Getting off the plane from Phoenix on Friday morning it seemed as if we entered a different world. The morning was cool and wet rather than the hot and dry weather we had become used to over the prior week. But the most remarkable thing about our return was the transformation of the landscape. Prior […]
Prickly flowers
New England has a profusion of flowers that start to emerge in the Spring. In the Southwest, the number of flowering plants is no different though the form is. When we think of difficult or thorny flowers in the North, roses come to mind. Their beauty is counterbalanced by the care with which they must […]
Starting seedlings
April is the month when you are unsure about how and when you will start your seedlings. The desire to get an early jump on the year is governed by the weather and the temperature of the soil. Often I start a few flats of greens in March with the hope of transplanting them into […]
Hard Frost
All frosts are not created equal. The first often arrives in October as a sprinkling of powered sugar on the roof of my house and pickup truck. Unlike that sweet confection, it disappears with first light and is easy to miss if one is late to wake or not attentive. There are a few other […]
And now back to your irregularly scheduled programming. . .
As we wound up Erik and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, on the way back from Washington D.C. I persuaded Ted to take a slight detour (ok it was more than slight) to a carnivorous plant nursery in Smithsburg, MD, called coincidentally Carnivorous Plant Nursery where we met Michael Szesze, the owner and propagator. We went there […]
Red, white and green
Different seasons stimulate different senses. The Spring shocks the sight into recognizing colors that could only be imaged a few months prior. Early May is the apex of that stimulation with the simultaneous flowering of trees, shrubs and bushes. We get some teasers of color in early Spring with different colored crocuses or the blue […]
Summer’s Fall
As Labor Day fades along with the crowds at the beach, the signs of Fall accelerate. The first hint of change ironically is not spawned by nature but man in the mid-August appearance of Halloween candy in grocery and drug stores and mums and asters in garden centers. The heat of the season tests us […]
Spectacular Summer
As bleak as the winter and spring have been in the garden, the summer appears to be making up for it. We have long since cut down and dug up all the dead plants, the roses and butterfly bushes, letting the existing perennials and opportunistic annuals take their place. A few, like the fig tree […]
Breaking Buds
There are a few signs that Spring has arrived in my yard rather than merely the calendar. We had our first BBQ yesterday dragging the grill through the snow. Two-thirds of the back patio has been cleared off though a persistent layer of ice that is shaded by a short wall of stone is hanging […]
A bed never felt so good. . .but the cars
You rarely appreciate how good you have it until your creature comforts disappear. To a degree, that’s how I now feel as I have returned from a 9-day kayak trip to the Everglades in Florida where I paddled from Flamingo to Everglades City. This is one of those “bucket list” kind of things that people […]