Usually we are wrapped in sweaters and coats with scarves and mittens as we scurry about with holiday preparations and celebrations. This year, despite a few chilly nights, the warm weather has lingered. This weather pattern has initiated the opening of many flower buds in gardens throughout the area, creating quite a unique holiday landscape scene. There is nothing we, as gardeners, can do to stop the action but we can enjoy the beauty of each blossom and consider it a gift.

This past week Maymont’s horticulture volunteers gathered to transplant the recently arrived pansy plugs into flats. Over the next 6 weeks these plants will be nurtured and grown to a size suitable for planting in the gardens. As garden beds are filled with spring-flowering bulbs they are then over-planted with pansies and violas.

In the first segment of the August edition of Virginia Home Grown, Richard talks with Program Director Susan Edwards and Mike Likins, both of the Virginia Cooperative Extension for Chesterfield County, about the Grass Roots Lawn Care program. Susan and Mike share ideas on weed control, soil testing, and selecting the right grass to match the growing conditions around your home.

My father was a baseball fan so I attribute my perspective of looking at summer in Richmond, Virginia as a ball player views the field of bases.  The month of May is home plate where we are fresh and ready for the run of summer.  June is first base and we round 2nd base in July.  Third base is August, we are getting a bit winded but keep going knowing that home plate, or autumn, is just down the base line.  The cooler temperatures will greet us as we slide into September knowing our gardens made it through the humidity, the heat and the sporadic rainfall once again.