Merry Everything, and Happy Always

We harvested the Brussels sprouts just in time – before the big snowstorm came.


And now the garden is blanketed beautifully with the promise of a white Christmas.


As long as I can look at it from beside the fireplace, I can catch the correct spirit. Poor Dave passes it (on the outside) while he muscles the firewood, brings up the boxes of decorations, and carries the ashes down to the compost heap. I like my observation point better!

My Christmas card addressing time felt so, so rich … all those friends! I love counting my blessings, don’t you?

And inside? The burgeoning paperwhites fill the house with joy and promise.


Everything that is sweet about our lives stands out clearly in the snowy time.

Merry Everything ... and Happy Always!

Good Bye, Autumn

The Autumn has gone by in a flash. First, the spiders were telling the garden to “wrap it up” ...


... then the glory of the leaves decorated the neighborhood ...


... and then came the drop ... both in temperature and in foliage. I have trees on property that drop leaves ... only to reveal a whole new “suit” of stuff beneath ... the redbud with its pods, and the crabapple with its crabs (or apples). Interesting.



The holly has more berries than it has had before ... wonder why.


And now the holidays are upon us. Much in the garden has not yet been cut down. The Brussels Sprouts await a big frost ... as do the callicarpa berries. And the bulbs in their bags call out, “Plant me! Plant me!” ... sigh.

I’ve a whole new box started for the new seed catalogues, and I look forward to introducing three new things to the garden in the spring: Asclepias physocarpa, Centaurea macrocephala, and Leonotis leonurus.

This doesn’t really reflect my thinking, but it’s apt, just the same:

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,

No comfortable feel in any member -

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -

November!"
- Thomas Hood, No!

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Gardener's Thanksgiving
Reverend Max Coots
1928-2009

Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:

For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are;

For generous friends with hearts and smiles as bright as their blossoms;

For feisty friends as tart as apples;

For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;

For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;

For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the other, plain as potatoes and as good for you;

For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels Sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem Artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as cauliflowers and as intricate as onions;

For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;

For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;

For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;

And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter;

For all these we give thanks.

August Aubade

The Pleides have run through the night skies.
The hawk cries as he criss-crosses the morning sky.
Cicadas open for business with choral practice
for telling temperatures.
August Aubade.

The garden is winding down in many tell-tale ways.
Chinese lanterns give the weeds an orange-y glow.
Annabelles turn green for picking and drying.
Daylily scapes dry hollow.
Reblooming iris join milkweed in setting bud.

The garden has a different feel and sound.
I like it.

To The Garden

Dave and I went yesterday to visit a friend’s garden. June tends it herself, and it is magnificent to see. She lives outside all growing season – watering, feeding, and just loving her surroundings, and it shows! Words aren’t really necessary: the photos say it all. Enjoy.

Here's To Naked Ladies!

Basket Flowers

Don’t you love it when you learn about a new flower? I just add to my knowledge one-flower-at-a-time, but that makes me happy.

In working with a flower farmer outside of Gettysburg in preparation for our Arrangers class this past Monday, I saw some flowers that had “gone by” but were drying in the field. She said they were Basket Flowers. So that’ll be my new addition to the garden this fall.

Centaurea macrocephala. They’re slightly funky … with a yellow head that looks like a safflower head, and the receptacle develops into a basket–like form that is great in dried arrangements. I’ll see if I can “lift” a photo from the internet to show you.

Meanwhile, aren’t the gardens beautiful with all their bounty?! The lilies are towering this year, and the annuals are finally reflecting their delight in all the earlier rain. Our class was lots of fun, and we were up to our elbows in blooms.


We learned in class that even one bloom can lift our spirits … we don’t always NEED many!

So, today my basket flower just exists in my memory, but next year……