Today I attended the Cleveland Botanical Gardens Flower Show and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. If you have time this weekend and you live in the Cleveland area, I would highly recommend that you bop on down and take a peek.

And I do mean bop, as this year, the theme of the flower show is Rhythm & Hue. What this translates to is that all of the displayed gardens had to be created around the theme of music, which made for some wonderfully whimsical gardens.

Like this one wholly dedicated to the Rock N Roll theme of Cleveland:

There were also a few fun musically inclined decorations:

Drummer Fountain

Sheet Music Waterfall

And even just plain old actual musical instruments:

Garden Planted Instruments
(I finally know what to do with my old flute)

Drum Water Cascade

Wondering what to do with all those old vinyl records in your closet?

Vinyl Record Edging

The floral displays were also quite striking. In one competition, there was even a kind of Iron Chef approach. Competitors brought pruning shears and everything they were allowed to beyond that was supplied by the judges. Here is the winner of that competition.

And I don’t remember what this flower arrangement won for, but it just looks so cool.

There was lots and lots more than this as well. Plus, a great many garden related vendors set up, so you can bring home a little love to your own garden. It will make a nice day trip for the Memorial Day Weekend.

What do you see in this picture? A construction site? A huge pile of dirt? A convenient place for teenagers to make out?

Me… I see free rocks. I bet some people are going, “So, what’s so big about free rocks? Aren’t they just anyplace? Aren’t they free already? Aren’t they cheap as dirt?”

I don’t know when the last time those people had to buy dirt, but let me tell you, buying dirt is anything but cheap. Just ask anybody who has those hand spray painted signs out that read “Fill Dirt Wanted”. They don’t put those out for kicks. Dirt is damn expensive and rocks are doubly so.

Funny thing is that for as expensive as it is to buy dirt or rocks it is just as expensive to have someone haul them away. Someday, I envision that there will be a MyDirt.com site where people can post their dirt and rock profiles and those in need of dirt and rocks will finally be able to connect with those who have some to share and the world will finally have enough free dirt and rocks for all.

Until then, I am just too poor to buy rocks. So I keep my eye out for places like this. Construction sites freshly dug with big ol’ rocks just laying around like gold for the taking. Frequently the construction site manager is just as happy to let you haul away all you would like. It is less they have to pay to have hauled away.

I use rocks all over my garden, to edge beds and for decoration. If you are really ambitious, you can build walls and the like as well. Buying rock for these projects… expensive. Hauling them away from a construction site… priceless, literally.

So there you go. You now have your frugal tip of the day. The only bad news is that with the housing boom over, the number of construction site will probably go down. It’s really a trade off. ‘Cause now the housing costs will come down, so maybe you can buy a house and afford to buy your rocks as well.

Last night was the Open House for the grand re-opening of the Esperanza Garden on W25th St here in Cleveland. After a three year hiatus, the Cleveland Botanical Garden‘s urban garden has reopened to once again grow the ingredients for the yummy salsa that is sold in the Botanical Garden’s gift shop.

The Open House was a fun affair. I was greeted at the entrance by Roshel P. and Edmanuel N. (pictured right), two of the local teenagers who are part of Green Corps and help to maintain the Esperanza Garden. They explained that they had been hard at work getting the garden ready for the Open House and that so far they had planted tomatoes, peppers, herbs and several other vegetables in the garden.

Later, Anthony V., also of Green Corps, insisted that I try the hot salsa. “Most people think that the hot salsa is hotter, but I don’t think so. I think the hot has more flavor,” he explained. He was right. It does have more flavor.

Later, I wandered a few blocks down and visited CityFresh. This is an effort of the Ohio State University Extension office to bring fresh produce and nutritional facts to the more urban areas of Cleveland. CityFresh is open every Thursday from 3-7PM through October 5th at the corner of 25th & Clark and also at Lorain & 48th. Minerva Santana will be on hand passing out free nutritional information. If you visit her 10 times this year, you get $20 in free food.

Vegetables can also be pre-purchased from CityFresh in the form of Market Share Bags. Each share costs $20 and each bag will include a freshly picked assortment of in-season, locally grown food. Discounts are available for low-income patrons and they also take the Ohio Direction card. To pre-purchase Market Share bags, call 216-429-8238 or 440-774-2906 or just stop by one of the CityFresh stands.

Whew… That’s the reporting part.

It’s great that they have opened the Esperanza Garden again. I wish that every neighborhood could have a city garden. Concrete is just not what humans were meant to live on and I think that there is a very primal part of us that needs something greener than a half dead city tree.

Unfortunately, most of the world does not believe that. But gardens have a way of creeping out of their boundaries and they can make fundamental changes to a surrounding area, even if it is only through a few escaped cleome and hollyhocks trying to have a big city adventure.

CityFresh is a noble effort, but one I think that will make very little headway. I know who will show up for that fresh food. It will be the snappy, hip sort of urbanites who are trying to turn the neighborhoods into somewhere they can raise their kids and where the current residents can’t afford to live. I know, I know, that’s not what they mean to happen, but that is what will happen. Neighborhoods in transition work so hard to be cool that they frequently forget that part of the neighborhood is not cool, it’s dirt poor, in more ways than one.

I wish the best of luck to both efforts. I hope that the Esperanza Garden can grow and that CityFresh can make a change. Even small changes make a difference in this great big pond we call life.

FREE! FREE! FREE! Using this word in an advertisement is almost certainly guaranteed to get someone to sit up and take notice.

Use this same word in conjunction with mulch and you will not only get gardeners to take notice, but quiet possibly you may get them to stampede.

I come from a direct marketing background and I was carefully schooled in the art of using the word “free” in advertisements. I am also from Scottish decent and was sternly raised to understand that the word “free” was second only to the word of God and a good bagpipe rendition of Amazing Grace.

With that kind of background, when I got the notice from the city yesterday saying there is FREE MULCH at the cemetery, I was near instantly in my husband’s SUV with tubs and buckets in tow.

Yes, you read right. The cemetery. They store the free compost there too. Do you know what kind of looks people give you when you tell them that you are going to the cemetery to get some compost?

But, free is free and I won’t complain about the location.

Think I am lucky getting all this free compost and mulch? Well, if you live in the city or in suburbia, there is a good chance your city gives away free mulch and compost as well. If your city does leaf or branch collection, chances are that they provide what they pick up back to you free as mulch or compost. See, tax dollars do accomplish something.

Try giving your city hall a call and ask if they provide free mulch, dirt and compost for your city. The worst they can say is no. And no is not nearly as powerful as FREE.

It is still raining! Other than a few hour reprieve two days ago, this rain has been non-stop. And cold too. Ugh. I was glad for the rain, but now I am getting a bit stir dirt crazy. I am starting to see good places in the house to build flower beds. I think it may be time to explore my online gardening options before I do something my husband will regret.

I found this little gardening game called ‘Plantasia‘. In the game, you are a fairy named Holly who must grant the wish of a man named Jack. Jack is a little manic depressive and sarcastically wishes for the gardens around his house to be restored. So Holly is stuck refurbishing the entire grounds of Jack’s palatial estate on her own. (Obviously the Fairy Union has not been doing their job right) Her only help is a crotchety old sunflower who complains alot.

Plantasia is pretty fun. It is kind of along the lines of a garden themed Bejewled or Tetris. You run around digging holes, removing rocks, planting seeds, picking flowers, killing bugs (non-organically) and watering plants. Sounds almost like a real garden, doesn’t it? The faster you do all of these things, the more ‘mana’ you earn. Mana is like money and you can buy things for the garden. Ultimately, you want to earn enough to buy a new fountain and statue. Once you do this, you can go onto the next level.

It costs $20 for the full game, but you can download a free hour trial here to try it out.

Another fun virtual gardening game is TinyGrow. It is a free Flash based online game where you ‘grow’ an alien garden through various actions. Warning: You may have acid flashbacks, even if you haven’t actually ever dropped acid. A very bizarre but neat game.

I particularly like the birds. The poop from the big blue bird causes plants to grow. I told you it was weird.

Click here to play TinyGrow

Of course if games are not your thing, you can always visit some gardening webcams. It can’t be raining everywhere in the world, so find someone’s garden where it is not raining and enjoy their sunshine from the comfort of your computer. I found a great directory of gardening webcams. You can surely find one sunny gardens among all of these.

So these things should keep me from going stir dirt crazy at least for another day or so. But it better stop raining soon. I am thinking that a bed of delphiniums would look great in the dining room.

It’s a beautiful day today and I plan on getting lots and lots done in the garden today. All without the ball and chains commonly known as glasses and contacts. I just had my three month checkup for the LASIK surgery I had done. I now have perfect eyesight and all I can think is why didn’t I do this sooner.

For me as a gardener, not having to wear my glasses or contacts while working in the yard is like a miracle. I have had glasses since I was 7 years old. My eyesight was so bad that I could not see clearly even a few inches beyond my nose. I had no choice to wear contacts or glasses if I wanted to be able to see.

In the garden, glasses and contacts are just a pain. Most of the time, gardening involves working up a sweat and when you are sweaty, your glasses slip and the stinging sweat gets in your eyes and lingers longer because it gets under your contacts and it takes longer to wash out. With glasses, you have to stop every so often to clean off the grim and dust from the dirt. With contacts, there is no greater minor agony than getting a small speck of dirt stuck in the contact.

I finally bit the bullet three months ago, after years of self debate and resistance. It was my eyes after all. I think of all my senses, the sense of sight is the one that I fear losing most. And, I won’t lie, it is not a cheap procedure. I wasn’t sure it would be worth it and there always seemed to be better things to spend that kind of money on.

But my husband insisted and kept insisting for years till I finally had it done a few months ago. And an hour after the procedure was done, I could read the license plates of the cars in the parking without my glasses. After 23 years of wearing glasses, that was something I never thought I would ever be able to do.

Now that my garden is waking up, I am even more excited. I will be gardening this year with new eyes and without minor annoyances that took away from my enjoyment. Being able to wake up and see the flowers of my garden out my window makes waking up in the morning a pleasure.

Today, I will go to bed weary and exhausted, but it will be an exhaustion won without once having to push my glasses up my nose so that I can see. For me, that was worth the money.

She’s all alone in the world as far as anyone can see. She needs somewhere safe to raise her kids and she doesn’t have too much to work with. It’s a bad neighborhood for a single mom and her kids. Just last week, her friend Robin was killed by some mean cats. But still, she has managed to find a nice guy who has a good home for her where she hopes that her little ones can grow up safe and healthy until they are ready to leave the nest. She is a little nervous. I mean can she really trust this guy? She barely knows him. But in this harsh world, what’s a girl to do?

So, I am being a bit tongue and cheek. But you have to admire the spunk of this little bird. She has taken residence up in my friend John’s backyard in a hanging basket that was left out over the winter.

This location is good for a bird. It’s high off the ground away from cats and other predators. It’s under the awning over the porch, so she is out of the elements. John doesn’t have any little kids at his house so there won’t be any accidents of curiosity or irresponsible cruelty.

She is pretty comfortable but she is still a little wary of John. After awhile though, if he doesn’t bother her (he doesn’t intend to) she will be comfortable enough with him that she won’t fly away if he gets too close.

Hopefully, if she stays, I will be able to get some pictures of her fledglings in a few weeks.

This is a volunteer pea. Honest to goodness! There are two of them in the old pea bed from last year (it’s a lettuce bed this year). I don’t think I have ever seen a volunteer pea in my life. I don’t think pea seeds are normally hardy enough to survive the winter here in Cleveland.

But, as we who live here know, this past winter was an odd one. Yeah, it got cold and we got our infamous lake effect snow, but it stayed warm much longer than it normally does. I went and checked and in mid-November, we were still getting temps of 70F. That’s 20 degrees above normal and about as odd as you can get here in Cleveland. Mother Nature normally thinks that Cleveland does not get enough snow and cold, not the other way around.

So I have two little peas growing among the lettuce seedlings. I will let them grow there, but I am going to have to figure out how to keep them upright. I normally use tomato cages for my peas to grow on, but I don’t want the tomato cages to get in the way of the lettuce. Maybe stakes?

Well, here’s to green survivors and warmer winters. I hope we see more of both.

These are the seeds my kids and I grew from the Secret Fortune Beans thing they got for xmas. I was looking at them yesterday and realized that there was something anthropomorphic about them.

IT’S EATING ME ALIVE!!!!

LET ME HAVE MY FREEDOM!!!!!!

So I am a little warped sometimes. Sue me.

It was a nice day today. I think spring is finally here officially. Today I planted some Reticulata Iris v. Cantab from Simple Pleasures. I bought them at Hirt’s on my buying spree. I picked them up at the last minute while I was checking out. And you are saying “But Hanna, those are Dwarf Iris. Don’t you plant those bulbs in fall?” Well, technically, yes. You are suppose to, but I always forget where the heck the other darn bulbs are planted. I usually end up buying a few off season bulbs so I can plant them while I can see where everything is.

And I get the bulbs at a discount.

Because they aren’t as healthy.

But it’s worth the gamble.

Maybe.

Okay, so maybe they won’t pull through, but when you think about how many plants we gardeners loes every season, it’s not so much of a bet.