Marjorie is the winner of Terrariums: Gardens Under Glass by Maria Colletti AND The Roses at the End of the Road by yours truly. The books will be in the mail as soon as I have your address. Congratulations, Marjorie! I know you will enjoy the books.
Fall is a season of thanksgiving. One of the blessings of the season is a good harvest and this year there has been a spectacular apple harvest – indeed a spectacular fruit harvest of almost every kind. I gave thanks and celebrated with Amy Traverso, author of the The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, during the Cider Days apple tasting at Clarkdale Fruit Farm. I joined the crowd at Traverso’s table tasting her pretty Quick Bread and Butter Apple Pickles…
The time has come to say farewell to the End of the Road. You will notice I am not saying farewell to Heath, because our presence in Heath will not end. When it was clear that it was time to make a move and be closer to our children we realized we did not want to move away from old friends. We expect to make new friends in Greenfield, but we will keep our old friends in…
In my youth I thought Chinese and Japanese gardens were very similar. Over the years I have learned how wrong I was. Both concentrate on bringing the gardener – and visitors – into nature. With the Chinese it is a wilder nature, intended for strolling, visiting and sharing with friends. For the Japanese the garden is more stylized with carefully pruned trees and shrubs that can be admired from inside a sheltered spot. There are many ways…
Fallscaping is a way of thinking about our autumnal landscape. After the heat and riotous color of the summer garden, things can start to look a little tired, but we can include plantings that will bring fresh color and life to our landscape even as the days grow shorter. As we enter the autumnal season we can take advantage of the color changes among the plants we already have. Do we have trees like kousa dogwoods whose foliage…
On September 27, 2015 there was a rare eclipse of the super 'blood moon'. On that night the moon was at its perigee, the closest it gets to the earth which makes it look larger when it rises. Fortunately the blood moon eclipse took place before my bedtime. This was taken at about 10 pm EST. As the eclipse drew near to totality, the 'blood' became apparent. This was nearly 10:30 pm EST. It has been quite a…
Most of us know that pollinators are important. Without pollinators many of the ordinary foods we eat would not be available. We hear about Colony Collapse Disorder which affects honey bees, but there are thousands of other types of bee and many other insect and animal pollinators including bats. These pollinators are also dying. What to do? This past June the National Pollinator Garden Network (NPGN), an amazing collaboration of gardening and conservation organizations, launched the Million…
Gardens are not made by sitting in the shade” Kipling said, and I must add that they are not made by looking at a plan, even one as beautiful as the custom design I am holding created by Home Outside. Gardens are made by thinking and digging, moving compost, planting and getting very dirty. Lots of skull work, and lots of muscle work. Let me recap our adventures of planting a whole new garden in Greenfield. We took…
I’ve learned a lot about weeds over the decades, but I was never given the ominous warning “one year of seed, seven years of weed” until last year. I think every novice gardener should be given a t-shirt with this bit of wisdom. On the other hand that bit of wisdom might be too discouraging for a beginner. The truth is that if you are a gardener, you will have weeds. All kinds of weeds, and all are…
Carload of plants including divisions from Heath Garden to Greenfield Now that I have planted Greenfield hellstrip I can make the official announcement: we are the proud owners of a small house with a small yard in Greenfield. The house has garden space on the south side and a rectangular back yard, but there is only a small front yard plus a hellstrip, which a polite person might call a curbside garden. Once it is planted. The house…