Holland Centennial Park Gardens

 I thought I showed you some pix last year of the gardens at the park where the Art in the Park vendor event is held, but apparently not. They are very nice!

The gardens are dedicated to L. Frank Baum because his family cottage was nearby, and it is believed that he wrote a fair amount of The Wizard of Oz while at the cottage. The book is a frame covered with 6000 plants. It is taken inside every winter.

I'll only show you a few of the garden beds. There were many! This one has several kinds of hosta - big ones- a purple heuchera, and a border of begoinias.

I love this! It's a very light-colored Hakone grass with really dark heuchera.

One whole garden was edged with alternate coleus and begonias.

Mass plantings of zinneas were bright! This has a racemed hydrangea behind it.

This was also one of my favorites. This is two different kinds of coleus both in the Flamethrower series. The red is 'Adobo Pink' and the green is 'Salsa Verde.'

I did OK at the event. The weater was cool (good), but drippy with sprinkles (hard to manage books, and lower attendance). The worst was I had a stomach ache all afternoon. Only a minimal clue why. Pretty much gone now.

I am declaring tomorrow a mostly rest day.

I may have figured out how to force Facebook to post a picture. We'll see. Of course it's a pain in the butt.

See Hemlock Crossing and More

Hemlock Crossing and More

I have landed at Jean's for the night with the Hollard Art in the Park tomorrow. We already have the canopies set up, and we've talked author and editor stuff till we kind of ran down.

I stopped on the way down here today and hiked at a new-to-me park. I think it's going to be my favorite stop on the way to Holland. Called Hemlock Crossing, on the Pigeon River (the short one that's totally in Ottawa County).

Here's another view showing the footbridge to the trails.

There are miles of ski loops mostly in the woods. Moderate topography. The whole thing also connects to a regional multi-use trail

I just liked this log.

I hiked 5.3 miles, and there are probably at least that many more miles of trail without duplicating very much.

At Jean's, she's been working really hard at cleaning up her hillside garden. It's looking fantastic.

I'll probably show you more of it another day, but for now, here's a coreopsis called 'Golden Threads.'

Best of all, I got to meet her new dog, a cheaglehund (chihuahua, beagle, dascshund mix) named Loki. She's going to have to watch me carefully, or he might end up coming home with me. He is 7 pounds of spring loaded beagle. I'm definitely in love.

I have to go to sleep now. I'm beat.

Miles walked in 2026: 269.1
Onekama Challenge: 80.9 miles.

Hemlock Crossing park, Holland, Michigan, various loops- 5.3 miles.

See Jean's Garden

Mason County Garden Club Tour 2026

It's been several years since I was actually home when the Mason County Garden Club Tour was being held, but this year it all worked out. The stops this year were all in Ludington.

This is a special year for the Club-- it is their 100th Anniversary, and also the 24th Garden Tour they have hosted. Because of this, 4 of the 7 sites were at public locations the club maintains, and one of those had a craft you could make. I may talk about those another day, but I want to focus on the 3 private gardens.

Here is a nice walkway corner. It's edged with the Donkeytail Euphorbia and filled with a petunia planter.

This garden had mostly traditional plantings and groupings, but it was nicely done. The owner mentioned the gardners' war with the urban deer (her fencing was removed for this tour), and ironically enough, I saw a doe and two fawns just around the corner, cruisin' for a snack.

This was my favorite, and it turns out I know the owner. This is just one view of the garden... it's filled with quirky garden art, different levels, and little nooks tucked between buildings and hedges and stuffed with plants.

Now I'll show you a few of my favorite plants, or pairings of plants.

This is another Heuchera- 'Changeling'- that I like a lot.

And here is a beautiful coleus planter. Coleus is a lot like the heuchera- they come in an amazing variety of colors and shapes. But they are annuals. (You may recall I tried to keep some over the winter- I had a little success which you'll see one day soon)

This is a really nice pairing of a coleus and a heuchera. Of course no one seems to keep track of the names of any of these cultivars, which you know I want to know.

Here is, perhaps, my favorite of the day. This is a begonia from a patented series called Space Age, possibly 'Black Hole.' Of course, I can't start playing with begonias unless I magically sprout a greenhouse, or at least more space with good light, to keep them over the winter.

We did not know where the gardens were located until we bought the tickets at the start. I had thought I'd walk as much of the route as I could since the day was not blistering hot. And after seeing the map, I decided I could walk the whole thing. 4.6 miles.

Did a little editing and some cleaning up at home.

Miles walked in 2026: 223.7
Miles walked for the Onekama Challenge: 35.5

See Mason County Garden Club Tour 2018

Troutarama and the NCT

Our Spirit of the Woods Chapter of the NCTA has a new position called Communications Coordinator, and one of the duties of that person is to work on outreach opportunities to tell more people about the trail. Taylor's first big effort was to get us in the Troutarama Parade in Baldwin. She is in the yellow shirt.

The parade was a decent length and a lot of people turn out for this. (It's a four-day event with all kinds of activities)

We handed out candy and flyers about the trail.

I've shown you this once before, but this is the statue commemorating that Baldwin was where brown trout were first released in the United States in 1884.

The statue now has a very nice garden with a couple of benches around it.

And coneflowers

The parade got me some walking, and then I had to go right past the trail on the way home, so I stopped and got in some more miles.

It was a little cooler and a little less smokey. There is a lovely breeze that made life tolerable. Still, not much else happened. I didn't sleep well last night and had trouble getting up this morning.

Miles walked in 2026: 219.1
Hike 100 Challenge: 80
Onekama Challenge: 31

In Baldwin for the parade and to get to my car- 2 miles. NCT, Lake County, MI, Timber Creek to Wingleton Rd and back 4 miles.

See The Rest of Yesterday

Visiting Margaret's Garden

I am going to try to get some plants going for the gardens over the winter. I do not have a track record of being very good with this, although I did OK last year. I'm going to try some coleus this year. Friend Margaret gave me cuttings from two different ones, a dark purple and this interesting variegated one. Look at the scalloped edges on the leaves.

She has a huge fenced garden- her whole back yard. She has vegetables and all kinds of flowers. A lot of them are tubers and bulbs she has to take in every winter. I don't have the patience for that at all. These are begonias that should only be good for one season. But she says she takes them in and every year they come back.

This is her back porch. Look at all the plants! She apologized because it's not at peak beauty. Hey, it's September. I think it looks great.

This is a really healthy Jimsonweed. She called it a moonflower. Common names are all over the map. It's Datura stramonium. Ingesting any part of the plant can cause severe altered mental states and even death. So, enjoy looking, but don't get the sap in your mouth!

There were lots of other things I could have taken pictures of, but I didn't. Oh well. These are the annuals along her front walkway. She says the petunias have bloomed all summer even without very consistent deadheading.

I enjoyed the tour! I'm glad she was home to show me. We had left it that I would come snatch some coleus from the front whether she was there or not. But I got the full tour.

I spent a big portion of the day doing errands. There weren't any big glitches with any of them, so that's good. I have a preliminary dentist appointment tomorrow.

I also edited and answered various correspondence, blah, blah.

See Margaret's Garden

And I'm Home!

Last night, we stayed with Ken and Mary near Chicago, where I visited a year ago January (link at end).

Ken is a fellow author, and Diane bought one of his fantasy books, Eclipse of the Triple Moons, for her granddaughter.

Mary has some nice garden plants.

We concentrated on driving, but had to make a couple of pit stops, of course. This is at the Welcome Center at Berrien Springs, MI. Some very nice gardens there.

We arrived at my house a little after 3 pm. Marie and Diane took on the "big sort," taking everything out of the car and figuring out who it belonged to, tallying up the money and who spent what. I went for groceries, because the fridge was bare here!

We had rhubarb chicken, rice, and corn on the cob for dinner, with Moose Tracks (of course) ice cream for dessert. Not a great picture with the sun in our eyes, but at least we will remember.

We visited a litte bit after that.

Sigh. Diane and Marie have to leave at 7:30 in the morning. They have a really long driving day tomorrow to get back to Diane's house. It would be great to have one more day together that wasn't a total rat race, but we all have lives that require re-entry.

It was a wonderful trip.

See Ice Age Trail See Stop Two - Ken

Jean's Been Weeding

Since the last time I was at Jean's house a month ago, she's been doing a LOT of weeding. Lots of her garden hill now looks nice.

She has lots more room for large plants than I do. This is right near her front entrance.

Her garden space is also on a hill, and she has stone steps with an interesting creeping evergreen growing over them. Just ignore the hose. We didn't pose the pictures.

The color of these lilies is stunning!

And 'Stargazer' lillies are always good for a show. It's no wonder they are so popular.

Oh, you want to know how those chicks that had just hatched a month ago are doing? Sure.

Laya is being a good Mom to them.

Tomorrow we'll be at Holland's Art in the Park!

Did a morning road walk. Miles hiked in 2025: 321.6

See Jean's Hobbies

Another Walk Around Ludington

 The day stared with engaging my brain much earlier than I like with a radio interview on WMOM with Bill Kerans who is the Director of the Scottville Senior Center. The interview went well, and you can see/hear it if you would like at Interview on WMOM

After that, it was still somewhat cool out, so I took another walk around Ludington, hitting some different streets from last time. You know I'm most interested in flower gardens. The porch and the one with the bench are like real-life examples of the displays at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

and

This one has great textures and colors and shapes. A little past prime, but hey, it's more than halfway through September.

Then I came home and finished straightening up before Omer got home, finished editing the How to Hike Book (will upload the revised text tomorrow), and I've made it to tired. Trying to spend a little time on the current pet project.

Yup, the boy is home.

Miles walked in 2024: 448

See True Blue Gumby II