www.homedepotgardenclub.com and join The Home Depot Garden Club to get exclusive coupons and tips, and DIY advice on gardening, lawn care, landscaping and outdoor living projects.

The Bearded Iris have arrived, and no, I am not talking about the main attraction in the freak show at the circus. Bearded Iris are among my most favorite flowers in the garden. As in, when I drive around town and I see a lovely color of iris growing in someone’s yard, it is the only flower that makes me consider committing a first degree misdemeanor and swiping a few. And, just for the record, I have not done it… yet

The word Iris comes from the Greek word for rainbow, which may have something to do with the fact that they come in just about any color in nature and I am willing to bet a few industrious plant breeders are working on some that come in colors that are not in nature too. I bet there would be a real market for Manic Panic Iris among the 30-something gardening crowd. You know, as a way to show our rebellious Gen-X nature without being fired for inappropriate hair color or piercings.

I am not the only one that loves Irises. If you are French, you love them like you love your country because it is the national emblem of France. Good food, good wine and a deep, patriotic appreciation for lovely flowers – tell me again why I do not currently live in France? *sigh* C’est la vie.

Irises, specifically the black iris , is also the national emblem of Jordan. Not that Jordan doesn’t seem like a nice place, but lacking the good food, and good wine (especially the wine), I am not as keen on living there.

In Japan, they are a symbol of heroes, warriors and strong men. During Tango no Sekku, the Boys’ Festival, where boys are celebrated for their courage and strength of character, the iris is prominently displayed because of its sword like leaves and boys traditionally take a bath with iris leaves on this day.

One of the nicest things about the iris is that they are absolutely a set it and forget it plant. They really only need attention every few years for division and other than that, they flower like champions.

They come in two varieties, rhizome and bulbous. (The bearded varieties are rhizomes.) Both are as easy as the other to care for. Plant them in the ground, wait till spring for bloom.

And for you really picky types (as if a world of color was not enough) they come in a huge variety of sizes. Everything for miniature to tall and sizes inbetween.

So, while they may not be as entertaining as Bearded Iris at the circus (I hear she does a pretty kinky strip show for an extra $10), irises certainly do add a spectacular display to the garden.

If there is one gardening implement that has drawn lines down gender preferences, it would be the weed wacker. I should know, I now own 3 of them. My most recent weed wacker acquisition came from Troy-Bilt (being the Troy-Bilt’s TB57, Lithium Ion String Trimmer) who wanted me to try it out and let you all know what I think about it. And I felt very qualified to do this because, well, I own so many of them now.

My weed wacker collection started out with me going and buying a weed wacker we were in need of one. So I drove myself down to the hardware store and bought one. I bought one that I liked, an electric one, the kind you plug into the wall like a vacuum cleaner and look like a confused housewife wandering around your yard.

My husband was not pleased. He had no desire to look like a confused housewife (he was doing just fine looking like a confused husband, thank you) and he then went out a scoured yard sales until he brought home a rather large gas powered one.

He hated the electric one because he thought it was prissy. I hated the gas powered one because it was heavy and stank. Often, the neighbors would watch the street theater as my husband and I casually wandered around the yard and weed wacked with our own weed wackers trying to prove, non-chalantly, that our weed wacker was the better weed wacker.

Now, I have this weed wacker from Troy-Bilt. It is a battery operated weed wacker and seems to address the issues that both my husband and I had with each others’ weed wackers. Now, technically, my husband is not here to speak his mind on it, but, like all wives before me, I feel that I am entitled to but my words in his mouth.

The Troy-Bilt weed wacker was light enough for me to carry around, and did not have the allegedly sissy electric cord leash. It certainly had the power to cut through the massive patch of thistle that had sprung up around my compost bin (it was like a scene out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre watched on a TV where the color is really off).

I do have to say that I did have some difficulty putting it together. I can honestly say that in this case, the problems started when I skipped the step my husband usually takes in skipping reading the directions. The directions confused me and that made it difficult to put the weed wacker together quickly. I probably would have been better off just putting it together without the directions.

But, once it was together, it worked very well. And the really nice thing about it being battery operated was that when I noticed I had missed a spot, it was no more difficult than picking it up to correct the problem. No lugging the power cord back out. No struggling to get the thing started again.

So now, I have to figure out what to do with the other two weed wackers. I suppose I could always paint them and list them on Craigslist as a matching set of his and her weed wackers.

Catch me live talking about Starting Tomatoes on That’s Life With Robin Swoboda (10AM Fox 8 in Cleveland). I will be talking about starting tomatoes from seed and how to care for your seedlings.

BTW, if you like the “I (HEART) Dirt” tee shirt I am wearing, you can sign up to win your own from This Garden is Illegal and Troy-Bilt.

Psst… I got what you need right here. A whole dime of high quality stuff. You ain’t finding anything better. The richest loam this side of the border, that is a bona fide fact, my friend. You will not find a finer grade of dirt, no way, no how.

I bet you did not know that when you are out there tending those flowers and planting those seeds that you were doping yourself, did you? Turns out that dirt harbors a friendly little bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae. When this bacteria infects humans, it affects our brains and causes it to make extra serotonin.

Serotonin is a funny drug for our bodies. It helps to control everything from how much we eat to how well we can remember to… wait for it… how good we feel. More of the happy, happy serotonin, the hap-hap-happier we feel.

So how does one catch this bacteria and reap the benefits? It is just as easy as playing in the dirt. Do a little barefoot walking, maybe pot up a few seedlings or two, get some weeding in and, voila, you got yourself a genuine dirt high.

This probably explains why many gardeners regard weeding as a meditation rather than a chore. The very act of touching the soil with bare skin, can bring about a chemically induced serenity. Not bad, eh?

So here we are, a bunch of strung out garden junkies, just fiending for our next Mycobacterium vaccae fix. Come on, sister, can you spare a girl a trowel? Just so I can get through to the next day?

Hey Kids! I am going to be doing an interview later today on “On The Home Stretch with Debbie Alan.” If you get time, tune in or download the podcast and listen in as Debbie and I chat about gardening. The interview will be at 10:30 and will be available for download in about 24 hours after that.