The Kudzu Files

Daylilies blooming in my garden this morning.

The goldfish pond is cleaned up, the pump is running, and this evening I added eight new little goldfish to the two over-wintering survivors. Maybe I can keep birds and bullfrogs and other carnivorous creatures away this time.

I took these pictures about two weeks ago, the daffodils are gone now and the tulips mostly so, but they made sitting on the deck in my front garden a very pleasant place in the early Mississippi spring.

Tulips from above - my attempt at an artsy shot!

I had a burst of inspiration one morning, and [...]

It’s that time of year in Mississippi, when the oak, elm, and juniper trees spread pollen everywhere. Everything outside, and some things inside if you leave the door or windows open for long, have a coating of yellow pollen. When I got home yesterday, I used the leaf blower to remove some of [...]

While Mississippi isn’t known for rocks, I do have some in my garden as accents. My in-laws own about 250 acres about 40 miles from my house. While wandering the property years ago, I found a small outcropping of some fairly large rocks, probably sandstone. I moved a few to my garden. [...]

Driving to church this morning, I realized that I was seeing something you hardly ever see here - ice on the surface of streams and ponds. Granted, it was a thin layer, but it just never happens. You’ll sometimes see some icing along the stream bank, or at the edge of a pond, [...]

Not complaining about no ice, but some snow would have been fun. Just cold, although as often happens here, the actual event is a bit more moderate than the forecast. Instead of 10F, we’ll be around 15. We still probably won’t be above freezing until Sunday afternoon, which is very, very unusual [...]

A typical January day in central Mississippi would have a high temperature somewhere around 55F. The low would be 38F or so. It might be sunny, in which case it would be pleasant, and we might even wear short sleeves. I would work in the garden, maybe. If it were cloudy [...]

I’ve had this urge to write something since this afternoon. The problem is, I don’t know what to write. It’s like something is in there trying to get out, but it can’t find the way. I blame it on Facebook, where shallowness seems to reign supreme. I know Facebook has it’s [...]

I have roses. I’m not much of a rose gardener. I go to a certain degree of effort, pruning at roughly the right times, trying to build the soil up, even on rare occasions fertilizing. But mostly, my roses have to survive the way most of my flowers survive - by being [...]