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Author Archives: Kateri
Spring Fevers
Does this ever happen to you during winter? You start out with all these ideas about how you’ll make the winter cozy and/or productive and/or b-e-a-r-a-b-l-e, and before you know it, none of that has happened and the seed catalogs have piled up and there has been no knitting, barely any pickles or chutneys made, and no chestnuts roasting by an open fire. Nor has the stack of must-read books receded by one millimeter. Continue reading
Posted in garden tasks, plants, seasons
Tagged bonsai, climate change, cold stratification, daffodils, early planting, grow lights, indoor planting, Joe Pye weed, last frost date, New England aster, planting calculator, raised beds, red columbine, seed starting, seeds, snow, spring, Ukraine relief, Wild Seed Project, winter
12 Comments
Eleventh Hour
‘Tis the season, at last, for dealing with the last dead or dying scraps before wrapping up the garden for the winter. (Don’t worry: the blog will continue. And I’ll have more time for it!) Continue reading
Posted in animal life, fall, garden tasks, plants, winter
Tagged allium, aronia, Berkshire Botanical Garden, black vulture, black-eyed Susans, Butterfly bush, carrots, chard, cilantro, coneflowers, COP26, Coreopsis, Cricket Hill Garden, Festiva Maxima, foxglove, frost, garden quilt, garlic, George Orwell, Greenpeace, kale, Kousa dogwood, lettuce, loquat, lychee, mango, mangosteen, medlar, Montauk daisy, parsley, pawpaw, peonies, Rebecca Solnit, reblooming iris, salt-marsh hay, shallots, United Nations, vultures
9 Comments
Falling Behind
Every year before this one, fall has come like a kind of reprieve. All those tasks still undone turn moot. Weeds keel over and expire of their own accord. Way too late to plant more veggies; sigh of relief there. The rodent marauders have done pretty much all the visible damage they can manage, and I happily leave the overweening hosta to them. But not this year. Continue reading
Posted in fall, garden tasks, plants
Tagged aronia, beans, climate change, elderberry, frost, garlic, hakonechloa, landscaping fabric, lemongrass, lettuce, Michelle Obama, mulch, pandemic, peas, sage, seed catalog, shallots, snow peas, weeds
6 Comments
The Department of You Think You’ve Got Problems
Every once in a while, I learn something that puts my problems into perspective. There are degrees of bad. There’s too much rain in one week, for example, and there’s the Greenland ice cap melting. There’s a very dry June, and there’s the Dixie wildfire and then the Caldor wildfire. But let me take you halfway round the globe and invoke the experience of my friend R. Continue reading
Posted in animal life, pests and problems, plants
Tagged arugula, Bali, basil, bush beans, cabbage moth, carrots, chard, downy mildew, Heliconia, houseplants, late planting, lettuce, Monstera, peas, pest prevention, rabbit, radishes, shiso, snakes, woodchuck
10 Comments
To Do Or Not To Do
In case you’re wondering why I call this blog “Inconstant Gardener,” let me give you an example. Continue reading
Posted in garden tasks, people, plants, summer
Tagged basil, beans, carrots, catmint, cayenne, chard, Charlie Nardozzi's Newsletter, cleanup, compost bin, coneflower, crop coops, cucumbers, dogwood, frost, garlic, geranium, hail, heuchera, kale, lettuce, mulch, onions, parsnips, planning, radishes, rain, raised beds, seeds, squash, to-do lists, vegetables, weeds, woodchuck
8 Comments
Home Sweet Home
I destroyed somebody’s home about a week back.
Actually, I probably do that a lot without even noticing it, and when I do realize that’s what I’m doing, I stop myself. Continue reading
Posted in animal life, people
Tagged Amazon rainforest, Asclepias tuberosa, bird's nest, birds, bluebirds, climate change, coneflower, deforestation, extinction, homelessness, invasive species, milkweed, robins, spiders
12 Comments
Exceeding Expectations
In a garden, as in life, we think we like predictability. But natural forces are not givens, and sometimes things happen that foil our efforts. And yet, the unexpected in the garden can bring zings of delight. I’ve been savoring many of those. Continue reading
Posted in animal life, garden tasks, plants, spring, summer
Tagged cornflower, crocus, daffodil, Eremurus bungei, foxtail lily, friends, garlic scapes, grape hyacinth, grasshopper, holiday, hummingbirds, mushrooms, penicillium mold, peony 'Charles Burgess', weeds
10 Comments
Spring, Sprang, Sprung
Whatever it is that spring does to the soul, it’s doing it bigtime this year. And even though I owe you a long overdue Post, full of facts and tips and musings (insight is accidental), all I feel capable of is an ode to joy. So here’s to spring! Continue reading
Posted in animal life, garden tasks, plants, spring
Tagged bees, cherry, crab apple, dandelion, forsythia, Johnny jump-up, plantain, rain, tulips, weeds
21 Comments
Getting seedy
You may recall that a couple or three posts back, I said it was way too soon to order seeds. I continued blissfully to think that. Somehow, I had myself convinced that April is when I need to think actively about gardening again.
I do consider gardening a kind of magic. But it has to start with something. Quite a few somethings, actually, but most of them were already outside under the February snow just waiting for the starting whistle. One crucial something, though, relies on me to act, and, I realized as February shazammed into March, act fast.
That something is seeds. Continue reading
Posted in garden tasks, plants, spring
Tagged Covid-19, foodscaping, grow lights, herbs, no-dig gardening, seed catalogs, seed starting, seeds, vegetables
6 Comments
For the birds
I was wondering whether there’s anything going on outside that you might want to hear about, and I thought: BIRDS! Who doesn’t love them and want more of them around?
So I looked into birds. That’s when it got interesting. Like a train wreck is interesting.
But hang on, because I also found some inspiration. Continue reading
Posted in animal life, pests and problems, plants
Tagged amaryllis, Audubon Society, bird baths, bird feeders, birds, black swallowtail, caterpillar, climate change, Douglas W. Tallamy, extinction, killdeer, milkweed, mockingbird, monarch butterfly, NABCI, narcissus, Native Plant Finder, native plants, North American Bird Conservation Initiative, parsley, peppermint oil, seed catalog, State of the Birds, strawberry, whooping crane
12 Comments