Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
Though most of our harvests are past, we are still working the soil. It is now time to plant garlic. I enlist Juana and Olivia to help me today. It is a bright crisp day with only a few clouds painting the sky and a slight breeze rustling the trees. The trees are still holding […]
Juana and I take the opportunity to harvest saffron from the crocuses. It has been a miserable few days with rain and a chill keeping both of us close to the warm, yellow and red fire blazing in the stove. Still, we both are happy waking to clear skies this morning progressing to a sunny, […]
The morning air is crisp and the sun is rising just a bit later and a tad to the east each morning. The equinox is but a few days away signaling the coming of Fall and the shutting down of garden growth. Yet each day, I find new signs of life. The morning glories have […]
With Labor Day approaching, I am starting to feel a bit like the sentinel-like sunflowers in the front yard. A month ago they were tall and erect, holding their heads high, soaking in rays. Now, each weighed down with hundreds of seeds, they are bent over appearing to have a vegetative osteoporosis. Their petals are […]
The most common butterfly we have seen this year is the yellow swallowtail. Its distinctive yellow and black pattern is a constant in the garden flittering between the many flowers we have. But as the season wanes so will they. Now I see that a great many caterpillars have emerged, first on my celery plant […]
It is harvest time in the garden with vegetables, fruits and flowers ready to be picked. This is the Summer of tomatoes as 5 pounds of these fruits are ready for consumption each day. Beyond stuffing our faces with cherry tomatoes, the sauce tomatoes are bubbling on the stove and the large slicing tomatoes are […]
Last week our leafcutter bees arrived from @kindbeefarms. Like any expectant parent, we opened the box with anticipation and excitement. We have lots of bees (and wasps and Yellowjackets) buzzing around our gardens and hope that these new arrivals will get along with all of our other pollinators. Their new home, which is well built […]
Juana is holding up just a day’s harvest of tomatoes. Perhaps I shouldn’t have planted 18 seedlings, but you never know how good or bad the harvest will be. We are in the middle of good eating in the vegetable garden with peas, beans, peppers, greens, radishes, scallions, celery, carrots and tons of herbs ready […]
Wicked Plants by Amy Stewart is a real eye opener as prior to reading it I never realized how dangerous and deadly are many of the plants that reside in our garden. I knew about the obvious ones like foxglove and daffodils, but had no idea that the vast majority of things that are planted […]
It’s midsummer and the virtual tummies of my carnivorous plants are sated with the insects of the day. Right now I have three different types of carnivorous plants: Pitcher plants (Sarracenia), Cape sundews (Drosera capensis), and Venus fly traps (Dionea muscipula). The pitcher plants sit in a bog that I build over a decade ago. […]