Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
The native fringetree sitting in my back yard is one of my favorites. Between its lacy, ephemeral flowers and the intoxicating lilac/honeysuckle-like fragrances, it is hard to beat as a showcase specimen tree. It is finally coming into its own in size as I planted it over a dozen years ago as a thin, delicate […]
Christmas in May! Or that’s what you can think with amaryllis bulbs blooming in our yard. Every Christmas we buy a few to help decorate. But many folks don’t realize that this tropical bulb can bloom whenever you want (provided you take the right measures for rest periods). So we usually have a dozen or […]
Everything is flowering in Sunken Forest. This microclimate hosts many native trees and shrubs that the wind keeps attenuated and gnarled in form. Beach plums, blueberries, raspberries, and chokeberries sport tiny blossoms. Clumps of beach heath with their distinctive yellow flowers are thick between patches of beach grass and Virginia creeper. Many vines of poison […]
This appears to be the year of the rhododendron as all of ours are spectacularly full of flowers. This one, adjacent to the driveway, has hundreds of blossoms hosting a similar number of pollinators that leap from flower to flower.
Black bear buffet! Well that is what my compost heap became last night as one was spotted in the neighborhood, an increasingly common event. The prospect of egg shells, melon rinds, banana peels and a few rotting vegetables screams Chez Midnight Snack to these meandering omnivores. Every trace of fresh vegetable was gone leaving only […]
This pocket guide of “common” Connecticut wildflowers published over 55 years ago is a good indication of how “uncommon” many plants have become. In skimming through its pages, over half of its entries I have never seen. Some like coltsfoot, fleabane, daisies, mullein, pokeweed, skunk cabbage and wild strawberries are plentiful and in plain sight. […]
Taking a short bike ride along the East Branch Reservoir in Brewster, NY, Juana and I hit the jackpot of wildflowers over a short 3.5 mile stretch of bike path. They are lovely but many, unfortunately, quite invasive. I also needed to reach well into my reference material as nearly half were unknown to me […]
Between the outdoor dry sink and a window box hundreds of tiny spiders scurry around between the two. Their appearance reminds me of the final pages of Charlotte’s Web, the wonderful children’s book by E.B. White. In it, Wilber the pig is still sad over the death of his spider friend, Charlotte. But all of […]
Olivia has learned the fine art of dandelion propagation ensuring that there will be flowers for muffins in the year to come.
When we bought our house over 30 years ago, there was a scraggly rose bush on the corner of the property that the deer never bothered. And magically it always explodes with lovely flowers right around my daughter Sarah’s birthday in mid-May. This heirloom bush with its sweetly fragrant blooms, has apparently always been part […]