July 24th, 2023 | Gardens and Gardening, General
It seemed like a good idea, some fifteen years ago or so. Plant a couple of persimmon trees, be patient, harvest the fruit. So I waited–patiently–long long past the five-year mark by which time I should have been seeing flowers. Nothing. Not a blossom, not...
October 5th, 2022 | Gardens and Gardening, General
The tree guys—Clayton’s Tree Service–came by as scheduled. One dead green ash, one dying green ash, two non-fruiting persimmons and a cedar needed removal; the Japanese maple in the upper terrace garden needed a prune, pending my decision about eliminating it....
July 5th, 2021 | Gardens and Gardening, General
Some summers back I bought a couple of bedraggled hemerocallis from Home Depot, hoping they might fill a couple of awkward spaces in my garden. A deep discount added motivation. They were quite a lovely color, too, shades of purple and yellow. I seem to have lost the...
June 16th, 2021 | Gardens and Gardening, General
Sixty-four degrees under light rain after too little precipitation and days in the nineties? That’s a gardening day. I pull weeds from the forgiving mud, deadhead the foxglove, penstemon, columbine and roses, and contemplate the possibility of adding a few plants...
December 4th, 2020 | Family, Gardens and Gardening, General, Holidays, Home Improvements, Society at Large, the world and Mother Nature, Time Passes
Is everyone still there? How to recount the year’s doings when we have done largely nothing? My favorite word–one of the three Oxford Languages chose for Word Of The Year–is “Blursday.” It perfectly describes the mush that time has become. Last year and...
May 22nd, 2020 | Gardens and Gardening, General, Health, Politics, the world and Mother Nature
This morning, I found an ear of deer corn dug into one of the pots of newly planted begonias. We are assuming the culprit is Elvirus, but it could have been a squirrel. We have a lot of squirrels and they plant acorns all over the place and make a mess of containers...