This Columbus Day weekend the dawns were beautiful, if only briefly, but it was a nice change after a cold, dreary, damp week. This is the view from our bedroom window. The long weekend means a short but intense Bake Sale Season. There were bake sales everywhere. Henry took my apple pie down to the Shelburne Falls Area Women's Club Pie Sale, and dodged 6th graders in the parking lot at Avery's. They weren't quite ready to sell, but…
Regular visitors at May Dreams Gardens know that Carol is an afcianodo of hoes. Her October 7 post was her final Hoe-tober Fest for the year and she asked about the hoes other bloggers use. I have two hoes that I use, very occasionally, and when I dug them out for this shameful photo it was clear that a trip to OESCO in Conway is in order. I need a sharpener. I can arrange a cleaning and oiling cloth right here…
When I visited Marie Stella at her house, Beaver Lodge, she took me out onto the deck overlooking the woods and beaver pond. She said The Birch Woman was a sculpture done by Sally Fine. I looked, but did not see. Although the birches were beginning to lose their leaves, my eyes had to adjust to the shifting light and shadows as the leaves danced in the autumn breeze, until suddenly the Birch Woman materialized. The Birch Woman…
“We live where there is so much possibility in the landscape,” Marie Stella said to me as we stood on the deck of Beaver Lodge, her house in Ashfield, looking through the woods down to the beaver pond. Stella has entered into most of those possibilities, using native plants, planting vegetables and fruits where a lawn might be expected, harvesting rainwater, using stone from the house site to…
These apples may not be the most beautiful, but they are pretty sound inside which means I spent the afternoon peeling, chopping and boiling them down to make 5 quarts of apple butter, a delicacy I only discovered last year. Two quarts have already been passed along to my oldest daughter and her family. They like apple butter on black pumpernickel bread, we like it on French toast. There is hardly any way to use apples that is…
The North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival in Orange, MA, has to be one of the best organized, most fun, most educational, most artistic, most inspiring festivals I have ever attended. It all began with a conversation under a tree, and now, 11 years later 12,000 people find their way to this small town to enjoy a fabulous day in the autumn sun. Or autumn showers as the case may be. The solar powered main stage provides music…
Yesterday I put up a new Blog Page, a Brief Tour of Heath, which will give more distant friends and readers a better sense of the Hilltowns in western Massachusetts. Sawyer Hall is a center of town life containing as it does the Post Office, where you can also buy the annual dump (Transfer Station) sticker, all the town offices, the Police office, and the Heath Free Public Library which I visit at least once a week. Last summer…
The wind and the rain have knocked the dahlias down, but the colds, night time temps in the 40s, don't seem to bother them at all. The cosmos are bowed down as well, but just as beautiful and healthy. We are at the beginning of the bloom season for Boltonia. The plants have very sturdy stems, about 4 feet tall, and the flowers are small and fringey. Great for autumn bouquets. This rose is also standing tall and…
Foliage-viewing – Annual failure to slake Winter’s color thirst. In her haiku Carol Purington captures a season and the necessity of trying to prepare for the monochromatic winter landscape. She captures the colors, creatures and songs of every season at Woodslawn Farm here in western Massachusetts. This haiku is from her book Woodslawn Farm. To see what other muses are abroad and inspiring us, visit Carolyn gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago, the host of…
The pace is slightly more relaxed, but the fall season can be just as busy for gardeners as the spring season. Many of the same tasks are required, clean up, soil building, compost building, and planting. In the autumn, all gardeners, both novice and experienced, have another chance to launch the next attempt to improve their gardens. For flower gardeners this means a comprehensive new guide to perennial care might be in order. With The Perennial…