A recent New York state lottery radio commercial bragged that it is “spending billions to educate millions”.  I did a double take, thinking I misheard.  Both liberals and conservatives should find this inadvertent revelation depressing.  It seems that no one is concerned with productivity anymore, that it has become a “bad word”.  However, gardeners know that you spend a little to get a lot.

In the same vein, the current mortgage…

In New York City recently, I was stunned by the majestic beauty of Central Park.  In fact, it’s overwhelming when scrutinized.  Therefore, it has become something like a giant dynamo of the city’s unconscious.  It reminded me of Norman O. Brown’s comment about how we are unconscious of our bodies, how that distinguishes being human.  […]

Most garden perennials flower in spring after the low light season.  However, garden annuals bloom during the summer, which is not typical of native plants in North America.  Mainly tropical in origin, bedding plants have been the focus of breeding since the residential boom of the 1950s.  Annual cultivars descend from plants found near the equator, the only frost-free part of the world.  These heat and light lovers…

Without naming names, I list some “average last frost dates” published on the internet by reputable gardening organizations.               Philadelphia            April 14 April 15 April 29 May 5 May 7             Allentown, PA May 5   May 19             Wilmington, DE April 13 (?) April […]

If someone loses his father at 10, goes to boarding school, graduates from Harvard with distinction, serves in Asia during World War II, inherits a lot of money, makes ambitious plans to contribute to society rather than fritter away a trust fund, reaches 97 and passes away, he can be sure he will be pilloried and ridiculed in the obituary colums.

Especially if he also:

    1)    invests in the Caribbean with…

Green has always been my preferred color.  (Orange runs a close second, but that’s another story.)  I’ve often wondered why green clothing is hardly ever worn.  Military association?  I think this would be positive, not negative, but perhaps it is a taboo of sorts.  Beau Brummel probably ruined green at some point, drawing associations with […]

A recurrent image from trips to the Middle East is the caravan.  I saw two, in Tunis and Sudan, scruffy versions of movie ones.  Noisy and smelly, they resembled nightmares.  Modern trucks have replaced them in volume, but only where the original routes were charted centuries ago.  Some trucks haul several containers in a bizarre conga line, like those crossing the Australian deserts.  Faster versions, then, of the old caravans.

However…

Company towns are strange holdovers from the middle ages. In my mom’s hometown of Ware Shoals, the bank, church, clothing store, housing and, of course, work—all were owned by the textile mill. Money didn’t matter—whatever the company paid out, it got back in profits and rents. Step out of line and you better move along. […]

Recently, on a lovely Saturday, I drove up to New York City to see the site where my grandfather, Jacob, worked in a nursery in Queens. He had just moved from Cincinnati, where he’d finished an 1890s era, “live-in” apprenticeship in his early teens. Then he spent a few years in rural western Long Island, outside the town of Flushing, known for its many German immigrants and nurseries, as well…

What can you say about a garden that you visited once and loved? That it was beautiful? That the extent of the exotic and the unusual was beyond that of any other private garden you’ve seen? That it was so magically and artistically arranged in its setting that anyone easily could be swept up in its spell? That once you entered it, you didn’t want to leave?

I am in the…