Onions and potatoes, tomatoes and basil, cucumbers and kale, snap beans and zucchini fill dinner plates and overflow salad plates as the growing season peaks.
Among the late summer bloomers in my landscape are a fragrant heirloom phlox, Japanese anemone, Oswego tea, Russian sage and New York ironweed, all perennials.
The rain, the sight of the Sun at the top of the sky, the quickened greening of the earth and the press of crops ready for harvest pull us into the rising tide of the growing season.
Touring the garden, perennial herbs and flowers, as well as fall-planted garlic that emerged from snowdrifts scarcely two weeks ago, have been growing quickly since the recent heat wave.
I find the garden’s vigor expressed in a diversity of late-season flowers and their pollinators, in underground root crops about ready to harvest, and in the earth itself.
Halfway between the summer solstice – the longest day of the year – and the autumnal equinox -- the time of equal day and night –this gardener is feeling swept up in the incoming high tide of growth, maturation and ripening.
The late-summer gardener’s day gets underway like a Jackson Pollack action painting. Is it possible to list the tasks in a straight line and follow the list?
Our experience of the landscape is a series of primal sensory contacts. While working around zucchini and yellow squash bushes as well as winter squashes and pumpkins, I am surprised by the fragrance surrounding their brilliant yellow trumpet flowers.
May 11 through 24, 2015
Mt. Washington -- With the sudden onset of unseasonably hot weather, the vegetable gardener is in a tailspin. We’ve gotten...
Our fascination with plants involves everything about them, including underground tubers, bulbs, and, by extension, the special charm of seed packets -- all of which hold the promise of new growth. Altogether, their appeal is so compelling that when choosing varieties and quantities for the new year’s garden great restraint is often required when purchasing.
