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Front Yard Island Bed - Extension Candidate and Potential Versions for Shaping Edges and Expanding Footprint - January 2026

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Last week I posted a list of 'potential' sites to expand (and amend the soil) of various bed sites around the garden.  Some of these were/are small extensions (adding inches to the width/depth of the beds) and others are much larger (adding feet of width/depth).  I wrote up the list and posted it in January not JUST because of the Wintertime-induced garden-related cabin fever, but also because a key element of my 1 'lazy bed extension' method involves TIME.  Time to supress and kill the turf.  That's because my 'lazy bed extension' method doesn't require the removal of turf, instead I just smother it with cardboard and then top the cardboard with various materials (biosolids + compost + leaf litter + mulch). On that list were a few front yard locations including expanding the Magnolia bed (which is a tight circle currently), connecting the Oregon Green bed to the front porch bed (about four-feet of distance) and expanding the small (12" deep) bed ...
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First Draft: Jake Parrillo's 10 Great Garden Rules - January 2025

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Over the years, I've written and linked to various 'garden rules' and 'garden mistakes' lists.  And, I've made a bunch of those mistakes. And, learned from the 'rules'.  But, over the holidays, I was talking to my oldest sister and my brother-in-law about gardening.  They're taking on a new, exciting project and are in the midst of planning a clean-sheet garden at their lake house in Michigan.  The conversation drifted towards them asking for advice on where to start.  And, that made me think about what I would tell other gardeners.  I went home and ended up writing a Google Doc that included some advice, links and thoughts.  After editing a little bit, it ended up taking the shape of being a list of rules (or advice) that I've seemingly adopted for my own garden.  I thought it was worth sharing as (in this case, like many others here on the blog), I've adopted Paul Graham's advice and wrote things out.  The act of *writing this list* ta...
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Festivus Greetings - From the Parrillos - January 2026

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For those who are on the receiving end of our Christmas card, there was something special included this year.  I write an annual 'year in review' post on a family website and include screenshots of the front/back of the card.   I'm not linking to it here, but I am going to paste a screenshot of one of the photos below.  I've redacted some of the info and blurred out the faces of some of the participants, but there's something noteworthy in the copy.  Can you pick it up?  That's right, people.  In addition to the typical seasonal greetings (Christmas, Hannukah, New Year), we saw in 2025 a return to the inclusion of " Happy Festivus " (To all those who celebrate, of course) on the card.   I'm calling that a win for the year.  This isn't the first year of including Festivus greetings to our friends, family and neighbors (for the rest-of-us), but for reasons that I don't quite understand, we took a few years off being included.   S...
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Steam Off Barth Pond At Patriot's Park - January 2025

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The air temperature recently exceeded the water temperature in Barth Pond and created this eerie scene with a mist coming off the water and hanging over the pond.  We couldn't get all the way around the pond as the cross-over bridge in the Southeast corner was topping-over via the little spillway out there.   So, instead, we walked the half-way around to the bridge and came back.  The Geese are still hanging around and between their mess and the hissing, it sure would be nice if there was a good way to chase them off.  
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Lazy Bed Extensions + Amending Bed Candidates - Winter 2025 - January 2026

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Yesterday, I posted a 'garden dreaming' post about building a new, raised bed section in our backyard to grow even more vegetables and flowers.   And, right before the new year, I posted by 2025 to-do list scorecard .  I bring both of those posts up because they are both involved in this post about lazy beds.   First, the scorecard .  I graded myself 18/25, but one of the seven incompletes was #23 - "More Lazy Bed Extensions" and I mentioned in the post that I have reserved the right to update my scorecard total if I get these bed extensions done before the end of January.   Time is important on these lazy bed extensions as we need time to suppress the turf that exists, 'melt away' the cardboard and allow the biosolids to mellow out a little bit.  I've done them in the Fall and the beds were ready come Spring.  And, I've done some on a quicker turnaround.   If I get these done in January, I'll have 120ish days of cure time....
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Bluesky Project: Raised Bed Garden Near Patio - January 2026

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The hits-and-misses that I've had with cut flowers and vegetables this past year has me (already) thinking about next year.  I wanted to make 2025 the year of 'even more cut flowers' and with all of the dahlias that I planted, we made that happen.  But, the constraints of our property mean that I'm close to the limit on what I can do going forward.  We have a ton of garden space in the backyard.  But, MOST OF IT is in shade.  That means that if I want to grow more things like dahlias and other cut flowers that need sun, I have to rethink things.   I could plant up more of the front yard or...I could do something bigger.   That something BIGGER is a cut flower garden.  In a part of the backyard that *is* in sun for a good part of the day.   And, a cut flower garden that uses raised beds.  We had raised beds in Elmhurst that lived inside of a fenced-in enclosure.  That garden produced a BOUNTY every season.  Vegeta...
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Another Year of Posting - December 2025

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2025 has come to a close here on the blog with this non-gardening post being the 366th post.  I seem to have over-posted in June (31 posts), but otherwise have hit my annual goal of posting everyday for the year.  Never-the-less, That means that 2025 is not a Gold Star blogging year, but still got the job done. Last year, I put up 367 posts (Leap Year)  - another non-Gold-star year due to duplicate date posts. This is the 11th straight year of 365+ posts and the 21st year of blogging on my own domain.    I broke the streak in 2013, but there were 3 other years (2010, 2011, 2012) that I went the distance before taking off to write on a political blog for that year.   At 11 (2014 --> 2025) years, that makes it 4000+ straight days of flexing this writing muscle.  Pretty, pretty, pretty good.   Of course, the bulk of the posts were focused in my [garden diary] and I once-again failed at trying to distribute the content beyond being indexe...
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