-- Anna Pavord, Bulb, 2009

Our New Catalog is Online and Ready for Ordering!

        Your LONG wait is over. Our brand-new catalog is online now, and we're eager to serve you!
        1. For a quick list of everything that's new, go to oldhousegardens.com/newBulbs.asp .
        2. For our fall-planted bulbs, go to oldhousegardens.com/cat.asp?CatID=1 .
        3. For an easy search by color, zone, animal-resistance, fragrance, bloom-time, etc., go to oldhousegardens.com/search_request.aspx .

Our Print Catalog Will Follow in Mid-August

        We expect to take our print catalog to the printers in a couple of weeks, which means it won't reach your mailbox till deep into August. (Someday we'll get it mailed in May, we swear!) Please DON'T wait till then to order, though, because:
        our rarest treasures sell out early,
        you can always add to your order later (we love that!), and
        if you're a returning customer, you'll get a 5% discount for ordering early.
        So come on down to oldhousegardens.com and start shopping right now before the crowds arrive!

Try One of Our Most Spectacular Broken Tulips for Just $4.50!

        Thanks to Mother Nature's bounty and a special deal from our grower, we're offering a once in a lifetime price on the ravishingly beautiful 'Insulinde'. Last year we sold every bulb we could get for $11.50 each, but right now you can order it for just $4.50, a savings of 60%! Here's your chance to try a true broken tulip, just like the ones that sold during the days of Tulipomania for thousands of dollars, for less than the cost of a double latte. But don't delay. Even this bumper crop won't last forever!

Now You Can "Like" Us on Facebook!

        You kept telling us we ought to join Facebook, and we wanted to, but we never quite found the time to do it. Finally our eager IT assistant, Mike, just couldn't wait any longer so he launched an unofficial Old House Gardens page. When the boss found out, he gave him a good chewing out – and then applauded Mike's initiative, took a deep breath, and put him in charge of our official page. It's VERY simple so far, and Mike is a very new gardener, but we hope you'll give it a look, "like" us, share it with your friends, and give us some suggestions for making it everything you'd like it to be.

Thank You! Kelly's Pink Ribbon Samplers Raise $525

        Your generous support of our Pink Ribbon Samplers raised another $174 this past spring. We added a few extra bucks and sent a check for $200 to LiveStrong.org, which brought our collective donation to a grand total of $525. Kelly, our shipping and micro-farms manager, was deeply touched, and the best news of all is that almost two years after her operation she's cancer-free, feeling great, and gardening as enthusiastically as ever.

Desperately Seeking a Great Garden Nail Brush

        If you're a gardener who loves to get your hands in the dirt, you know how important a good nail brush is – and how hard it can be to find one that can keep your fingernails looking decent and won't wear out after a month or two. We've been disappointed by all sorts of them, including plenty of expensive ones. But here are a couple we've been using since last summer that have proven their worth.
        Although it's not pretty (we found it at the Auto Barn, after all), the Eppco Heavy Duty Two-Sided Hand and Nail Brush is, well, dirt cheap at $1.69 each, and its bristles are stiff and long-wearing. We especially like how the angled row of extra-stiff bristles on one side scrubs even the toughest gunk from under our nails. A much more attractive brush that has also given us many months of excellent scrubbing is the Compact Hand and Nail Brush by Fuller Brush. Although its bristles aren't quite as stiff as the Eppco's, they scrub well and hold up well. It's more expensive at $7.99, but it's worth every penny.
        If you've found a brush that's worked well for you over the long haul, please share the good news with us at Charlie@oldhousegardens.com or our new Facebook page. And happy scrubbing!

Book of the Month: The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

        Combining her loves of gardening and history, our good customer Susan Wittig Albert has launched a new series of mystery novels that are perfect for summertime reading. In the first book, we're introduced to the good ladies of the Darling Dahlias Garden Club in the small town of Darling, Alabama, population "907 good Christian people (soon to be 908 because Mrs. Perkins is expecting any day now), and only a few Bad Apples." Of course it's often hard to tell the bad apples from the good, as the Dahlias discover while trying to figure out why their majestic old cucumber magnolia is dying and what really happened to pretty young Bunny Scott. The story is set during the Depression which makes for especially poignant reading these days, and in the spirit of that era it ends with some helpful tips from the Dahlias: "Makin' Do: 12 Ways to Stretch Whatever We Have."
        Susan's second book in the series debuts this month with a title that's sure to appeal to heirloom bulb-lovers: The Darling Dahlias and the Naked Ladies. I plan to be reading it well before our naked ladies bloom, with my feet up and a cold glass of sweet tea by my side.

OHG Barn Wins Historic Preservation Award

        The Ann Arbor Historic District Commission honored fourteen preservation projects recently, including, we're proud to say, our new office. The mayor shook our hands as he handed us the Special Merit award which read in part, "We applaud the adaptive reuse of the barn-like 1929 garage . . . for the operation of their internationally famous mail-order nursery. . . . Giving up their search for a historic farm, they decided instead to keep their business in town and create new, green office and shipping space while expanding their neighborhood network of urban micro-farms."
        Our neighbors Matt and Kelly Grocoff won the Preservation Project of the Year award for the super energy-efficient, "net zero" renovation of their old house, a project which has garnered national attention, including a feature article in Preservation magazine.

Did You Miss Our Last Newsletter? Read It Online!

        May's articles included heirloom bulbs for the White House garden, studying dahlias at Stanford, peony bouquets in September, a Michigan hospital grows its own, Heirloom Gardening in the South, and more. You can read all of our back-issues -- by date or by topic -- at oldhousegardens.com/NewsletterArchives.asp .

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