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Category Archives: fall
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
A whole new world: Beyond the Thanksgiving myth
Before you sit down at the groaning board to tuck into that Thanksgiving feast, pause a moment.
If you’re going traditional, here’s what is probably on your table: Continue reading
Posted in animal life, fall, people, plants
Tagged Abenaki, achillea, amaranth, American persimmon, asclepias, avocado, beans, blueberry, cassava, chilis, coneflower, corn, cranberry, echinacea, elderberry, ethnobotany, fiddlehead, food groups, giant leopard plant, ground cherry, heritage seeds, holiday, Jerusalem artichoke, maize, Mashpee, milkweed, mole (the sauce), monarch butterfly, Native American, papaya, pawpaw, peanut, pineapple, pollinator garden, potato, pumpkin, quinoa, ramps, raspberry, salmonberry, Seeds of Renewal, smallpox, squash, sweet potato, teosinte, Thanksgiving, tomato, tractor plant, tribal agriculture, turkey, USDA Zone 10, USDA Zone 7, USDA Zone 8, Wampanoag, White Earth Lands, wild rice, wild turkey, yarrow
6 Comments
November miscellany
It was a grab-bag week, so this is a grab-bag post. Cold cold weather is rolling in and back, in and back, and I’ve been scrambling to get this ‘n’ that done as time and weather permitted. Now it’s urgent for me to figure out the priorities for any action that involves digging into the ground. I say priorities, because I’m afraid I’ve reached Triage Day. Today. Continue reading
Posted in fall, garden tasks, pests and problems, soil
Tagged bearded iris, cleanup, geranium, mice, mulch, peppermint oil, raised beds, Siberian iris, yard waste
6 Comments
Reconstruction, garden variety
Here it is November, edging into the middle of the month, and for a brief and lovely week, the march of the seasons hit pause-and-rewind.
The warm spell put me back on the hook, though: things I had thought were past praying for, all of a sudden weren’t. Things I thought would just have to wait till spring, now became not only possible but even, perhaps, mandatory. After all, there were (and still are) piles of mulch and topsoil in the driveway, waiting for me to do something with them. They must be dealt with, or horrors will happen…. Continue reading
Posted in animal life, fall, garden tasks, pests and problems, soil
Tagged cedar, chard, chicken wire, geranium, hardware cloth, herbs, mulch, raised beds, tarp, woodchuck
6 Comments