DIY Projects, Home Improvement

Walkway

The focal point of your front yard should be your entrance into your home. The walkway to the door should be inviting. Is your sidewalk nice to walk on or is walking on the lawn safer?

walkway with paving stones and bark mulch

One way is to use paving stones and bricks instead of concrete with a sand sub-base. There are many designs you can try. You can use gravel in between stepping stones. Gravel comes in many colors and sizes from pea gravel to larger rock. They even have smooth glass mulch in a variety of colors. If you are adventurous try growing low thyme or clover between the stepping stones.

Even concrete can be colored and textured in different ways. It is no longer the drab cement of the past.

Finally, you can use a bark mulch. It is budget-friendly for a natural look that ties all the planting beds together.

Container gardening, Flowers (annual and perennial)

Bachelor Button Flower

Bachelor Button flower in the garden, I have been growing these ever since I was a little boy. Mother bought a Gurney seed packet for kids and this was one of the seeds in it.

Bachelor button flower

The bachelor button flower grows around two feet tall with silvery foliage producing flowers of pink, white, blue, almost black, and all the hues in between. The plant-like cooler weather making them a short-lived annual, however, planted among other longer blooming annuals makes for a long-lasting show during the summer.

Darker form of the bachelor button plant

The name comes from Victorian men wearing these flowers in their lapels. The other name “cornflower” comes from the wild form of bachelor button growing in between the rows of corn plants and other grain. The settlers brought them over to America and were used for dried arrangements and adding spice to their foods. The flowers produce a clove-like flavor or make into a tea.

These plants were grown indoors and planted outside early withstanding temperatures in the mid-’20s.

Herbs

Dill the Herb

Everyone knows what dill the herb is, however, A blue foliage plant called ‘Dukat’ has more leaves than the regular plant and is used more for ornamental uses slower to seed. The leaves have a strong flavor and high oil content. It is related to the parsley family.

Blue-green variety of dill

It originated in eastern Europe and Russia, came over to America with the settlers for culinary uses. Today we use dill seeds for pickles. The leaves of this herb can be used, dried, or preferably be frozen in water to keep the oils in the leaf. Many dishes from India to the mid-East to Russia use its leaves.

In our country, dill leaf can be used to flavor fish and potato salad.

The only pest is the ‘dill worm’ which will hatch into a black swallowtail butterfly, so many persons leave the caterpillars to eat and become butterflies.

Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar
Swallowtail butterfly