Tag Archive for ‘Seasonal Plants’
Parable of the Mushroom, November in the Garden & Calendar of North State Gardening Events
Where is it? I’ve been looking for more than a month – given the diminishing hours of daylight, the cooling temperatures, the increasing humidity – it should be there! It was here last year at this same time, I reason. So I keep looking. Every day for weeks now as I leave or return to [...]
Autumnal October – A Season of Politics and Plenty & the Calendar of North State Gardening Events
In the tumult that is day-to-day life and the endless to-do list from home and work, I consider my garden a refuge. It is the place to which I retreat to hear myself, to think more clearly, to smell the air, to feel the soil and to replenish. It’s a place in which I am [...]
September in the Garden & Calendar of North State Gardening Events
The summer’s most recent heat wave went on long enough that I became stir-crazy. The ensuing sense of restriction actually motivated me to get outside and do something. Pruning an overgrown hedge was the perfect task. Prior to this last round of stifling heat, I sort of enjoyed the cloud-formation look of this hedge billowing [...]
Blue Moon August & Calendar of North State Gardening Events
Life cycles around us constantly and the August garden makes me especially aware of this – reminding me how much I am moved by plants: their constant transformations, their resilience. How a seed can grow from a tiny speck to a towering-fruiting-falling-over tomato plant in one season; how a cluster of insignificant flowers on my [...]
The Marvels of May & Calendar of North State Gardening Events
I recently had the good fun of accompanying a visiting native bee specialist to a few of our local gardens. He was looking for one or two area gardens to monitor over time for bee activity and behavior. All of the gardens we visited were lovely, beginning to bloom and green with spring rains, buzzing [...]
March: Mirth and Madness in the Garden & Calendar of Regional Gardening Events
March in the garden is both maddening and full of spring’s mirth. Even with our terribly low winter precipitation thus far, the garden and countryside are moving along – unfolding in flower, fruit and seed. We’re lucky that our relatively mild climate allows us to plant flowers, fruits and vegetables from seed almost every month [...]
February in the North State Garden & Calendar of Regional Gardening Events
Winter seemed to finally arrive toward the end of January this year, bringing needed rain and snow to the North State. While the driving was a bit tedious, to watch the view change right in front of me was powerful. The rains came filling the plains and grasslands, the snow recovered our surrounding Mountains overnight [...]
Work and Wonder: New Year’s in the North State Garden
I like to think that winter’s long, dark nights, its snow and driving rains (when we get them – boy, I hope we get them), and its killing frosts, provide me with absolution from the mistakes, lapses, failures and inadequacies of the previous year in the garden. The dark and cold and leaching work together [...]
August’s Plenty & the Calendar of Regional Gardening Events
August – from the Latin Augustus – is a word variously meaning majestic, venerable, inspiring admiration, and stately. A name derived from the Roman ruler of the same name – it seems well-chosen for August, the eighth month of our calendar year. A month in the North State garden that is synonymous with plenty, August [...]
Scented, Splendid Salvia in the North State Garden
Despite what feels like many weeks of rain (snow in the high country) and gray weather lingering into late spring this year, I am deeply gratified by those plants in my garden that are flourishing regardless. Some of these plants, as I would expect, are positively reveling in the almost coastal weather pattern. But some [...]