To technology-glutted moderns, the celebration of the New Year may seem like a fleeting one-day inebriation, a hiccup in the 365-day trajectory it takes for our planet to complete one orbit around the sun. May their hangover cure include realizing that without the sun’s heat and light, they, like the Earth, would be a lifeless, […]
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 […]
I’ve noticed color more this year than in others, due mainly to its absence in our large, fruited vegetable garden, where I focused much attention. On the other hand, the Happiness Garden—our .71 acre of meadow perennial heaven at Fordhook Farm—has never been more luminous, shining in the sun. “Ganz lustig!” as my grandmother used […]
After giving a speech to 600 garden writers in North Carolina last week, I returned in a state of uncertainty—had anyone heard the underlying message? It was too cerebral, I think, to read a speech to a bunch of pumped up enthusiasts who wanted to chat about the gorgeous Sarah Duke Gardens that surrounded us. […]
(The following is the speech I gave to The Garden Writers Association last night at their annual convention in Raleigh, North Carolina. Despite the familiar first sentence and a few other tropes, it’s a new piece. Enjoy!) 2009 has been one extraordinary year in the history of American gardening. As if on cue, a […]
2009 has been one extraordinary year in the history of American gardening. As if on cue, a panoply of developing trends all pointed towards the garden, opening the gates to the most dramatic resurgence in American gardening since the Great Depression. First and foremost, the current economic slump has proven an effective recruiting tool for […]
This growing season at Fordhook has been frightening. Normally, I expect a couple of monsoon like periods, a few days in late May, and another few days in late July and a couple in late August, max. However, for 2009 the reverse has been true. The only normal days have been, all combined, about one […]
It is always an unusual event when you copy someone else and end up discovering that you made the original. As I mentioned last winter in “Camp Obama“, the President and First Lady might have considered breaking ground on their starter garden in private rather than in public. Maybe it’s just my innate sense of […]
The proverbial naïve optimist brought low by reality, Candide might be the first modern hero. Certainly, he was the first modern gardener. In the image popularized by the 18th century French novelist Voltaire—”tending your own garden”—Candide is a metaphor for pursuing, and enduring, one’s own path, perhaps even “minding your own business”, in the best […]
At 100,000 miles, a car is just getting started. Therefore, it makes no sense for the government to pay folks to turn in cars that are not even broken, much less broken in. In fact, a car improves with age. It acquires a depth of personality and character that only time confers. Like a pet, […]
