Last week I attended the Independent Garden Center Show in Chicago. This tradeshow is for garden center owners to get a preview of the plants and products available for them to sell next year. There were also presentations and workshops for garden center people to network and share ideas. For a humble home gardener and plant geek like myself, it was like being a kid in a candy store.

Media attendees were encouraged to tweet their experiences from the show floor. I love tweeting from my chair at home, but ended up getting so engrossed talking with friends and vendors, and looking at a huge variety of plants, seeds, and gardening gadgets and goo-gaws, that I completely forgot to tweet. There was so much to see!

I loved the texture (much softer than you'd think) and color of this houseplant, Calathea lancifolia or rattlesnake plant. The undersides of the leaves are purple, and the plant grows to 30". If I had more space indoors and weren't a confirmed houseplant hata, I'd actually consider getting this!

Even though I love squirrels (my "problem children" are groundhogs and raccoons), and do not want to shoo them from my garden, this display for Cole's Flaming Squirrel Seed Sauce tickled me no end. The bloodshot eyes, the steam coming out of the ears ... classic.

I loved these retro-looking pieces from Garden Iron and More. They had trellises, gates, seats, plant hangers, and more, all very reasonably priced. I love rust in the garden.

Gardening personality P. Allen Smith was a keynote speaker at the conference. Despite his demanding schedule, he made himself available to bloggers and was very approachable and down to earth. Here Linda and I pose with Allen just before he signs complimentary copies of books for us. I picked P. Allen Smith's Container Gardens: 60 Container Recipes to Accent Your Garden, from which I'm sure to get a few ideas to add to the container gardening class I teach at WCC.

These are the new seed varieties for 2012 from Renee's Garden. I admit I had a bit of a fan-girl moment meeting her in person. I've been buying her company's seeds for a long time, and liked her ever since I saw her years ago on a segment on Gardening by the Yard. A super knowledgeable gardener and sower, but completely down to earth and real. I regret not having my wits about me to have my photo taken with her!

I'm not the biggest fan of petunias, but I really liked this Proven Winners combination of Supertunia 'White Russian' with the lovely dark and textured foliage of sweet potato vine 'Sweet Caroline Bewitched.'

Come back tomorrow for a post on my tour of Ball Horticultural Co.

 

Topsy-Turvy Tuesday is just like Mish-Mash Monday, only a day late. If you're wondering, there's also:
- Willy-Nilly Wednesday
- This & That Thursday
- Folderol Friday (thanks, Rose! Much better than my original Frivolous)
- Salmagundi Saturday (ooh, I learned a new word!)
- Sundries Sunday

You're welcome! :)

Incidentally, the squirrels are not related to anything in this post, except them being topsy turvy and willy nilly. I love how the snow and sunflower seed were caught mid air in this shot.

Seed Swaps Underway
I had enough participants and seeds for two separate rounds, each with over 50 seed packets. (Yep, that was how I spent my Sunday.) I sent them off to what I'm calling Team Muhly and Team Bee Balm on Monday.

Blahs and Grumblies
I make a point of being positive and humorous online, but it turns out I'm human (nooooo!). I seem to have come down with a major case of the January blahs. Not in terms of hating winter, as I love winter, especially this early in the season and especially with the snow cover we have. It's that a lot of November and December was fun and busy with holiday activities and other diversions. And now things have slowed down into a big, dull blah.

And as a diversion from feeling blahy, I've branched out into feeling grumbly (all I need now is an Old Fogey button and to yell at kids to get off my lawn). I have spent a lot of time recently on the phone with customer "service" people, trying to explain and resolve what should be (but aren't) straight-forward inquiries. Lots of being passed on to other people (once seven times, only to end up where I started, though with a different person, who did finally address my issue!) and getting contradictory information. But I'm hoping that's settled now.

Technical Assistance Needed
Does anyone know how to remove "Read more!" links added automatically by Blogger? For some reason, Blogger has automatically added "Read more!" links at the end of every single one of my posts (old and new)! Only there is nothing more to read, and I really want to remove these links. I'm using the old editor, and can see no code for these links in html mode, so I can't remove them. Has this happened to anyone else?

Update: Thanks to Premarati who suggested I look at the HTML template (which I forgot existed, even though I've edited it in the past!) and Garden Girl whose comment made me go back and re-read something I thought I'd read clearly enough the first time, but had not! It turns out the reason I couldn't see the jump code in my template was because I had not clicked the Expand Widget Templates option so I could see all of the template. I then found the code I added years ago, before Blogger had the automatic "read more" feature, and could delete it. I think that when Blogger added its "read more" feature, it took my old template command (which previously was used only when called out/coded in individual posts) to mean I wanted every single post to end in "read more" automatically. Yay! Problem solved.

Does anyone know how to delete a blog from Blotanical? I'm trying to remove my older blog, Full Bloom, which has been inactive for over a year. I can see no option under MyBlogs to remove it.

Update:  Thanks to Barbee and others, I'm pretty sure we cannot remove blogs from Blotanical, only Stuart can. I've emailed my request. Thanks!

Action to the Rescue
Well, the opposite to moping must be to do something, so I've decided to walk to handle today's errands, instead of driving. It's only 3 miles round-trip and the brisk air should do me good! This afternoon, I'll make a nice cup of tea and gather my winter-sowing supplies and do a little of that. (I need to clean out the trays from last year. I always mean to do it right after I transplant out the seedlings, but there's so much to do in spring, and, well, you know!)

What do you to do distract yourself from blahs and grumblies??

New year and old traditions! Welcome to another Mish-Mash Monday. Ahoy maties!

Seed Swap Starting Soon
If you expressed interest in joining my seed swap in my preview post back in September, it's time now to officially sign up. Update: Sorry, the seed swap has reached capacity.

Looking Back
Some cool things happened this year:

• In February, I quit my job to pursue Garden Faerie full time.
• In May, I attended the Garden Bloggers' Spring Fling and met old and made new friends.
• In July, I visited my niece in CO and the Denver Botanical Gardens.
• In August, I visited MOBOT, one of my favorite gardens ever (you didn't miss the post... I've been saving it for winter).
• In December, my blog was named one of Horticulture magazine's Top 20 Gardening Blogs.
• All year, I steadily removed buckthorn, large and small, from the south side of my backyard and at the end of the season had made some real progress.
• I went public about being a curbside shopper.
• I enjoyed the freedom to arrange my days to suit my own needs and spending more time in my garden.
• Wonderful things came in the mail:
  
• Cheryl, Esther, and Liz sent packages of British tea, which I'm still enjoying.
• Gail, Randy, and Shady sent me great plants (and Beckie, Linda, Lisa, and MrBrownThumb gave me seeds or plants in person).
  
• Genevieve sent Wicked Plants, which I won on her site, and some free items in a promo for her OpenSky store: 3 pairs of Atlas Nitrile gloves and a Fiskars soil knife that I adore.

Looking Forward
You might even say putting your best foot (or paw, as the case may be) forward! Hyuck! I'm in town all week.

My biggest goal for 2010 is mundanely mature: I need to find stable employment. I've loved my near year of being the Garden Faerie (speaking, teaching, gardening, garden coaching, and garden writing), but the reality is, it can't support me in the long-term. I've worked over 20 years in corporate communications (technical and marketing writing, editing, and web content management) and am looking to draw on those skills to move in a slightly new direction. Possibly user interface design, project management, or instructional design/training. I don't know how realistic a change in career focus is in the Michigan economy, but I'll soon find out!

Footyprints on My Nice Clean Snow*
The east and south side of my backyard borders on a nature area, so my snow never stays pristine long, as various furry and feathered friends make their way to my feeders.

The usual suspects include, of course, birds...

squirrels (which I love!)...

and ducks! I love their tracks!

Who's visiting your feeders?

Happy Mish-Mash!

*I swear Yosemite Sam once said "Who put footyprints on my nice clean desert?" but can't find the sound file.

More than a month after my actual trip to the Denver Botanic Gardens, I'm posting my photos. I have to hurry it along as I'll have lots of new photos by the end of next week, after garden trips to Columbus and St. Louis (and Vincennes, IN and Royal, IL!).

I loved Denver Bot as much on my second visit as I did on my first last year. It's right in the middle of the city so it isn't huge, but it consists of many individual gardens, all in different themes, such as:

...a water-smart garden,

...a Great Plains garden,

...a kitchen garden,

...a Japanese garden,

...and Yuccarama.

The individual garden areas are arranged so you don't see everything at once, but approach each area with delight in discovery. My niece came with me and it was interesting watching her reaction. Even though she has no interest in gardening, I think she found it fun. (She was especially tickled to see the veggies they grew, especially cabbages, as she'd never seen them anywhere but in the grocery store!)

Last year, the Gardens integrated artwork by local teens and young adults into the gardens. This year the theme was Jurassic Gardens and dinosaurs peeked out at you in various locations.


It was really difficult narrowing down what photos to show you, but hopefully the number makes up for the lack of descriptions. Feel free to comment if you have a question or need an ID.

I hope you enjoyed the pictorial essay. For more info on Denver Botanic Gardens, see the blog entries I did last year on Blogger and MLive.