Sugaring Season Has Arrived
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Sunday Night – Drama, Delicious, Drama
More drama!
Seeds: Heritage, Hybrid, GMO
The Native Seeds/SEARCH catalog arrived in my mailbox this past week. This company located in Tucson is new to me, and so is the term native seeds. Included with the catalog that offers a variety of open pollinated seed from amaranth to watermelon was a tiny separate chart listing the best ways to choose seed. They say “Whenever possible, source your seeds first from the area where you live. Seed libraries, seed exchanges and local seed companies that…
Surprise Forgotten Under Bedroom Bookshelves
If your housekeeping regime is anything like mine, there are bound to be surprises from time to time. Last week I shuffled the bins of knitting yarns slightly from where they had been pushed in front of the bedroom bookshelves. There under the shelves was a pot of bulbs that I had forced on top of the shelves last spring. And once again I had to cry Life Will Not Be Denied! The potting soil was dry and…
Why Does Snow Melt the Way It Does?
Snow melts in mysterious ways. Any ideas why? For more Wordlessness on Wednesday click here.
Cellulose to Paper, Plants to Everything
The Sunday New York Times did a fascinating story yesterday about Timothy Barrett, a man they call the Cellulose Hero and the work he has done with paper, and preserving important of historic paper documents. I read all this with pleasure in the paper edition of the New York Times. In addition to talking about Barrett's important work, there was a brief history of paper, invented by the Chinese more than about 2000 years ago. Before that those lucky enough to…
Ellen Sousa’s Green Garden
Ellen Sousa now lives in Spencer on a small farm with animals, veggies, and many native plants that have earned it certification as a Wildlife Habitat and Monarch Waystation. But it was not always so. As a child Sousa tramped the woods with her father and read Who Really Killed Cock Robin, an environmental mystery by Jean Craighead George. My daughter Betsy also read this book in sixth grade and she determined at that moment to become an…
The Curious and Sometimes Lascivious History of Vegetables
According to the historical record the soldiers inside the Trojan horse gorged themselves on carrots to 'bind their bowels' an important precaution, but other records tell of the emperor Caligula "who had a fun-loving streak, once fed the entire Roman Senate a feast of carrots in hopes of watching them run sexually amok." Carrots have fascinated more modern characters like Henry Ford who was anti-milk, and anti-meat, but crazy about vegetables, especially the carrot. At one point he…
Bloom Day – February 2012
On this second Bloom Day of 2012 I have very little to show. There is this white supermarket cyclamen that I bought in November that has more than seen me through the holidays, and the Wolf Moon. The wonderful thing about cyclamen is its long long winter bloom period. On February 4th I attended a Garden Writers Meeting in Boston, where we not only got invigorating information and inspiration from Mary Kate Mackey, but gifts from various vendors…
My Container Garden of Succulents is Growing
Seven weeks ago I gave myself an early Christmas present – a bowl in a classic shape (actually a sort of plastic flower pot) and four succulent plants. I had been inspired by reading Succulent Container Gardens by Debra Lee Baldwin which I had reviewed in this column earlier in December. I am not terribly good at caring for houseplants except for the succulents: a jade tree, an enormous orchid cactus, and Christmas and Thanksgiving cactus I had…