Grab Your Hot Tea, Hyacinths on Vase

Season 6, Episode 9, January 17, 2024

Jan 16, 2024

We were on the cusp of some wild weather for this week’s episode, when Carol and I talked about Angelonia angustifolia, two more seed catalogs, botanists who inspired us, and so much more!

Bright red male cardinal in my yard. Do you see his mate?

Although Carol said she didn’t have snow when we recorded, she did get some dry, cold, powdery snow on Saturday night. I got some, too, and it’s been so cold in the single digits. I’m basically subsisting on hot tea and Snickerdoodle cookies.

My 3D-printed dibber and head planter. I love garden gifts!

My favorites this week were my 3D-printed dibber and head planter Yvonne printed for me when I went to speak at the Oklahoma Gardeners’ Association. Carol loves her ‘Whale Fin’ Sanseveria, shown below.

Carol picked our flower this week because it is the National Garden Bureau's annual for 2024, the Year of the Angelonia. We both agreed this one is super easy to grow. It does love the heat. People call them summer snapdragons. I’m kind of ambivalent about angelonia. How do you feel about them?

I grew Angelonia Alonia ‘Big Indigo’ in 2017. I just searched online, and it’s still out there for sale. It did have bigger flowers than some summer snapdragons.

We have two more catalogs for perusing this week. Carol discussed the Burpee Seed catalog, and I talked about Territorial Seed Company, which is one of my favorites for vegetables. Believe it or not, Carol has the 1976 Burpee catalog. Listen to the podcast to hear why.

Carol bought this week’s book, which is an easy spiritual read. Playing in the Dirt: 90 Devotions for Crazy Plant Ladies, by Dayspring (Amazon link.)

For our dirt, we both loved the story of Margaret Bradshaw in The Guardian. She is 97, a true steward of the land, and one of our best dirt topics. Ms. Bradshaw reminds me of my garden friend, Martie Brown, who is in her late 80s.

Now for our rabbit hole goodness. Mine was about learning to cook again. I’m cooking more plant-based than I did in the past.

Carol wrote a blog post called Wisdom from 1935 about Clare Leighton and Clare’s book, Four Hedges, which reminded me of Planting garden bulbs as an act of faith, a blog post I wrote in 2013. We thought maybe Carol bought the book because of my blog post. But then Carol looked at her invoice for the Four Hedges book… it is from January 2013, and I didn’t post about the book until October 2013… so how is it we both bought the book in 2013? Maybe I bought it because of Carol’s post? But Carol didn’t write about the book until last week. Who knows?

Anyway, I couldn’t find my book, so I started cataloging my books all over my house at Carol's suggestion. I’m using the same app Carol does by CLZ Books. It works very well. This is time-consuming, but it’s also winter, and I’m bored.

See you next week!

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