On April 16, 1989 my husband and I flew to Beijing where I had taken a job with a women's magazine. There I first learned of International Women's Day where it is a big event. And certainly I learned a lot about the life of Chinese women while working as a 'polisher' for Women of China English Monthly. I worked with translators (whose English was excellent) who translated articles about women in China's history, and the women who were taking…
Over the week the snow has been refreshed by snow showers. Drifts and plow banks by the roadsides remain deep and high. It still feels like deep winter. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
The best place to find fresh spring bloom is to look within the greenhouses at Mt. Holyoke and Smith Colleges. Both colleges are having their annual spring flower shows and giving us the strength to get through these last days of winter. This looks just the supermarket primrose that I planted years ago and that blooms every spring in the dappled shade in back of our house. Could it be that the goddess Flora has found her way to reign…
Where do the plants in our garden come from? How did plants get from the heights of the Himalayan mountains, or the Appalachian mountains, to our gardens? It would be hard to count the number of plants in our gardens that were first seen by the intrepid explorers of the last three centuries. John Bartram (1699-1777) of Philadelphia was possibly the first American botanist and plant hunter. Bartram was a farmer with little formal education, but he was…
Outside snow is blowing across my hill. Inside the greenhouses at Mt Holyoke and Smith College tulips are beginning to bloom. On March 2 the greenhouses welcome the public to the Annual Bulb Shows. For more Wordlessness this Wednesday morning click here.
Yesterday I drove into the valley to see tulips, and many other bulbs and flowers, blooming at the Mt. Holyoke College Talcott Greenhouse and the Smith College Lyman Plant House. Both institutions are preparing for their annual Spring Bulb shows which require attentive and scientific handling of the potted plants, cool and then slowly warming so that they are at the perfect moment for spring-hungry flower lovers to visit them when the shows open on Saturday, March 2. Both…
Almost March, but it still feels like deep winter. Everything is white and still. The Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls is icy. And closed. Salmon Falls and the Potholes are frozen. Winter has not lost its hold
Douglas Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in our Gardens, one of the best books ever written on how the food web works in our gardens, is coming to our part of the world. He will be the keynote speaker at the Annual Western Massachusetts Master Gardeners Association Spring Symposium scheduled for Saturday, March 16 at Frontier Regional High School in South Deerfield. In his book Tallamy powerfully and engagingly explains how important…
Winter is for time with 16 year old grandson Rory. And sledding. And bowling. And movies. And philosophical, economic and history conversations. Whew! For more (almost) Wordlessness this Wednesday click here.
I have never forced snowdrops before, so I decided to experiment. Early in November I got my late order of bulbs from Brent and Becky's Bulbs. Some of them went in the ground, but I potted up some tulips, my paper whites, and a few of the snowdrops. I left them all out in the unheated Great Room. All of the indoor…