Gardening and writing
It's all about filling a blank space, visualizing what can be, moving words or plants around, just shoving the familiar, the conscious mind out of the way and allowing [...]
Bob Hill, Ranter Emeritus
A Fool’s April
The bubbling fountain came last, the watery finish to a wonderfully sunny day spent playing in the dirt. Sure, spring had officially arrived a few days earlier, but to me [...]
Good to the last leaf
There are a couple of magnificent, one hundred-and fifty-year-old gingkoes across the Ohio River in Louisville. Visitors to Cave Hill Cemetery and the Peterson-Dumesnil House make annual pilgrimages to see [...]
The Mostly labeled…Korean Mum
For perhaps the 15th consecutive autumn let me TRUMPET THE MOST UNDERUSED PLANT IN HORTICULTURE HISTORY OK, calm down Bob..Bob.. But I'm telling you, it is underused. These pictures [...]
Boxwood Winter
Folks around here have taken to calling it the “Boxwood Winter.” Named for that fabled Dec. 23, 2022 day when we were all waiting for Santa Claus and an artic [...]
A peony and the shovel
Somewhat less than Sports Illustrated cover material, this proud pink peony has a story all its own. Literally separated from friends and family by a guy with an errant shovel, [...]
Stuck Between a Stone and a Happy Place
Being a stone kinda guy, I spent a few happy hours the other day rescuing a rock garden just outside our shaded side door that had been buried in time, [...]
The Roots of Box Store Fondling
Twas Spring Fever that led a relatively sane man to be rummaging around deep into skinny cardboard boxes at the New Albany, Indiana Home Depot. Although still February - the [...]
Froggy Went a Courtin’ for Spring
I am sitting in our back porch on my first official visit of 2023. A half-dozen frogs have broken into the porch over the winter. One is reading, two [...]
My 800-mile trip to get a cheap greenhouse, and the neighbors who showed up for it
Maybe 20 years ago while visiting family in Mississippi I got word of a guy, somewhat of a local character, who had a greenhouse for sale. The guy, the story [...]
Supreme Friends and a Pair of Witch Hazels
This is to connect our Southern Indiana farmhouse, built in 1860, to England’s famed RHS Garden Wisley, founded in 1878, to the legendary horticulturist Mike Dirr, his age doesn’t matter, [...]