Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
As Christmas approaches so does the colder weather that heralds the arrival of the winter solstice. While the light from the sun is at its nadir for the year, it is only beginning to become cold. Moving forward the temperatures continue to retreat to the teens and even lower. It is the beginning of the […]
By early December all the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves. The surrounding lawns have been blown clear of detritus and the only sign of the former foliage is in the woods. The leaves have long since lost their color and are an uneven gray separated by small mounds of green moss that cling to […]
Flowers that emerge from the snow usually arrive in the Spring. The aptly named snowdrop is often the first followed by crocuses. The Fall is different as this rarely happens. Fall crocuses, such as saffron, have come and gone by the time the first snow has arrived. So too have the flowers of late blooming […]
One of the tasks of Fall is to collect and ready the wood pile. This pile is a combination of wood from trees that have been fallen and split on my property and those from other places. In recent years there have been more foreign than local wood. The pile needs to be close to […]
November is often when the first snow of the season falls. If we are lucky, all the leaves have fallen from the trees leaving a barren landscape that is ready for a coating of white. Some years, it comes early covering leaves that still need gathering. Regardless, it is temporary as it often (though not […]
At this time of year there is a welcome contrast between my property and that of many of my neighbors who have lawn services. For them and the near constant arrival of professionals with large and noisy equipment, the goal is to erase any signs of untidiness in the form of decaying plants or random […]
The phrase “Indian Summer,” is often misused in late October or early November after an unseasonably warm day. To be accurate, an Indian Summer is when it becomes unseasonably warm AFTER very cold weather or a hard frost. The Old Farmers’ Almanac has even more stipulations but I think it goes a bit far. I […]
Sometime between the first frost and the release of the last leaf from a surrounding tree, the lawn needs a final cut. The month of October has offered a welcome respite from the regularity of mowing (particularly during a wet year) as the cool temperatures and lower exposure to sun has slowed the growing process. […]
The first frost of the season usually arrives in October though the year we arrived in Connecticut it came in late September; in some years it came as late as mid-November. October though is when the growth in the garden slows to a crawl as the leaves quicken to abandon their hosts. The tips of […]
As fall arrives, many of the garden plants are dying down and with that the insects that have been feeding on them. However, we have been fortunate (or cursed) that this fall we have had a ton of caterpillars feeding on the garden greens. The worst example of this has been in a small test […]