Apparently many gardeners are finding the need to leave their beautiful old gardens and move on to new gardens, and finding books to find a new way. I can speak to this urge myself, having left my gardens in Heath, to create a compact stroll garden filled with trees, shrubs, flowers and a place to sit in Greenfield. I also needed a garden that would not need so much work. Windcliff: A  story of people, plants and gardens…

The Feast of Saint Nicholas is the beginning of our Christmas. December 6, 2007 is also the beginning of my commonweeder blog which I celebrate with great pleasure. Every year on this date I have thought about the many  wonderful gardeners and others who have shared their skills and talents with me.  I have learned and laughed and given thanks for my good fortune. This year as I celebrate my 80th birthday all these happy days of the…

Photos of my garden from the view from my office window is one way I keep track of weather and changes in the garden over all the seasons. After the drought this summer I did not expect three days of rain, sometimes very hard raid. Our garden sits on clay and a high water table. There are many floods but to have such a drenching at this time of the year is very unusual.  You can see we…

In these pandemic days we can get  depressed, or lonely, but I found a website Unsplash to remind you, and cheer you that happy days will come again. Unsplash has thousands of beautiful photographs for us all to use in our work or to amuse ourselves. Unsplash is "the internet's source of freely-usable images. Powered by creators everywhere." Here is the mystery and beauty of the aurora borealis. I am reminded of the night in Heath when our…

A Pandemic Thanksgiving calls for all manner of celebratory tricks. Of course, I had spent all Wednesday afternoon, and Thanksgiving morning (beginning at 6 am) doing more cooking to prepare the feast scheduled  for 3 p.m. It seems it doesn't seem to matter if the holiday meal is for three people or  the more routine crowd of 25. There is a lot to do. Once we got the turkey in the oven Henry and I stopped for a…

Slowly, slowly, the leaves and fallen and now it is time to get serious about cleaning up the leaves.  We have two river birches and many large shrubs, but they are not the only ones responsible for all  the leaves in our garden. The garden to the south sends us many leaves from three large oaks. The house to the north has an enormous maple and we have not really begun to clean up these leaves. Now is…

The brilliant colors we have enjoyed this fall have been glorious, but with all the rain and wind, snow and frost, the landscape is quieter. Field Maloney was out in the orchard on October 30, picking the last of the apples for West County Cider.  Maloney is of the school that requires cider be made from fully ripe apples. Field Maloney is the son of Terry and Judith Maloney who arrived in Franklin County from California back in…

The autumn colors of the yellow twig dogwood are very different from summer colors. Now the foliage is golden yellow, brilliant when the sun is shining on it. Though it is named "yellow TWIG" I have  always found the yellow twigs to me are more chartreuse or lime when the winter sun is shining on it, but now the autumn colors of the foliage are definitely yellow and gold. We love this shrub because the shrub loves water…

If you have trees you will have leaves in the fall. When you start raking it can look like an endless job, with very little payback.  Not  true. The truth is that if you have a garden and trees you can have soil enriching compost. I harvest lots of leaves every fall. We have lovely neighbors  on both sides of our garden and  they both have trees. Our Northern neighbor has a beautiful giant maple right next to…