"Echoes of Eden" Dayle King Searle

Each year as people speak of their favorite Christmas memories, my mind goes back to a Christmas in the late 1980s when our children were young and our budget tight. About two miles from our home and down a gravel country road, sitting beside our potato cellar were two trailers which housed our workers during the summer. That fall my husband, Ron, was approached by two families who wanted to rent those trailers to live in for the winter. Ron hesitated. The trailers were not normally occupied during the winter, and he wasn’t sure how well the furnaces worked or if they were insulated well enough to provide adequate shelter during our difficult winters. But the two families, who both had just recently come to the area, were so desperate that Ron finally agreed.

There are moments in life that can best be described as “golden.” Times when life feels perfect and all seems as it should be.

           I sprayed my lawn today, so it seemed like the perfect time to repost this article, which first appeared on my blog two years ago.            First let me make it perfectly clear that I love making dandelion chains as much as the next girl, and I've done my share of making a wish before blowing the fluff off a dandelion that has gone to seed. I find dandelions absolutely delightful in the right place. The right place just doesn't happen to be in my lawn.

It’s starting to look like fall. My viburnum has changed from green to red in less than a week, the weather forecast is for cooler weather, and my daughter-in-law said she is starting to look forward to “the holiday season.”                 Most people think “the holiday season” begins the end of October with Halloween, includes Thanksgiving in November, and goes on through December with Christmas and New Years. But here in Shelley, Idaho, the holiday season begins earlier--on the third Saturday of September with Spud Day.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I spent some time at our cabin in Island Park. I enjoyed seeing the wildflowers on our drive there and around the cabin once we arrived, but they seemed sparse, and I feared I had missed the peak of the wildflower display this year. Then we decided to take a drive and try to find the trailhead of a hike my husband had heard about. This adventure took us well off the beaten path to a road so remote that the only other people we saw were forest service employees practicing a drill. Along this road the wildflowers were still in their prime. Thank goodness I have a patient husband who dutifully slammed on the brake every time I yelled, "Stop!" Otherwise I wouldn't be able to share this little taste of the beauty we saw.

     We just finished redoing the front planting beds for a delightful couple in Idaho Falls. The homeowners enjoy gardening and growing flowers, but they were tired of fighting the weeds and tending the open beds. They did the hard work of removing the old plants, and last week we installed the design I created for them last fall. Check out the before and after pictures.

My friend and neighbor, Julie, has one of the best vegetable gardens I've seen. She says most of the veggies her family eats ALL YEAR come from her garden. That's impressive. A few years ago she shared with me a garden tip that has become one of my favorites. When her children were young, in order to keep them enthusiastic about helping with the garden, she allowed them to pick out something new to try growing each year. It might be a totally new vegetable or simply a new variety of an old favorite. She said her kids loved looking through seed racks to choose their new "adventure" plant, and anticipating the harvest kept them happy about helping in the garden all summer. I have found this trick also works for grown-up children like me. Ever since Julie told me about this, I have been choosing an "adventure" plant each year to grow in my own garden. There have been some failures--chard grew just fine, but I didn't like eating it--but there have been s

Can you tell what this picture is of?

A daffodil is blooming in my garden. In March. Anyone who is not from eastern Idaho will not appreciate the amazingness of that statement. People in other places think there are four seasons--summer, autumn, winter, and spring. In eastern Idaho we have six seasons--summer, autumn, winter, fake spring, second winter, and "ugly but real" spring. Summer, autumn, and winter here are like in other places, but then in March fake spring comes. It is usually a week or two of nice weather, during which the snow melts and newcomers to the area rejoice that winter is over. Those of us who have lived in eastern Idaho a long time feel a little smug about our knowledge of how nature works here. We say things like, "Don't let it fool you. Winter isn't over yet." A few years ago in March I heard a college student, who was from here, say her roommate, who was from California, was convinced that spring had arrived, but she warned her, "No it isn't. It will snow fiv

     When William Shakespeare penned the phrase, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," I'm sure he wasn't referring to plant nomenclature. However, roses, like all plants, have multiple names, and sorting things out can sometimes be a bit confusing. Here is a simple explanation of plant names, and why this knowledge is important for home gardeners.