Winter Fear Porn Brings Out The Rant in Me
There is nothing quite so tender as the sight of a grey, ice-locked landscape melting into warm browns during a winter respite. I am struck by the beauty of it [...]
Marianne Willburn
A Garden Tragedy in One Act
Anger. Heartbreak. Homicidal thoughts. All stemming from the collision between people who don’t garden, and the garden of someone who does. Thought I’d tell the tale as the classic tragedy [...]
Fake Plants Saved My Tablescape, and My Bathroom
Fake plants have come a long way over the last few years. There’s a chance that these words issue from the disturbingly hazy standards of my middle age; but though [...]
Hackneyed Metasequoia and Other Confessions: A Letter To The Midwest
6 January 2022 Lovettsville, VA Dear Scott, I thought I’d confuse you by preempting your letter with one of my own. No, you are not behind, I am simply ahead. [...]
Hardened Plant Nerd Seeks Horticultural Innocence: A Letter to The Midwest
December 9, 2021 Lovettsville, VA Dear Scott, My apologies for allowing your letter to float gently down through the inbox until it lodged somewhere between a reminder to pay my [...]
Welcome to The Suburban Outback
It’s happened again. The quizzical stare – the wide smile – the head cocked to one side, all ending with the tentative, half-apologetic question. And even though the asking of [...]
Houseplant (and Magazine) Madness
I am that friend/relation/rando who, fascinated by the snapshot of prevailing culture that characterizes a periodical, will happily accept your grandmother’s stack of fifty-year old magazines she couldn’t bear to [...]
“Do You Like Fall?”
My physical therapist recently asked the question as she was prodding and poking me this week, and it elicited an immediate positive reaction from the part of me that still [...]
The Brisk Chill of Autumn Has Arrived. Time for….Crotons?!?
I’m not opposed to a great Summer Romance. Temperate gardeners who have acted upon one of the many blatant hints I have dropped this season and picked up a copy [...]
Austen, Fiona, and The Power of Greening Urban America: A Letter To The Midwest
September 4, 2021 Lovettsville, VA Dear Scott, It is as if Virginia Woolf & Jane Austen came together over a few drinks and birthed your last letter. What a read. [...]
The greenhouse is up! End of journey, or beginning?
“You mean you grow all these plants without a greenhouse?!?” came the shocked question during a tour of my garden last weekend. “Yes,” was the answer. A resounding yes. [...]
Plant & Prejudice: A Gardener’s Journey
Sparked by Elizabeth’s zinnia post this week on the merits of plants she once considered to be the “low rent versions of dahlia,” I spent some time this morning considering [...]