The Weedpatch Gazette
Welcome! My favorite part of this blog is the interactive aspect of it. Click on the blue titles to view the full article. This page is where you can pin, tweet, share, and best of all, COMMENT! I like comments! ~ Rommy Lopat
CHICAGO PLANTS, LANDSCAPES, PARKS & PRESERVES
~ and the people that create them ~
This Land is Your Land! And so is Lake Michigan…
I know, I know, it's gray outside. Waking up in the morning to "no contrast" is a struggle. But let's be optimistic and say that the monochrome makes us appreciate the sun and chlorophyll so much more than those people who never see seasonal change. Here's...
Happy New Year! Time to Dream of (Wacky) Vegetables to Plant…
Need some laughs? An alert reader sent me a fellow blogger's ("The Art of Doing Stuff") post about visiting a CSA farm in Canada and some of the wacky plants it's possible to grow. Take a look at the great photos in this article (and scroll down to get...
Coldest Day on Record–Not So. Maybe. Go Figure.
This morning I heard a TV weatherman say this is the coldest day (-16) on record in Chicago. Of course, I had to Google that assertion, especially because I wondered if, in my lifetime, I had now lived through the hottest and the coldest days on record in...
Polar Plunge!
Here's a brief but spiritually invigorating (brrr, especially today!) video sent from subscriber and great humanist Mordechai Levin, who lives along the Nippersink Creek in Richmond, McHenry, Illinois. He suggests that the creek be renamed, the...
STOP the presses and read this!
Many of you know that I volunteer with a GREAT charity called Mothers Trust Foundation (MTF). It is so great that it won the "2013 Human Services Philanthropy Award" by Make It Better magazine, and the prize was a free professional videotape...
Silence All Around
I was thinking about what I could write about while driving home from the dentist today. I looked into a forest preserve I was passing and thought, "Nothing. I can't think of anything to write about gardening. It is just so damn gray today"....
Mississippi Flyway Used by Half of All North American Birds! Hear more next Monday…
Lake County Audubon Society welcomes all to attend a very important presentation on Monday, December 2, 7:30 pm, at the Libertyville Village Hall, 118 W. Cook Street, Libertyville, IL.Chris Canfield, Vice President of the Mississippi Flyway and former VP...
Butterflies, Bees and Trees: What’s Your Legacy?
Yesterday I was ferreting through a pile of my husband's "paperwork" and came across a lost treasure: a faded pamphlet of "The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness", written by French novelist, Jean Giono (1895-1970) and first published by Vogue...
Woe the Ornamental Pear Tree: Invasive, But Does It Make the “Invasive List”?
Trouble's brewing over the fate of Ornamental Pear [Pyrus calleryana] trees. It seems that this tree (you may know its cultivar names such as Aristocrat, Bradford, Chanticleer, Cleveland Select, Redspire, Trinity, or Jaczam) is becoming invasive in northeastern...
Restoration Ecology: Bad Signs, Good Books, and Henry Cowles
I am not a biologist nor a botanist, merely an interested gardener, but our trip to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore did offer a few "head scratchers". For example, why is it that so often I notice signs like this... ...which are then...
The Indiana Dunes National Seashore: Homes and Homesteads
Have you been to the Indiana Dunes National Seashore lately? In October, we took the short drive to Indiana to tour the "Houses of Tomorrow" from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair: Century of Progress that were hauled by barge to Indiana's lakeshore as part of...
Astounding Mosaiculture! Which One is your Favorite?
I hope you will open this link and be ASTONISHED at human ingenuity. http://myvirtualgarden2.blogspot.com/2013/09/mosaiculture-exhibition.html?m=1 Thank you to Courtney Dobyns, landscape designer in Vermont, for sending weedpatchgazette.com...
It’s waayyyy past time to outlaw Buckthorn!
The first two emails in my inbox today concern Buckthorn--the scourge of the Chicago region. First, my husband John sent me a photo of the black berries produced by female Buckthorn trees. He suggested that for readers who might be unsure how...
Save the Raptors, Savor the White (But Don’t Drink the Milk)
A small blurb in the Lake County, IL Audubon Society's fall newsletter caught my eye...and as a result I visited a website called, barnswallow.net. What a wonderful thing that Wauconda resident Linda Breuer is doing to care for and raise owls, hawks and...
Here’s to Tiny Bubbles!
Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with gardening. This morning I opened a random link and read this: "Two Americans and a German shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine this year. Americans James E. Rothman and Randy W. Schekman, and...
Gotta Love the Signmakers!
Just a note to all of you (thanks for subscribing!) to say that we are off on a vacation for a few weeks, so chances are I will not be posting any Weedpatch articles while on the road, although you never know... But before taking off, I just...
Thanks to the Woodpeckers and Nut Hatches
Have you all seen this Wall Street Journal article? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323446404579011172323705040.html?KEYWORDS=ash+trees#articleTabs%3Darticle May they eat and eat and eat until the Emerald Ash Borer stops its...
Buy a Hosta, Build a Future
Saturday, August 24, 9am-4pm Hosta Sale. Rich's Foxwillow Pines Nursery in Woodstock, IL, will have several hundred varieties of hostas for sale to benefit Heifer International. All hostas are $5.00 and up. Heifer International (HI) is a non-profit,...
Do you use Gmail?
Attention, Weedpatch readers. Gmail has decided to make our lives easier, which means they've created a new "time waster" to our lives. Please check to see if my email alerts to new posts has ended up in the "Promotions Tab" on gmail, rather...
Do Deer Like Milkweed?
"Do Deer Like Milkweed"?This is a query received from a Weedpatch reader named Patti S. I LOVE questions from readers because finding answers is my way of avoiding working on any essential tasks (like earning money or calling the health insurance company)....
MISSION
The Weedpatch Gazette is written for people who believe that beautiful landscapes should emphasize diversity and richness in plant material and be especially sensitive to landforms, ecology, economy, wildlife, and the wise use of land, water and soil. TWG aims to present information succinctly, with candor, detail, and humor. Submissions of content, well-reasoned criticism, and ideas for stories about landscape and the people who make and appreciate them are always welcome.
Follow
Subscribe to TWG's RSS FeedSelect any blue title to read the full article. From the full article, readers are able to navigate to all older and newer articles, share to social media, and enter comments. I love comments!