A winter escape
Do you need a garden oasis about now? Someplace quiet and filled with plants happy to see you? You…
Preposterous
Gardening is always an act of faith and hope, but looking at both the thermometer and snow and ice, well, it seems preposterous that we will have the abundance of flowers, fruits and vegetables ever again. We will.
The Charlotte alchemist: An interview with Steve Wisbaum
“The medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy that focused on the attempt to change less valuable metals into gold, to find a universal cure for disease, and to discover a means of prolonging life indefinitely is called alchemy.
Your garden has a personality
When you first enter a garden, whether that of a friend or stranger, do you notice something straight off that tells you something about its creator? I do, and feel like I have learned quickly something about the gardener who lives here.
Treasure in plain sight
The University of Vermont Extension and its Master Gardener Program are Vermont treasures. As we look out at the…
Fortress Max
Throughout history humans have built forts or fortresses to protect themselves and their livestock from marauders, Neanderthals (our first cousin) and other animals. Some were quite elaborate with moats, turrets and drawbridges.
Readying for winter
The forecast mentions snow and I’m hoping I’ve done all the necessary tasks to relax and forget gardening for a few months. This is a good question: what is required to set the garden to bed for another season? This very day I placed the last of my spring bulbs in their snug homes for the winter. The last of the leaves have pretty much all come down. Fortunately, I have helpers to clear them up.
You said you wouldn’t, but you did
Maybe it’s the memory of last spring when the earth exploded with color or the prospect of five months with little or no outdoor gardening that renders us helpless in the face of buying bulbs. Whether from catalogues or the local nursery.
So let’s get to it!
Stick season – Turning sadness to hope
There’s a sadness in the air as “stick season” descends upon us. For those to whom this is a new phrase, it’s that time between glorious foliage colors and the sparkle of stars and ice crystals in the lengthening darkness. It might seem to fall on us suddenly, but truly it creeps in, allowing us time to prepare for our rejuvenation by the fire.
Never quite finished
Having just completed the efforts of preparing the garden for hundreds of visitors (that is not a typo; we, along with other local gardeners, hosted hundreds of visitors for the recent Flynn Garden Tour), I am painfully aware of all that can go wrong, even when we are responsible and diligent planners. Having a year’s notice helps, and one would think that gives one a wide window to prepare. Well, stuff happens.
In The Garden
In the past few columns, we’ve visited the finer and perhaps more colorful of the garden’s inhabitants. These are the icing on the cake, so to speak. But there needs to be structure and strength before you add icing. This is what gardeners refer to as the “bones” of the garden.
Whether you weather the weather
I am obsessed with the weather. It controls all that can or can’t happen on the farm and the margins are incredibly delicate. If the weather is cooperative and you time your actions just right, you can save yourself a ton of work. However, if you miss a detail in the forecast or the forecast is wrong or changes suddenly, bad things can happen. Such a fine line it is.
Thriller, spiller, thriller: the many joys of container gardening
Thriller! Spiller! Filler! Have you heard this phrase? Some have and it might be new to others. It’s the design idea behind container planting. Containers can be window boxes, clay pots, beautiful ceramics or a feeding trough. They’re valuable in our summer gardens for filling in spaces, adding a pop of color or replacing some of those ephemerals we spoke of in the last column.
Finding a connection to nature
My wife and I attended a film festival in Middlebury recently. It was the 10th Annual Fly Fishing Film Tour on Friday the 13th. For almost a decade now I have been attempting to educate the public—both the hunting/fishing sector and the non-hunting/fishing sector—about the healing qualities of participating in the outdoors.
First harbingers of a new growing season
Now you see them, now you don’t. I’m speaking of spring blooming ephemerals that will be showing along Vermont’s roadsides and, if we’re fortunate, in our own gardens very soon.
Digging out and digging in
Ah, springtime in Vermont! The grasp of winter ever so slowly relenting and allowing us to consider that perhaps soon we’ll be without snow banks, icy walkways and frosty windshields every morning and will instead be out strolling through the garden with bare feet.
Sacred Hunter: No loss is without gain
It’s the time of year that many of us examine our balance sheets and seeks to claim losses to…