There are just a few days of August left, and though it almost seems futile to discuss the month in terms of its garden life, I find myself finally with an hour or two to do just that. And, as Christopher Lloyd once said, the time to do a thing is when you have time [...]
Printed directions and warnings for products that require only a modicum of common sense exhaust me. Yesterday I purchased a vanity mirror with accompanying booklet in four languages on how to a) plug it in and b) turn it on. On page four were various line drawings in red and black depicting line people being [...]
Sometimes we need an easy win. We need a riot of color that looks like we planned it, even if we didn’t. We need ‘low maintenance’ and ‘average soils.’ We need something along the lines of ‘direct sow’ and ‘blooms from summer ‘till frost.’ And while we’re at it, we’ll take ‘deer resistant,’ ‘drought-resistant’ and [...]
Thankful as most of us are for the drenching rain this weekend and thunderstorms this week, it remains a hot summer with wasps and Johnson grass around every corner. Spring gardeners are leaving their hard-core cousins outdoors as they beat a hasty retreat to air conditioned sunrooms, prosecco glasses in hand. Any further gardening will [...]
One of the most popular talks I've been giving lately deals with maintenance and balancing one’s life with one’s garden – more specifically, not taking on a project that creates six new maintenance projects in the foreseeable hereafter when the lifeboat is already taking on water. And to those watching me bounce around the podium, [...]
Temperatures are rising, and motivation to cultivate the garden around us is dropping – even if such cultivation is as simple as waving a hose over a tasteful assortment of patio pots. Verbascum thapsus colonizing the site of a crumbled bank barn. You are no doubt seeing the beginnings of stress [...]
In August, the gardener can be forgiven for wanting some time off. Forgiven that is, by other gardeners – the garden itself does not forgive and does not arrest the march of progress just because you’re tired of picking beans in 70% humidity. I am not for a minute implying that you go on vacation. [...]
Humidity. It’s separating the men from the boys right now. Only last weekend I was forced to deride guests for scuttling back inside during a deck party. The key word I was trying to impress upon them was of course ‘deck’ – but this did nothing to shame them into compliance. For that matter, [...]
Given sufficient provenance, the memory of a plant can hold a place in our affections just as the memory of an old love affair. In fact, such floral memories are perhaps sweeter, for they do not carry the attached nonsense of end-of-the-line supernovas or unresolved conversations – the bitter that always taints the sweet. They [...]
