Yellow ranks of milkweed, their pods bursting with seeds, line the edges of our fading wildflower field where they stood sentry all summer. I spent years encouraging them to naturalize and, now, along with the lupines, echinacea, and blue lobelia, they routinely come back and spread a little farther every spring. At full height, they’re ungainly plants, to be honest. Pods, leaves, and flower...
We’ve lost many trees to storms and disease over the years. The enormous old hemlock beside the barn that Sandy twisted off its foundation, exposing a root system as clunky and complicated as an old-fashioned telephone switchboard. The ancient willow that began shedding its mighty limbs with dangerous abandon and had to be euthanized. One of the three blue spruces that we planted almost thirty...
I was unexpectedly obliged to spend several weeks of July in upper Manhattan. It was a scorching, humid stretch of time, the sidewalks shimmering under an unrelenting sun. The city tends to absorb heat, like the black clothing preferred by so many of its stylish denizens, adding to the uneasy sense that the whole place might self-combust at any moment. It finally did one night when a gargantuan...
I tried for years to grow lupines (or lupins or bluebonnets) in one of my garden beds. I chose a sunny spot with moist, well-drained soil which I read they preferred, but they weren’t happy there. One or two of them would come back in the spring, but they were sad spindly things and would collapse within a few weeks. Finally, fed up, I pulled them out and tossed them into my wild flower field...
The daffodil heads have shriveled. The tulips stand naked, their bright silk half-slips scattered on the ground. The lilacs are blooming now, the scent intoxicating the air, spent flowers drifting like snowflakes across the lawn (an image stolen from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem below). It’s almost cold enough to snow. Though spring keeps moving through its paces, the temperatures remain stuck in the...
In the middle of winter when the world was a silent blanket of snow, I heard someone whistling to me as I carried in firewood from the garage. I only had to glance at the empty birdfeeder to know who it was: a black-capped chickadee, reminding me it was time for a refill. These delightfully friendly, vocal little birds are our constant companions in the winter months. When the rest of the world...
I wanted you to know that a book I’ve been working on for many years, my first work of creative nonfiction, is about to be published. Written under my married name Liza Bennett, Georgia & Anita tells the little-known story of the enduring friendship between Georgia O’Keeffe, America’s first great woman artist, and Anita Pollitzer, a charismatic leader of the suffragist movement...
Though it’s officially astronomical spring in the Northern Hemisphere, winter isn’t budging in the Berkshires. It snowed again last night. Just a light dusting, but enough to make it clear that it’s a little too early in the game to start counting our spring chickens. Desperate for a little color, we stopped by the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Bulb Show. The air was warm and fragrant and...
The snows have been arriving in waves, long rolling breakers of foam, blurring the line between earth and sky. White beasts lumber across the garden where a row of bushes had been. Trees sway and tinkle under their weight of crystal chandeliers. The forecast calls for high winds that will bring down branches and knock out power. But there’s something exhilarating about being snowbound — stranded...
For the first time in several years, we’ve been waking up to sub-zero temperatures. It’s the kind of cold that can’t really be measured by windchill factors. Biting and mean, it feels more like some kind of outsized mythic creature– the Abominable Snowman, perhaps – marauding across the landscape, freezing locks and playing havoc with your tire pressure sensor. It’s the kind of cold that can...
I still send them out every year. It’s become a rite of the season, even as the tradition of letter writing falters and my penmanship along with it. But the lights must go up, gifts wrapped, cookies baked, cards ordered and mailed. All these things, repeated year after year, have a way of blurring the present and the past, and filling the last few weeks of December with a sense of nostalgia...
We hadn’t had a good rain in weeks. A drought was declared. Then a severe drought, along with a burn ban. The long lovely stretch of mild weather turned ominous. Leaves rustled in the underbrush, and then were swept up in a frenzied dance by
They entertained us all summer long, chasing each other around the garden in dizzying circles. Their high-pitched chatter drove our cat mad, taunting him as they raced back and forth outside the screen porch before
The Sweet Autumn clematis that festooned the trellis with small glossy leaves all summer has burst into blossom. Swarmed by bees, its tiny, star-like flowers give off a heady aroma of vanilla and clove. In another few weeks, these flowers will morph into clouds of fluffy silver seed heads. The mint and basil in the herb garden have already bolted, sending up soft