If you want to make this world a better place, just plant a hydrangea.  My girlfriend in Florida just told me that she’s planted several in her yard and she’s going to experiment with the gorgeous Annabelle (the big fluffy white variety).  So I’m convinced these plants are much hardier than I originally thought (and continue to be cultivated so).  If they can make it in Florida, WOW!

So here’s my 411 on how to plant these beauties:

1. Place your plant.  They will eventually get huge, so plan on spacing at least 3 feet apart on all sides.

Once you’ve decided on your placement, grind the bucket into the dirt to leave an imprint so you know where to dig.

2. Start digging!  I prefer a short square shovel so I can jump on it and get a little deeper – make sure there are no underground pipes, lines – i.e. dangerous stuff in your way!

Aim to make the hole 1.5 times larger than the plant bucket.

3.  Once your hole is dug, fill it with water and any fertilizer.  Think of those roots sinking in and getting cozy.  They’re going to be there a long time, so give them a good welcome.

4.  With your hands, make a little circular trench around the base of the plant.  This will direct the water into the root ball and not send it off as runoff.  Water, water, water.  If they leaves look droopy, water more.

5. Finish with mulch and annuals to fill in the spacing you allowed for future years’ growth.  After a few years, you won’t have to do this!

6. Add Aluminum Sulfate (available at any gardening store) to your soil to keep the blue flowers, or allow these Endless Summers to fade to pink.  Your choice!

Go ahead, make this world a better place!

And now for the winners…

#1 GeoSafari Talking Electron Microscope

And the Winner is: #10 Melissa M.

#2 You Can Count on Monsters

And the Winners are: #17 Jamie and #8 Leah

#3 The Big View Bug Jars and the Early Explorer’s Science Set

And the winner is: #14 Vivian

Congrats to all the winners!  Be sure to get in on the giveaways going on this week!  Have a great day – stay cool!

Meet the Step2 Extreme Coaster:

We were lucky, lucky to be sent one of these to test, and it was love at first sight.

Here’s ours in action…

And there you have it.

The adorables LOVE this coaster…

and the adorables who live next door…

and the adorables who live several houses down…

and the friends who have visited…

and if only I could fit on that little car, I would love it too.

(Of course I’ve tried.)

You can find the Step2 Extreme Coaster at Amazon.

Many thanks to Step2 – we were thrilled to test this!

And while I had my camera out in the yard, I had to show you this:

All the roses went POP! POP! this weekend.

Pop! POP!

POP! Pop! Pop!

What’s new in your garden?  And what do you think of that Step2 Coaster??

Can you believe its June????

Get ready for randomness, friends….

1. My eldest started full gear for hockey this spring.  While most of you are enjoying the warm weather, I’m grabbing our winter coats to bundle up for the rink.

This boy is totally and completely geeked to be playing.  Let me tell you, there are a lot of pieces going on there.  And this is just the start for me…

Younger adorable is skating too.  I could eat him up he’s so cute.

2.  In addition to hockey, we also started full pad lacrosse (which of course is slightly different equipment – I’ve been hoarding coupons to Sports Authority)

Notice the knees – try as I might I can NOT get those knees clean.  I’ve tried soaking them in the bath and scrubbing them with baby wipes, they will not come clean.  Ideas?

Younger adorable digs the playground next to Lacrosse practice.

3.  We’re also playing golf (1X per week) and soccer (2X for elder and 1X for younger) and starting tennis soon.  Can you say overscheduled?

4.  As I was touring through random homes online (I’m an MLS stalker), I found the most profound, drop-dead amazing laundry room I’ve ever seen.

Be still my heart, because you are racing like Secretariat.  You’ll see this again sometime when I’ve added to my folder of fabulous rooms.

5.  Speaking of, we watched Secretariat for our Sunday Family Movie Night.  Every one of us loved it.   I highly recommend it for all ages, though we did fast-forward a couple of emotional scenes that tend to bore the adorables.

6. My boys are still allowing me to dress them in matching shirts.  This makes me crazy happy.  Sometimes they even come out already matched.

I know I have a limited window with this.

7. My planters are rocking my world this spring.  It stopped raining for 5 minutes today and I ran out to take these:

I found these Gardenia trees at Costco for $29.99 and I couldn’t resist.  Of course I needed new planters and *luckily* I found these Toulon planters at Ballard Designs.  (These are the medium size).  Then I planted various creeping white annuals on top and instantly you have a Happy Heidi.  Elder adorable has the chore of watering them daily – I’m terrible at this. He’s done a good job so far.

These are the planters in the backyard: they consist of pink geraniums (1 big one), 3 white snapdragons, 3 “Big Blue” Lobelia and 6 white Alyssum packed in there like sardines.  It’s love, friends.

8.  I’ve had the most obnoxious urge to make these Chocolate Oatmeal Big Ole’ Hunk a Love.  So far I’ve resisted, but I can’t guarantee I’ll hold out for much longer.

What’s new with you?

The Garden category over there under For the Home has been sorely neglected these long winter months – the last post was October 25th!  And that is just not acceptable in my book.

So if you’re like me and look out over your garden and start to salivate at the thought of getting in there, it was time to dust this category off and start talking about it.

This is a Barbara Mitchell Daylily that bloomed in my garden last summer.

Today, we’re talking about my second favorite plant: the Daylily.   (With all my love for the Daylily, I’m still partial to my beloved hydrangeas: Hydrangeas 101, Hydrangeas in Late Summer and How Does your Garden Grow?)

Daylilies are originally from Asia, but they are not, in fact, related to Lillies.  I was as shocked as you to learn this.  They are a perennial, like full sun, and are hardy in Zones 3-10.

Range of Average Annual Minimum Temperatures (°F) for each zone
	zone 3	-40 to -30°F
	zone 4	-30 to -20°F
	zone 5	-20 to -10°F
	zone 6	-10 to 0°F
	zone 7	0 to 10°F
	zone 8	10 to 20°F
	zone 9	20 to 30°F
	zone 10	30 to 40°F

If you look at this map, here, Zones 3-10 cover the whole United States.  So I think you’re good, wherever you are.

Here’s what I love about Daylilies:

1) They are NO work.  You plant them once and that’s it.  Okay, okay, after about 5 years, you can dig them up, split the root ball into two and you now have 2 plants.  But that’s it.

2) The Reblooming varieties (an established plant) typically produce 200–400 flowers in a season and bloom from early to late summer.

3) They are gorgeous (!) and provide excellent punches of color throughout your garden.

So what’s not to love?

I can’t think of a single thing.

You’ve probably seen the most famous variety, “Stella d’Oro” growing in front of office buildings, home developments and just about everywhere else:

Landscapers love them because of those 2 tiny reasons that they require no work and bloom all summer long.

In my own garden I used “Happy Returns”, which is a lighter shade of yellow with all the same benefits…

I also am in love with the bright pink of this “Hush Little Baby”

Or take it to red with “Pardon Me”

Or really red with “American Chief”

“Strawberry Candy”

I could go on and on.

And I really could because there are more than 300 varieties of Reblooming Daylilies. Visit your local garden center to find out which varieties grow best in your area.  My local center was also able to special order a specific Daylily I requested and I appreciated their confidence that it would grow well in my garden.

Just remember to verify that you have a Rebloomer.  And then sit back and enjoy the beauty.

Here’s a great article about the ins and outs of Daylilies by a University of Minnesota professor: Growing Daylilies

Have you grown Daylilies and had luck with them?  Do you have a favorite variety?

One thing on my to-do list this week is to clean out my gardens: rip out all of the vegetable plants that have been steadily producing fruit throughout the fall, and all those pretty annuals.  I just hate to do it, because it looks so bare when I’m done.

But at least it will be easier this year with this handy new cart:

Take a gander at the Fiskars Carry-All Garden Cart

This 4-Cubic Foot cart is perfect for carting all of your garden clippings, leaves, tools, and waste.  The nice big wheels make it super easy to maneuver around your lawn.

In the spring, you can load it with your annuals and perennials that need to be planted, as well as your garden tools and be all ready to go.  (Ahh, spring!)

But first, the great yard clean-up of 2010 begins….

Giveaway

You can win one Fiskars Carry-All Garden Cart ($80) simply by leaving a comment by Friday, October 29th.  I’ll choose the winner using Random.org on Saturday.

Because I just LOVE comments, here’s how to gain extra entries (please leave them as separate entries):

1. Do you subscribe by email or RSS to The Good Stuff Guide? I love my subscribers, so you get an extra entry. Wahoo!
2. Email 5 of your friends about The Good Stuff Guide and tell them what a rockin’ website this is.  We’d love to have them join us!
3. “Like” The Good Stuff Guide on Facebook and receive the latest news and your chance at additional giveaways. (I LIKE you too!)

Good luck!

You can also find the Fiskars Carry-All Garden Cart at Amazon.

Don’t miss the stellar Fiskars rakes:
This Fiskars 24-Inch Leaf Rake ($19)

This rake is awesome!  Great design elements help it scoop up ALL the leaves.  I finished my postage stamp lawn in under 15 minutes.

And this Fiskars 8-Inch Shrub Rake ($17.50), perfect for between your perennials and other tight spots.

Today we’re headed to the Kip’s Bay area of Manhattan to see a Show Home Kitchen.

It’s well worth the tour!

Here’s the overall view of the gorgeousness.

The floor, the floor!  It’s iridescent Italian glass mosaic.  Love the swirl!!

The central 12-ft. island features “dished” Calacatta Pueschetta marble around the induction cooktop with a prep sink conveniently nearby. On the opposite side, a banquet rolls out of the island for extra seating. Smoky blue cabinets feature stainless feet.  I love the smoky blue mixed with the stainless steel.

Here’s a closeup of the island cooktop.  For more serious cooking, there’s another cooktop you’ll see in a sec.

A mirrored continental breakfast bar incorporates a concealed mirrored appliance center, hidden at the touch of a switch by a drop-down marble panel.

It also has drawer refrigeration and a built-in coffee maker.  I just love the idea of these drawers for quick and easy fruit, veggies and hummus snacks for the adorables.

But my adorables would have that display tower knocked down in minutes.  It’s so pretty though…

Illuminated three-sided tall glass-door cabinets showcase china and glassware.  Maybe seeing my china every day would induce me to use it!

A custom cooking hearth by St. Charles of New York integrates stainless cabinetry, counters and sink with cooktops in a limestone-tiled alcove. Now that’s something!

Make sure you notice the 4 wall ovens there.  A dream true come Thanksgiving time!

Special thanks to Karen Williams and Robert Schwartz, principals of St. Charles of New York for sharing this kitchen with us.

Have a great weekend!!

Every week I plan to show you my harvest from the tomato plants. I envision these beautiful photos of plump, sun-ripened little nuggets of the summer. The kind of tomato photos that draw me to magazine covers (and to buy them) like my exuberance over the Christmas toys at Costco.

But here’s why that can’t happen…

The elder adorable picks them as soon as they have a hint of red, but are still mostly green.

And then he reduces them to rubble.

This was the fruit of the heirloom “Mortgage Lifter”.   I haven’t had the opportunity to try one yet, but they look pretty delicious.

Accessory to the crime.

We spray off with the hose after this, because these delicious (so I’m told) tomatoes are wicked juicy.

And then he hands me this…

Somehow in their pillaging, they missed these…

I’m going to pick them in the middle of the night.

Hard at work there is Chef James Laird, in his home garden, growing the makings of healthy and fresh(!) culinary treats expressly for use in his restaurant, Restaurant Serenade in Chatham, NJ.

Together with his wife Nancy, the duo grow lettuces, tomatoes, asparagus, zucchini, cucumbers, herbs, onions, broccoli, flowers and more.

I just love the dedication this involves!

And of course to marvel at the garden – Gorgeous!

The garden is protected from four-legged eaters by a perimeter fence.

If you’re ever in the area, visit Restaurant Serenade in Chatham, New Jersey.

Hmmm, what would you whip up with this garden?  Do you have any fresh homegrown dinner ideas?

“The big view” with a bit of the herb garden in the foreground.

These bamboo supports are for the tomatoes.

Strawberries in the foreground. Raised beds of broccoli & cabbage, beans, carrots in the middle ground and tomatoes on bamboo supports in background. The sunflower was a volunteer from last years fence planting.

Raised beds of veggies with peas on trellis & cukes just getting started on another trellis

Early morning fog heightens the gorgeousness.

The view for breakfast “al fresco.” A few ice cream pails hanging on posts in the garden are handy to pick more than just a handful for snacking. Netting draped over the posts keep birds out of the berries.

The master gardener, Stella Otto says, “It’s all planted in a compact space for easy care/low maintenance and includes trickle irrigation and wood chipped paths. Trellises and other supports provide vertical growing area to make picking easier.  Best of all, it’s just steps from my kitchen; adjacent to our brick patio. In the summer I enjoy a sunrise breakfast al fresco overlooking the garden and our 10 acre horse farm. This garden provides for my husband & myself as well as our soon to be college bound teenager.  After freezing, canning, and preserving what we need for the winter, we still have plenty to share with friends and neighbors without an excess amount of time and work. Although we have plenty of acreage available, I purposely chose to design the garden for a small compact space to complement our cape cod style home with enclosed yard. The design could easily be used in a small in town or suburban lot.”

And friends, this garden is something to aspire to!

Chef Ken Frank of the Michelin Star-rated La Toque restaurant is spearheading the CHEFS’ EDIBLE GARDENS project, collaborating with other area chefs to create magnificent, organic gardens. The fruits of these chefs’ labors will be enjoyed in their various Napa restaurants.

Stunning!

These gardens are on the grounds of a wine museum, the COPIA, which recently closed.  These gardens, which, I’m sorry to say, aren’t open to the public, are simply exquisite.

Lush, local and organic greens.

Artichokes.  The first time I saw these growing wild in California I was completely surprised.  They become 4-5 foot stalks – somehow I thought the artichokes would grow more like broccoli closer to the ground.

Gorgeous cauliflower.

I’m just thrilled that this garden continues to be loved and cared for, with its produce finding its way into the local restaurants.

A great idea, methinks!