Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
One of the battles that gardeners have with wildlife is over compost. We see our piles as a way to transform plant waste into nutritious compost that will help the next generation of plants grow and be healthy. Wildlife often sees compost piles as a 24/7 diner where they can sample the latest seasonal fare. […]
As most aspects of the garden wind down, cleaning old beds and pulling dead or soon to die plants takes priority this time of year. It has always seemed bittersweet to liberate plants from the soil right after or even during their peak. That was the case a little over a month ago at Green […]
I hadn’t raked leaves at my mother’s house for nearly 35 years. The yard service had done a final cut a few weeks back but since then it seemed as if all the neighboring trees had decided to give their leaves up to my mother’s lawn as a going away gift. Her trees—all oaks—have been […]
We have had the most spectacular autumn in memory. Even to a color-blind boy such as myself the shades of the season have been alarming in their density and variety. Perhaps one of the best things about moving to Connecticut from Long Island is the superior colors of autumn. Long Island has great farms, beaches […]
Though a frost has yet to coat my roof with a thin sheen of white, I know it is coming. Leaves fell in great bunches last week, the hostas have browned up and my lawn has put out that last spurt of growth requiring a final trim. I’ve been building an increasing amount of fires […]
The advent of autumn has always been bittersweet as the seasonal burst of a multifaceted patina of foliage is counterbalanced by the sad brown and gray death of its aftermath. I was in between these worlds this weekend as the first of a weekly raking regime started. I’ve always enjoyed raking as it is a […]
It was a dark and stormy night . . . Or at least it was incredibly windy as the porch light illuminated a rain of leaves being blown about like flat slices of snow during a blizzard. It seemed as if the peak of leaf season and their escape from perches high on maples, birches, […]
For a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to spend that much time this summer at Green Chimneys so it’s been good to return on a regular basis and work with a new crop of children. Of my old charges, only one is a repeat, which is bittersweet as I miss my former students while […]
I was not a good blogger in August opting to rest and harvest my labors rather than write about them. For every post I did not write, I harvested a huge crop of something. First it was zucchinis, which grow in quick succession. My wife hated them as I pulled at least two a day […]
It has been a toasty and dry summer on the East Coast, with nary a drop of rain from the sky to my yard in weeks. Thunderstorms roll through on a regular basis but it seems as if an invisible umbrella extends over my property as they hint of but never deliver water. Unlike last […]