Photo credit: Laura Mathews of Punk Rock Gardens
The folks at Splash Supply Co., a company out of York, Pa., have solved the problem of where to hide your house keys - and what to do with your cold drinks during a garden party.
This rock cooler looks remarkably like the real thing - a real rock, that is - when the lid is down. Not only can you keep your drinks in it poolside or in the garden, it is a seat as well.
Photo courtesy of American Girl
Don't look now, but there's an American Girl in the garden.
The company that brought us a line of historical dolls - from Addy, a runaway slave, to Kaya, the American Indian girl, to the Revolutionary War's Felicity and World War II's Molly - is introducing Lanie, "a thoughtful, energetic girl who discovers the world in her own backyard."
Lanie is being marketed in cooperation with the National Wildlife Federation, which has begun a campaign to reconnect children and their families with the outdoors. It seems that while Lanie loves animals and all things outdoors, she has to convince her family to leave their indoor activities and join her.
In the books that tell Lanie's story, she will be planting a garden and creating a butterfly habitat.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
Over the weekend, I tested a new product designed to protect plants from a sudden frost and extend their bloom time. It's called FreezePruf and it is made by the manufacturers of Liquid Fence.
I sprayed my begonia and my dahlia thoroughly and left my coleus unprotected on the afternoon of what was predicted to be a frosty night.
Sure enough, the next morning the ground, and the cars, were covered with a silver frost and I checked my container plants for damage.
The coleus, as you can see from the picture below, was devastated by the cold, but the begonia and the dahlia seem fine.
I cheerfully reported here on Garden Variety that the product appeared to have worked as designed...protecting plant cell walls from the expansion and breakdown that freezing temperatures can cause.
However, when I took a look at the containers a couple of days later, the begonia leaves had browned and wilted. So had the dahlia, only slightly less so.
(You can see in the photo above that some of the leaves have browned slightly, although they have maintained their shape.)
I don't know what I did wrong. I sprayed the plants thoroughly. But both were clearly showing frost damage that had only revealed itself after the warm sun had "defrosted" the leaves.
I welcome anyone else's thoughts about what may have happened with a product that is getting all kinds of positive press. I am perfectly ready to believe I screwed up.
On the other hand, maybe it isn't nice to fool Mother Nature.
Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer
Susan Reimer has spent 16 years writing about raising kids - among other topics - in her column for The Baltimore Sun. And every time son Joseph or daughter Jessie passed another milestone - driver's license, college, wedding or a move to a new military duty station - she has planted another garden. Now she will be writing about those gardens - and yours - here on Garden Variety. 
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