gardening

Make a water dish safe for butterflies

If you're green at heart but have a black thumb, don't give up on gardening just yet. There are some easy-care plants for indoors and out; in fact, some, including these 10 suggested by experts, are so foolproof you simply can't kill them.

In the natural world, the 21st day of June is an auspicious occasion. It is the summer solstice, once called "midsummer's day." The period of daylight is the longest of the year and the duration of night the shortest. The sun-worshiping ancients built Stonehenge to accurately identify this great dividing time.

I thought I was bulletproof. In my four decades as a gardener, I've never had a personal encounter with even a single deer in my yard. Although I am well aware of their abundance in every corner of the continent, secretly I always felt insulated in my in-town, densely populated semi-urban neighborhoods.
That is, until one recent weekend.

I first heard of upside-down tomatoes from the late Tom Robinson of Russelton, Pa., back in 2000. I still use the techniques he taught me to plant one or two tomato plants each season.

My grandmother's name was Daisy, and Marguerites were her favorite flowers.

Remember the old nursery rhyme or jingle we used to hear as kids: "Rain, rain, go away, come again another day"? For the last month now, at least, I found myself singing that little jingle a lot. In my newly planted vegetable garden, rain has been the only constant, dropping more than 15 inches in less than four weeks.

Although we may not be able to start or stop the rain on demand, warm the air or cool it down, we can create a garden to weather most any storm. I crafted such a garden several years ago during a season when we experienced one of the most volatile weather-related years on record.

For Mark and Kendall Richard, love at first sight turned into a family affair.
Looking for low-maintenance flowers to add spring color to their small farm near Vacaville, Calif., they became instantly enchanted with bearded irises. Within five years, a few plants became thousands.
"This is a hobby gone wild," Kendall says, knee-deep in a rainbow of flowers.

Bearded irises can be among the most rewarding -- and frustrating -- flowers to grow. They're mostly easy to care for, but they can baffle even expert gardeners with their unusual habits.
Here are some common questions and advice:
Q. Do bearded iris need a lot of water?