Mild weather this long holiday weekend has given us time to work together to dig up, dig down, cut back and rake, all parts of putting the garden to bed. Henry helped me slightly enlarge the end of the bed around the fountain juniper, cleaning out weeds, and making room for small bulbs, miniature golden daffs, 'Diamond Ring,' Pink Sunrise' and macrocarpum 'Golden Fragrance' muscari. We will be able to see these from the dining table in the spring.…
Every spring we begin the gardening season with new energy and new plans. After a winter of reading and thinking we stride out into the spring sun to build and dig, to add and subtract with confidence and high hopes. In the fall, while we are hoping we still have time to plant some bulbs (we do) it is time to review and see how our projects and experiments turned out. Our big project this year was really…
Mary Lyon, the founder of Mount Holyoke College, was born in Buckland in 1797. Nowadays the Mary Lyon Foundation supports local education in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts which include the town of her birth. Last night my team, the Prescriptive Orthographers sponsored by local Baker Pharmacy, was one of 25 teams who participated in our Annual Spelling Bee. Every team got themselves up in more or less outrageous costumes. The Woodward Wordsmiths even brought the car that…
In the spring I attended a hypertufa trough building workshop and planted two it with succulents I bought at a local garden shop. My two troughs lived happily outside on the welcoming platform. When our first hard frost was threatened I brought my troughs inside and they are now living on a broad southern windowsill in our unheated Great Room. I wasn't worried about the hardiness of the succulents, only the troughs. I haven't paid too much attention…
John Bunker, heritage apple expert, and author, distributes WANTED posters for the old apples he is searching for. He gives a pretty full description of the apple's appearance from size, shape, color of skin, color of flesh, stem size, and seeds. I've learned some new words like Acuminate which refers to the tapering shape of the seed cavity. I don't know what the 'eye' of the apple is. I know the opposite of the stem end is called the 'basin,' and has…
John Bunker and David Buchanan gave a couple of talks on Cider Day all about their experiences with finding and planting heritage apples. They also got to sell their books. I knew about David's book, Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter, but I didn't know that John had also written, and illustrated, a book about the apples and orchards of Palermo where he lives in Maine. Not Far From the Tree: A Bried History of…
David Buchanan and I met at the Conway School of Landscape Design (CSLD) reunion in September where he gave a six minute talk about what he had been doing since he graduated in 2000. He talked as fast as he could, and I listened as fast as I could, but I was glad I could slow the journey when I received a copy of his new book Taste, Memory: Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter.…