In December of 2007 (!) I began my career as a garden blogger. I hardly knew what a blog was in those days. I had just discovered Garden Rant, and my friend BJ Roche at Fiftyshift said that as a writer I had to have a blog. And so commonweeder was born. What I knew about garden blogs - a blog was a place to share information and experiences and opinions through the Internet. I did not imagine…
And the wind is blowing. I barely made it out to the hen house and back. This is a day for staying home, browsing through Right Rose Right Place by Peter Schneider and considering what roses I want to add to The Rose Walk in the spring. My daughter Kate in Texas suggested I build a wish list on the Antique Rose Emporium website. So I did. I hope someone looks. You all have a chance to win that…
The artist Robert Strong Woodward spent most of his life in Buckland - and in a wheelchair. At the age of 21 he was injured in a hunting accident in California where he was living. Paralyzed from the waist down he returned to New England where he was born, studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and then moved to Buckland. It was his intent to make his living as an artist. He was…
Because it is my second Blogoversary, both Storey Publishing and CowPots are making it possible to have two Give Aways. Right Rose, Right Place: 359 Perfect Choices by rose lover and expert Peter Schneider will be a lovely and useful holiday treat for any rose gardener, or would-be rose gardener. There is advice here for the experienced gardener as well as for the novice. I have already added a number of roses I never knew about to my…
The first wildness was our local porcupine sunning himself (I don't really know if he is a he or she) in front of the henhouse this morning. I nearly stepped on him on my way to feed the chickens because I was so busy looking at a wild hardy kiwi vine on the adjacent shed and wondered how I was ever going to prune and tame it. Fortunately the movement of the porcupine, including getting all his quills in fighting…
When rose the eastern star, the birds came from a-far, in that full might of glory. With one melodious voice they sweetly did rejoice and sang the wonderous story, sang, praising God on high, enthroned above the sky, and his fair mother Mary. The eagle left his lair, came winging through the air, his message loud arising. And to his joyous cry the sparrow made reply, his answer sweetly voicing. "Overcome are death and strife, this…
My Thanksgiving cactus (Schlumbergera truncata) had just barely started to open on Thanksgiving day, but it is in full bloom right now. It will have passed its moment of glory by Bloom Day, so I continue to give thanks in the here and now. I've had people tell me their Thanksgiving cactus or Christmas cactus never bloom at the proper season, but that is usually because they have misidentified their plant. The Thanksgiving cactus 'leaf segments' have little points…
"Now, thank God, everything is finished; perhaps there are still things to be done; there at the back the soil is like lead, and I rather wanted to transplant this centaurea, but peace be with you; the snow has already fallen. . . . Well then make a fire in my room; let the garden sleep under its iderdown of snow. It is good to think of other things as well; the table is full of books which…
Much has been written about the “Columbian Exchange,” which refers to the plants and animals (and diseases) that were exchanged between the Old World and the New once Columbus started ships regularly traveling across the Atlantic. The Old World owes a lot to the New, especially in an agricultural sense. Potatoes, corn, tomatoes, cocoa, pineapples and pumpkins and a dozen other crops traveled from the New World to the Old so successfully that everyone’s diet changed radically. However,…