I flock with my fellows, on November gusts we glide, guided by memories of last year’s feast— sweet, seeded, and plentiful. We descend together and sing our piercing songs to the bounty of rosehips red and bite-sized. My dusky tail feathers spreading squared and wide, colored stormy sky with yellow tip— … more
Every summer day they passed under vining tree arms, dappled shade overhead, crunch of gravel underfoot. The old couple- he on his way in, she on her way out- moved on a busy current, all summer long under the green they flowed, tanned arms shade-patterned by the many hands of palmate leaves. … more
“No bees!” is not a command Leela is willing to learn. “Sit, rollover, shake,” and “stay” she’s mastered, but something about the allure of bees flying at her nose height is as irresistible as a squirrel’s swishing tail. The potted calamint (Calamintha nepeta ‘Montrose White’) at my deck stair makes … more
1. I sing the Blues on the longest day, but I don’t weigh down, not with sadness, not for the rare rain, I do not bend, I bobble bluely, catching every breeze, setting tables for my friends, the small bees, the flower flies flower spiders, and beetles. My blue is the summer … more
The mood is gray-black lit by gold-yellow. The month is April. Daffodils reign. Under atmospheric river storms, sodden snow, and great big inhales of sunshine, we dig the ground and plant. Looking up from the squelch squerch beneath my boots, golden bright daffodils beam pure joy. Popping out in their hundreds … more
There’s only a few plants of which I’d say, “Everyone needs this!” In the interest of diversity, and to keep my work new and engaging for myself, as well as for my clients, I don’t repeat plant palettes. However, almost every garden has a dark pocket of dry ground, that tough … more
It was on one of those dim, fogged mornings when the remaining leaves on the trees appear to yearn for the ground, heavy like newly washed hair, limbs blurred with mist, the lines of them made more distant, remote, out-of-reach, and the grasses and tall perennials on the ground slump, arch, and … more
Overhead, a sheet of dim white, and ragged complexity of dark and light lace, moving, shifting with the wind. The clouds, a landscape mirrored in the small scene of remay-covered trays in my nursery, porous cloth peaked where plant tags stand and valleyed with collections of withered buddleia leaves and blown, black … more
wet spring followed by this, a parched, dry fall. crush of katsura leaves underfoot releasing toasted warmth, buttery, cozy, smell of fall. catch a whiff of gardenia-scented silverberry blossoms, of sweet perfumed eternal fragrance daphne, or salad freshness of sasanqua camellia, and rotting figs, fermenting apples, wildfire smoke on the wind. dry … more
“Recently, I spent a day at the cottage where I used to live, and noted with a pleased surprise – to be exact, it was a feeling of having done good unconsciously – the progress of the things I had planted nearly 10 years ago.” George Orwell Arms heaped with … more
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