New Year’s resolutions. No matter how dismissive we try to be, no matter how skeptical we become, there is something seductive and promising about the date of January 1, the beginning of a brand new year. I look at the blankness of the calendar’s pages, matching the blankness of the winter landscape and think about the ways I will fill the days of the new year, fill my days in the garden. The older I get the unhappier…
Fragrance in the garden is very important to me. This is easy to arrange in the outdoor garden where I can grow lilacs, dianthus, mock orange, Oriental lilies, night scented stocks and honeysuckle as well as my hardy roses. Fragrance in the indoor garden is a little harder to come by, but scented pelargoniums, commonly called geraniums, provide many fragrances. It is not the flowers that are fragrant; indeed most scented geraniums have modest flowers. It is the…
I wanted to share a special Thanksgiving memory today. Thanksgiving is a harvest festival, with gratitude for the fruits of the soil that have sustained us through another year. It is also a time of gratitude for the other blessings of our life, especially the family and friends with whom we celebrate. Sometimes it is the Thanksgivings celebrated far from those we love that have a special place in our memory. As the current news is so filled…
I don’t know about you, but I am already starting to work on my holiday gift list. Those who know me, know I think that few gifts are as good as a good book. Books teach and inspire, and often offer great encouragement. Gardening has long been one of the nation’s most popular pastimes, but recently with our difficult economy, and worries about the energy costs of agribusiness, many people are turning to the vegetable garden, for fresh…
Elise Schlaikjer has named all the houses she has lived in Phoenix House, but when she moved to Greenfield, just two years ago, the name was especially apt. It took a fall and a head injury, but Schlaikjer decided that after 23 years in Michigan it was time to move nearer her daughter Laura, in Greenfield. At the age of 73 she was ready to start a new life, like the Phoenix rising from the ashes, reborn and…
What is a community? A group living in the same area? Yes, but more. A group sharing similar interests? Yes, but more A group sharing similar concerns? Yes, but more. A group sharing friendships? Yes, and when you add all of these attributes of a community you have the Highland Communities Initiative (HCI), a project of The Trustees of Reservations. Last Sunday members of many communities gathered to celebrate the opening of the Bullitt Reservation, the newest of…
“I do everything wrong,” Rol Hesselbart said as we looked over his garlic harvest. And, he pointed out, he did everything wrong in Michigan and Virginia before he started doing everything wrong in Heath. Hesselbart, naturalist, educator and retired national park ranger, is known locally for the size and quality of his garlic bulbs. I am one of the lucky few who scored a few to plant myself this month. His growing techniques have evolved slightly since he…
Dan Conlon, co-owner with his wife Bonita of Warm Colors Apiary, President of both the Massachusetts Beekeepers Association and the Franklin County Beekeepers Association, began keeping bees when he was 14 years old. He lived at the edge of a Dayton, Ohio suburb, close enough to farmlands that he got a summer job helping a farmer with haying and whatever needed to be done. “The farmer kept a few beehives, because many farmers did at that time, knowing…
“Invasive species have the potential to completely alter habitats, disrupt natural cycles of disturbance and succession, and most importantly, greatly decrease overall biodiversity, pushing rare species to the brink of extinction. Many ecologists now feel that invasive species represent the greatest current and future threat to native plant and animal species worldwide, greater even than human population growth, land development and pollution.” William Cullina of the New England Wildflower Society We do not have to travel far to…
I have a friend who once built himself a ‘lethe house.’ It wasn’t really a house, and it wasn’t really about forgetting, the way the mythical Lethe River in Hades was supposed to bring total forgetfulness to those who drank the waters. My friend planted a circular garden filled with soporific plants like valerian, poppies, chamomile and lavender that would send one into the mythical arms of Morpheus, the god of dreams. The garden was rimmed with large…