Late summer is a golden time for American gardeners, when their love and nurture of their plants are requited with whiz-bang vegetal yields in the American outdoor living room. This continuing harvest, amidst the elegiacally shortening daylength and fading daylight between the June solstice and September equinox, delivers on spring’s joyful promises and continues into […]
Hail spring, farewell winter, and a rousing welcome to the spring equinox for precisely positioning the earth—and us—in time and space. We watch in awe as the solar conductor rouses the vegetative orchestra to life, transforming fallow plots of land into flourishing gardens. Let there be life! The equinox provides a YOU ARE HERE moment […]
We now take a break from our dystopia to announce happy tidings for the new year. Welcome to 2022: the threshold of the American gardening revolution. The boom you’re hearing is not the launch of a billionaire’s ego-powered rocket or the sudden crash of a cryptocurrency. Reverberating across the country, the blast—a sonic bloom?—comes from […]
Let’s welcome the Estival Solstice, the first day of summer, a simple astronomical event with a stunning array of effects on Earth. Now begin gradually shorter days and longer nights, barely perceptible in late June’s splashy technicolor landscape. In a single moment, the sun’s course reverses, beginning a gradual pivot, arcing from the northern to […]
The first day of spring kicks off the unofficial national gardening holiday everywhere in the northern hemisphere. In the US, gardeners are celebrating riotously. For the largely quiet home gardening business, this year started with a bang—no, an explosion. On the heels of 2020, a breakthrough year for seed buying, 2021 has already produced sales […]
The 117th Congress convenes today. Let’s raise a toast to this newly-hatched deliberative body and bid a fond farewell to the 116th—the least productive session in Congress’s 230 years. From January 2019 to today, our elected representatives managed to have just one percent of proposed legislation approved by the House, ratified by the Senate, signed […]
Home gardening occupies a serene corner of the clamorous, go-go American business landscape. You’re unlikely to find the gardening sector grabbing headlines and leading off news broadcasts. Usually, the loudest buzz in gardening comes from bees gathering pollen. 2020 is a whole other story. Within six months, the home garden industry saw a quantum leap […]
Just when you thought the gardening season was over, fall arrives to prove you wrong. Many believe we hang up our trowels on Labor Day, as if Mother Nature slammed the garden gate on us. Not so fast! There are at least two more months of pleasant, productive gardening weather—over three in the Sun Belt. […]
Welcome to the first day of summer, the summer solstice, when the sun is at its highest, vegetation greenest, daylength longest, and night shortest. Call it, “summer cum laude”, since we’re so happy that our year’s longest day has come. We edge downslope now to December’s winter solstice. From today onward, daylight will progressively shorten, […]
Today at noon, unplug your backlit screen, stroll outdoors and take in the buoyant charm of reflected light. Afterwards, take a few minutes to reflect on the sun, the superstar powering the existence of the earth—including us, all things animate and inanimate, everything. The Vernal Equinox is the first day of spring, the occasion par […]
