July. The exuberance of spring is over, and gardeners are looking at the remains of a pretty good party. But whether your garden looks hungover or not depends on the planting you did in the spring. Let's hope it included some flowering heat survivors such as echinacea, black-eyed susan, liatris, pelargonium, goldenrod, verbascum, daylily, [...]
The winters are tough out here. I know that I write from the muddied perspective of an ex-Californian (becoming more ex by the minute), but damn. I’m also aware, as the mother of a child now in North Dakota, daughter of a man who farmed cattle in Alberta, and correspondent of numerous friends and colleagues [...]
If you look carefully, there are very few places teeming with more stories than an airport terminal. In more innocent days when such things were still allowed, I’d hang out occasionally at the international arrivals gate watching people reconnect after time apart. The idea that I should have so much free time on my hands [...]
This week I have been clearing a couple of my raised vegetable beds of cabbage, garlic, shallots and ancient pea vines to make room for a few last chance direct sowings of carrots, turnips, chard, beets, beans and squash. Some might term this a fall sowing, but mentally I’m not quite there yet, preferring instead [...]
I can’t remember which of the many gardening books I was reading the day I jubilantly came across the statement, “If you can garden in the Mid-Atlantic you can garden anywhere.” My self-satisfied smirk widened further when I realized that the author wasn’t even a Mid-Atlantic gardener himself. This gave his words great gobs of [...]
