This is garden tour season. It is a pleasure to leave the weeding chores and go off to look at beautiful gardens where I am sure whole energetic crews took care of the weeding before we tourists arrive. The Lenox Garden Club arranged a wonderful tour of the Hidden Treasures of the Berkshires that sent me into fantasy mode pretty quick. Since I have no ancient specimen trees or bedrock boulders, this kind of shady garden is one…
A few days ago Amy Stewart at Garden Rant was talking about a beautiful new book, Shed Style and Elegant Hideaways by Debra Prinzing with photographer William Wright and published by Clarkson Potter, which was all about the various useful and elegant sheds that gardeners used. Some are totally functional, but others have more elevated styles and uses. Then Amy asked all of us to write and describe our fantasy shed. I wrote about our Cottage Ornee which…
These two tiny creatures are yellow spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum) that my husband dug up when he was cleaning the drain in our dirt cellar - part of the continuing work on our new foundation.These are our first cellar salamanders, but our neighbor had one living for years in his wet basement. Apparently this is not unusual. Yellow spotted salamanders can live as long as 20 years and except for their mating season in March or April (depending…
That's me in the blue dress, chatting with visitors to The Annual Rose Viewing. The weather reports were threatening, but so far our luck has held and it has never rained on the Rose Viewing. In fact, there was so much sun that my husband was busy handing round extra garden hats and parasols, but as the afternoon progressed it became less humid and one of Heath's lovely zephyrs began to whisper across the hill.Even so, some visitors…