Nancy J. Ondra's Blog

Well, I didn’t expect that it would take me nearly eight months to find time for a new blog post, but at least I’m finally getting caught up before the new growing season begins. It’s been a treat to have an excuse to go though my photo archives from last summer and fall, reliving some […]

So much for good intentions of keeping up with my garden notes—it’s been a while! Fortunately, I know all of you understand how crazy things can be in the spring, so instead of offering excuses, I’ll dive right into what’s been going on here over the last several months, starting with some projects. At the […]

On the whole, I think 2024 is a year best forgotten—at least the second half of it. The first part of the growing season was so promising, but then the rain stopped, and what should have been the best part of the gardening year became an endurance test instead a time of joy and celebration. […]

Well, yes, there are a few flowers here right now, but for the most part, the extended lack of rain has caused many plants to shut down early for the season. Besides spoiling the best part of the growing season, the drought has had a big impact on this fall’s seed harvest. So, instead of […]

It looks like the worst of this year’s summer is over—hooray! We could still use some soaking rain, but we did finally get 2 inches last week, and the cooler, less-humid weather is giving some welcome fall vibes—as are the garden and meadow. Once again, my attempts at doing a shorter post were thwarted, because […]

Two words for the last month: Hot and dry. The less said about that, the better, except as an explanation of my continuing emphasis on closeups for Bloom Day. It’s interesting to note that the natives are doing just fine, thank you, so let’s focus on them first again this month. With their crisp white […]

This month, we’re back to my regularly scheduled programming: whining about not getting promised rain when most everyone else in our part of southeastern PA did—particularly disappointing in light of the scorching week ahead. There are also current animal issues, including rabbit(s), chipmunk(s), and these little goobers, whose parents built several nests in various spots […]

In what may be a first for a Hayefield Bloom Day post, I have no real complaints about the weather this past month. Despite indications that we would have a super-early last frost this spring, we got nipped in late April, which is normal, and once again, Mother’s Day was the last night (I hope!) […]

It’s that time of year again—time to begin celebrating what’s going on in the garden each month. Weather-wise, the overall theme for the last few weeks has been either wet or windy. Except when it was wet and windy. Still, there have been enough nice days and sufficiently mild temperatures to bring out the stars […]

So much for my good intentions! I’ve said for years that posting on this blog is the only form of garden journaling I’ve ever been able to keep up with. Things got crazy last fall, though, with seed-collecting and order-filling and a variety of projects, and it’s taken until now to find a week to […]