I did not notice these wonders at Mass MoCA until about the fourth time through All Utopia's Fell by Michael Oatman. This exhibit is an Airstream trailer rigged up like a space capsule that has crashlanded and is hung up in the air on an old factory building, crammed with all the equipment for necessary for spacemen to live and work. Finally I noticed that this craft has God's eyes everywhere. Was Michael Oatman suggesting that God's eyes…
How long does it take for a vision to become flesh? Or in this case patios, stone walls, cool shady flower beds and a koi filled pond? For Bruce Cannon who found and bought a hilly wooded site on South Mountain in Northfield fifteen years ago, the vision was complete in only three or four years, but the building took a little longer. The house came first, set on the only bit of flat land on this steep…
We’ve all faced the spring task of combing through the seed catalogs trying to decide which squash, or tomato or whatever variety to buy. Will it be dark green Raven zucchini, the light green Magda or the striped Safari? We might be considering days to maturity, disease resistance and spininess of the plant. If we agonize over our few choices, can you imagine what a seed company has to take into consideration? Recently I spoke with CR Lawn,…
“O beautiful, for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain . . .” These words, written by Katherine Lee Bates in 1895 capture an image of our country that we still treasure today. However, there are differences between 1895 and 2012. The tall waving wheats that gilded our midwest in 1895 are now only a foot tall, barely shuddering in the breeze.. The early 1940s saw the beginning of the Green Revolution, an agricultural shift that used technological…
Rol's vegetable garden is one of the wonders of Heath. His is one of two very different gardens that I visited last week. My neighbor Rol is the garlic and onion king. This spring he coordinated a group order of onions from Dixondale Farm. I bought 60, and though we planted at the same time I can tell you that my onions look nothing like his. Weeding and watering seem to be key elements to success. Many of…
One of the benefits of the summer garden tour and event season is the chance to meet new people with unique passions and knowledge. When I attended the Western New England Japanese Iris Show in Shelburne Falls at the end of June. I saw exhibition blossoms of beautiful Japanese irises grown by local gardeners, stunning arrangements, and was inspired. Japanese iris bloom from mid-June into July, coming into flower when the Siberian and then the bearded iris seasons…
Carl Linnaeus, botantist and father of modern plant taxonomy scandalized his world with his talk about a plant's sexual parts, but his taxonomic system finally won out over others in use at the time. In her book, The Brother Gardeners, Andrea Wulf lays out the difficulties botanists had with identifying and naming plants that would be useful to scientists around the world. "priests bollocks" and "mare's fart" did not work everywhere. The important Miller'sGardener's Dictionary listed ALL the names various given…
The trouble with the Handmade Garden Projects book by Lorene Edwards Forkner is difficulty in choosing where to begin. Steel trellises or other things made with metal scraps? Clever hose guides? Or creative containers? Then the Bridge of Flowers committee thought it might be a good idea to make hypertufa containers to plant and sell at our Annual Plant Sale on May 19. The decision was made. If you decide you want to have your own copy of…
Water is everywhere around us. In streams, rivers and the oceans. We need water for everything, drinking, cleaning, agriculture, powering turbines. We cannot exist without water. In fact, we are water – about 60 percent water. Because it is so easy to turn on our taps and get all the clean, sweet water we need, we rarely think about water, how much we use, how we use it, what other people use it for, who doesn’t have safe…
Gail Callahan, quilter, weaver, and dyer, said she never 'got' the color wheel with its confusing array of colors. After working with textiles and fiber for years she eventually found a way to make color theory less confusing; she turned the color wheel into a grid. My photos don't do this interesting tool very clear, but Gail wanted to find a way to eliminate some of the confusion she and others feel. The black template blocks out many…