Chicago-based Sprout Home has been one of our favorite garden sites and stores for ages. They make gardening seem accessible and possible in even small urban spaces. They recently relaunched their site and we have to say the new and improved sprouthome.com has us counting the days until winter’s thaw hits. Now blogging from their outposts in both Brooklyn and Chicago, they offer fun, informative posts on everything from Venus Fly Traps to tips on how to choose the perfect house plant . If you’re looking for inspiration, click around their garden area for some of the gorgeous projects they have designed. And, if you’re thinking of planting something, check out their collection of mod containers, which will make even the brownest thumb seem mildly chic.

After the grocery store I popped into Home Depot to buy some flower bulbs to plant over the long weekend. The unseasonably warm weather means there is still plenty of time to get them in the ground. Again, I found myself lured by some lovely blue and white packaging that bore the Martha Stewart name. Unlike the other bags of bulbs, hers were organized by single colors. She just knows what it is I’m looking for, doesn’t she? So despite feeling slightly duped, I succombed and purchased the MS bulbs.

Can I recommend them? We’ll just have to wait until next spring to see. But I will say, the turkey was a fine bird. — Angela M.

More posts like this.
Things to do with Martha Stewart’s home keeping handbook (besides home keeping)

Are you planting bulbs this fall?

A couple of years ago, one of our most commented posts asked “Would you keep chickens?” Overwhelming you said, heck yeah, we’d love to raise chickens, and quite a few of you already did. Suddenly advice was flowing on breeds, coop building and egg quality. Fast forward a couple of years, and suddenly it seems that literally everyone around me is talking chickens! Many in our little New Jersey town have had their feathers ruffled recently (can’t resist the pun, sorry), after an ordinance was passed allowing backyard chickens starting this spring. People are worried about bad smells and that the foul will attract rats. We already have racoons, skunks, groundhogs and squirrels up the whazoo. What’s the harm of a few chickens? I love the idea of teaching our child where her food comes from, and it will certainly help us be more self-sufficient. Unfortunately, our own little patch of grass is much to small for a coop (what with the puppy and the playground we have planned — more on that later), but I sincerely hope one of our neighbors gives it a go. If you’re inspired, you must check out Tilly’s Nest, which just won a Blue Ribbon Blogger Award from Country Living mag. Its dedicated to the joys of raising chickens. These birds look downright huggable, and their owner, Melissa, offers amazing advice for the novice. — Angela M.

Tell us: Would you mind if your neighbors had chickens?

Photo by Laura Pandaru

I’m always remarking how much safer I felt living in the city rather than the ‘burbs. On dark and stormy nights, I miss being in close proximity of other apartment dwellers and having only one point of entry into our home. I also miss sleeping in a 12-story brick building that I know can’t be toppled by a falling tree. This weekend we were figuratively blown away by an extremely rare October snow storm. It was cold, wet and dangerous: The still-green leaves clung to tree branches, catching the damp heavy clumps as they fell from the sky, adding tons of weight to branches. Isadora and I sat inside, watching the spectacle out of the windows. POP! Down a limb would come crashing, just missing our neighbor’s car. Luckily no serious damage was done, but now I can’t help but look at the massive oak tree in our front yard with trepidation. It seems criminal to chop down a tree that’s been around hundreds of years. How do you know when it’s time to say good-bye tree, hello chain saw? This slide show, How Safe Are Your Trees at iVillage, offers some handy assessment ideas. Be on the lookout for warning signs like dead branches, splits in the trunk or even mushrooms growing out of the roots. — Angela M.

Have you ever had property damage caused by falling limbs or trees? Share your horror stories here!

Image from iVillage/Getty

If you’re like us, you spent a glorious fall weekend leaping around pumpkin patches and picking apples right off the tree. Divine! But before we start carving our jack-o-lantern masterpieces, we thought it’d be a good idea to remind ourselves what we learned last year. As you may recall, our 2010 porch pumpkins had a tough time. First, they got nibbled on by some squirrels. Then, they got moldy and basically caved in.

1. Don’t put your pumpkins out too soon. Rainy damp days can be deadly. Take them inside when it’s moist out!
2. After you carve it, soak it in cold water for a bit.
3. Smear some Vaseline on the carved, exposed edges.
4. If you’re worried about hungry critters taking a bite, mist it with a diluted cayenne pepper mix or try some Bitter Apple.

Got any other tips? Tell us here — and send us photos of your carved pumpkins! We’ll be sharing ours soon.

Hey, what do you do with those little tag they put in nursery plants once you get them home? Perhaps you throw them away. Or maybe you have a system like mine: throw them in an old flowerpot in the shed until a year later when you’re trying to remember the name of what was planted where and how tall it might eventually be. Well, how about this idea from one of my neighbors: grab a simple binder, organize it by area of the yard, and just staple the tags in there along with any notes about plant care. Such a simple idea, but I admit, I was impressed! — Mary T.

As you know from previous posts, it’s been a summer filled with popsicles. And as the last long weekend approaches, I feel the need to suck every sweet drop from the end of the popsicle stick. Then, I’m gonna take a pile of those popsicle sticks and do something crafty with them and a bottle of glue. Of course, Martha Stewart has some serious suggestions. I love the little house, above, from their site, and suspect our daughter will, too. But there are some grown up ideas out there as well (after all, not just the little ones like popsicles). On Etsy, I spotted this adorable cutlery holder. (The lazy can buy one for $10.) And Reader’s Digest offers these ingenious uses for popsicle sticks. Be warned though. There are some heated debates on gardening forums about how using the leftover wooden planks for plant labels is a bad idea. Apparently, they get moldy? Yuck.

What about you? Got any fun projects to keep us busy over the long weekend? I sense rain in the forecast. — Angela M.

Summer comes a bit later to the Pacific Northwest than the rest of the country — particularly this year. As such, my neighborhood’s annual garden tour was held just a few weeks ago (and it was kind of cold and very rainy even then). As much as I loved peeking into other people’s yards — especially those I would never get to see otherwise, like a house right on the water — it struck me that there are universal truths to every garden, no matter how big or small. And even though this season is winding down, these lessons can still be applied not only to gardens, but, I’m finding more and more, life.

Go with what works.
In the Midwest, I could throw seeds pretty much anywhere, and the hot sun and frequent thunderstorms would assure me a huge crop without much planning at all. That’s emphatically not the case in a clime where a day in the mid-60s is considered summery, and I’ve driven myself a little crazy trying to cultivate plants that need more loving care than I have time to give them. The gardeners on the tour were smart: lots of plants that thrive here with little effort, like lavender, Japanese maples, and rhododendrons. The big surprise? A good amount of common annuals like petunias and geraniums. Cheap to buy, simple to replace, and planted in profusion, quite gorgeous. So it really doesn’t require exotic hybrids to plant a beautiful garden.

Take your cue from your surroundings.
I was particularly delighted with a garden on the tour that had a storybook style that isn’t my instinct at all, including a small boxwood hedge sculpted into a fleur-de-lis. But the style worked perfectly with the Tudor home with its arched windows and stained glass. The beach home had very little “yard” at all, unless you count decking and sand. No matter; they filled the deck with potted plants in a variety of colors and textures, used espaliered trees to take advantage of a narrow corridor between houses, and chose a lot of grasses that stand up to sea spray.

Make room for sitting.
If you’re not careful, you might get to the end of a beautiful weekend and find that you spent the entire time cutting, mulching, weeding, watering — but not enjoying. If that’s the case, who exactly are you planting that garden for? Get a $20 plastic Adirondack chair, a $500 designer bench, or a salvaged rock, but set up a place to sit down (or even several places) and do it.

Try to see the potential in everything.
The beach garden mixed up spiky sculpture with spiky grasses growing like hair from a cement head. An eclectic garden (my favorite on the tour) used the springs from an old mattress as great-looking wall art and festooned fence beams with bottle caps left over from barbecues. What twee statues or broken furniture might you re-imagine into a clever addition to your own yard?

Don’t try to get it all done today. Or this year.
One garden that was heavy on trees and raised vegetable beds was very much still a work in progress, and yet they’d been working on it for ten years. Even if you hire someone to weed and mulch, it takes time for plants to reach maturity (just like people). Sometimes you have to give up on a plant that isn’t working (hmm…just like people). And even if you do it all yourself, gardens cost money. Unless you’re among the very wealthy, you likely won’t have a garden quite as glorious as you envision the very first year you work on it. And that’s okay.

You can encourage beauty anywhere.
A lot of houses in my neighborhood include a graceless set of cement steps that lead down to a basement door. I have been encouraging some jasmine to grow over a railing to help obscure ours, and was happy to see that other gardeners had the same idea. Even damp steps to the basement can look charming with a flowering vine or a few pots of flowers.

Keep your sense of humor.
Even the manicured Tudor garden had a yellow rubber ducky floating on a pristine bird bath. Listen to your instincts and have fun with your garden. I can guarantee you that you will sometimes step deep into mud (or worse if you have animals). You will walk into the occasional spiderweb. And you will accidentally turn on the hose when it’s aimed at your face. It’s always good to remind yourself to laugh.

Garden on. — Mary T.

The back yard at my house has always been a bit of a problem. Well, a disaster, really. It’s cloaked in full shade, and I have two dogs, which means that when the rainy season hits, we’re dealing with a (probably) malaria-ridden swamp pit for most of the winter. It also means I spent much, much, much too much time with my Swiffer, cleaning up all those muddy paw prints.

Finally, I’d had enough – and this summer, we decided to pave over it. Except that paving over a yard is expensive, and tricky. So, we went cheap and opted to install landscaping gravel instead. I was actually really nervous about how this would turn out, but after spotting these photos in Sunset Magazine, I had to give it a try. I had visions of an awful urban jungle, devoid of color and personality, but the end result is so fantastic, I can’t believe we didn’t do it sooner. The whole project took one day, and was under $500 to complete (including labor!). The new yard is so incredibly liberating – no more mowing, seeding, digging around in piles of mud. And it’s much prettier than I imagined, even calming. The borders are edged with soil, so we can plant a few shade-friendly plants around the perimeter, and the rest is totally, 100% maintenance-free. I can hardly wait to throw an outdoor rug underneath my patio table (which can finally come out of storage), and have a little end-of-summer barbecue to celebrate! The only down side I can think of is that one of my dogs isn’t so crazy about walking on the gravel (you can see her scoping out the situation in that photo). But she’s coping, and my other dog loves being able to lay on the warm gravel in the sun…so I’m calling it a trade-off.

Have you ever considered eliminating the grass from your yard? –Becki S.

Since the days are already getting shorter, we need to harness that dog-day summer sun to illuminate our outdoor evening festivities. What better way to do that than with these modern Solar Light Balls from Poketo. Their robotic, futuristic looks and neon hues are a welcome departure from the typical brushed nickel and bronze of those other solar lights. At $35 each, they are a touch pricier than what I’d typically spend, but even just one waterproof light would give high impact and a year-round shot of fun to any yard. Heck, I think they’re cool enough to use indoors, too! — Megan B.