And the work travel continues...leaving first thing in the morning for the Independent Garden Show (IGC) in Chicago (love heading up there this time of year...such a nice break from Texas summer heat!) The high is supposed to only be 80 degrees..whoohoo!! From there I go directly to Texas Nursery and Landscape Expo (TNLA) in San Antonio.

I'll be looking for excellent new gardening products, plants and such.

Here is a lovely photo from Chicago last year of a huge bed planed with Gooseneck Loosetrife.

Just a lovely shot of a bee snacking on a 'Mac N' Cheese' Echinacea.

My understanding is that an improved variety called 'Now Cheesier' (snicker...) will have better heat tolerance than the 'Mac N' Cheese' for those of us in the deep South. I guess cheese does tend to melt at 105 degrees, lol.

Echinacea 'Mac N' Cheese'
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

In preparations for putting my house on the market...I was compelled to take out the big veggie garden in the back yard. This was one of the hardest things ever to do! I've spent six years building my garden from scratch at this house, but knew that it may be overwhelming to most potential buyers...

So now, all that remains is a large expanse of new sod...Typically, I move in the opposite direction: The turf reduction program as I like to call it. So it feels pretty strange to be ripping out my precious veggie garden to replace it with turf. At least I'll be hanging on to all the cedar raised beds I built (you can see a few of them stacked in the back). They'll go into storage until we find a new home for them...

Sniff, Sniff...so sad...I'm sure I'll have fun building the new garden though, as always...

Another great tiny garden center you should visit, if you're in the Portland OR area, is Pistils Nursery. Very urban and super cute with a nice selection of plants and giftware. They also have a really fab chicken coop and some foul residents...

This boy was not happy about my poking around in his coop! I believe this is a Faverolle...please correct me if I'm wrong. What a beauty.

Super fab coop. Love how they've planted/set plants around the base.

Plenty of room inside for the babies...

Ok, WOW, was all we could say when we came upon the many greenhouses or gargantuan petunia baskets at Bauman Farms near Portland OR. They grow the biggest petunia baskets I've ever seen! Now, of course, we simply can't pull this off in Dallas, TX. Petunias just have too many grievances with our climate. Just to make it worse, they sell these monsters for...wait for it...$47.95!!! Good Gravy. That's it? Really? What a deal.

If you live near, or swing through Portland OR, Bauman farms is about an hour outside of town, but totally worth the drive. It's a 4th or 5th generation family farm that grows the most fantastic berries. They have a great produce stand, chickens, pygmy goats and garden plants. Too fun!

New Dwarf Tomato for Tight Spaces

One of the several "new rages" at the professional trade shows this year are tiny tomatoes. Not tiny fruit necessarily, but tiny plants. Now a few of the ones I've tested for OG Magazine in the last couple of years crashed and burned in our heat. But I'll be curious to see how some of these new hybrids do. Here is one of them:

Tomato 'Sweet & Neat Scarlet'

I'll be gathering a number of these new tomatoes to test in my own garden and the NHG vegetable production garden. But due to timing, I will have to wait until next year to do so. Should be interesting.

Tomato 'Sweet & Neat Scarlet'
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

Meet 'Neverfloris'

One of my favorite new things I found at OFA the week before last...A funky new African violet that makes these fuzzy little green "flowers". They never open up into a traditional flower with petals. I'm obsessed and It's called 'Neverfloris'.

You can even use it like a flower "frog"...you know the little metal circle of spikes that allow you to hold cult flowers in place. You can use 'Neverfloris' as a base to hold other flowers, decor, little birds, etc. Too cute.