Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
A week ago the last of the strawberries were harvested. The pickings were slim and even the chipmunks abandoned the vegetable garden looking for food. As I scoured the patch for the last time, removing the bird netting, I found a few perfect fruits reminding me how fortunate we have been this season with bountiful […]
When I lived on Long Island, strawberry season was always between Memorial Day and Father’s Day. In that short stretch, when we lived on Long Island, Juana would get me out to the Eastern End farms to pick strawberries for eating and jelly. It was one of her favorite activities now reminding her how she, […]
May is the first month when the garden begins to become more reliable for food. There have been years where the cold frame has provided early March greens, and sometimes dormant carrots and leeks that have been left in the soil after last Fall’s harvest can be pulled as a unfrozen treat. But newly grown […]
When I first start planting vegetables, it is in the comfort and warmth of my kitchen as early March is too cold to start seedlings outside. I retrieve dusty plastic trays from my greenhouse and wash them, mindful of any pathogens that could be remaining from the prior year. Sometimes Charlotte helps me start the […]
This weekend we are in Antigua, Guatemala, for a family wedding. They say that Guatemala is the land of eternal Spring and I can’t disagree. When we got off the plane, a waft of warm fragrant air and the sound of marimbas told us we were no longer in frosty Connecticut. The drive to Antigua […]
Often the effects of nature arrive in lumps or large batches. This was more than the case this week with my beds of seedlings and the foot plus of snow sprouting up and falling down, respectively. I planted three trays last week thinking that perhaps I was a bit late. But upon checking my past […]
Getting back from the Florida Keys was a big shock on the first day with a temperature drop of 80 degrees (more on the travel up later) but within a few days we felt like we were in a Northern Florida zip code as it was sunny and pushing 60 degrees. Unlike prior years, the […]
In December, most of the vegetable beds are empty. The beds of strawberries and garlic have a few spots of green emerging from their strawed blanket. The asparagus and rhubarb have been cut to the ground and manured for next Spring. The early snow is stubborn stunting any harvest attempt. At that time of year […]
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 […]
Though a heat wave is abating, the early signs of fall are in the air. A few leaves are beginning to turn and the sun has started to set over the hill much earlier than has been typical for the past few months. In another few weeks, the back yard will be in the shade […]