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Cicely & Alexander
It’s been raining for about a week and everyone I talk to is complaining, but not me: everything is so lush and green. I keep peeking out of my third-floor study window down at the garden below, a...
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The Doctrine of Signatures
This week’s blooming plant is the lungwort, or pulmonaria officinalis, a low-lying shade plant with speckled leaves that has always been the best example of the pre-modern theory of the Doctrine of...
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Chartreuse
Green has long been my favorite color, but more recently I have come to realize that chartreuse is my favorite shade of green. A bit unusual, but true: my spirit lifts when I see it or wear it (and I...
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Ever Eglantine
I’ve got roses on the brain, but not just any rose, eglantine roses, a wild, shrubby variety (otherwise known as sweetbriar or Rosa rubiginosa or eglanteria) at once very common but surprisingly...
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Slippers and Slipware
It’s perhaps a bit early–though not too early considering our warm spring– but the lady’s slippers have arrived in my garden. Late last week I took a walk through the woods and encountered the pink...
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When Hostas Attack
I’m looking forward to getting into my wild garden this weekend for some frenzied weeding and general taming, but I have to admit that I’m a little afraid of the hostas in the shade garden. These are...
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Overgrown, “Old-fashioned” Gardens
For the decade that I’ve worked on my garden I’ve been going for a lush, flower-packed, “old-fashioned” look, popular a century ago when there was a strident Colonial Revival reaction against Victorian...
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The 8th Wonder of the World
It’s almost shameful to follow up a post on my garden with one that is acknowledged to have been one of the most beautiful in early modern Europe, but be assured I am suggesting no comparison! A...
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High Summer Gardens
August is beyond peak time in New England gardens but there is still a lot of color out there: primarily from phlox, phlox and more phlox. I’ve been taking pictures on my local travels and those below...
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First Snow
On Saturday we had our first snow here in Salem; by Sunday it was gone. I was very happy to see it and hope to see more: last year, we had no snow in the winter, not a flake. There was the Halloween...
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Fool’s Parsley
My scholarly, botanical and materialistic interests intersected the other day when I came across a beautiful Arts and Crafts wallpaper print by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey named “Fool’s Parsley”,...
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May Day
Thanks to fond childhood memories (which I wrote about in last year’s May Day post) and my own rather whimsical penchant for the past, the first of May is one of my favorite days of the year. This year...
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Early May Meander
May is my absolute favorite month but also the busiest time of the year for me, with grading and other end-of-the-semester obligations, annual meetings for every single Salem organization to which I...
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First Foray
Between my end-of-semester obligations and travel I have completely neglected my garden during its busiest season, so I took my first foray out there this weekend for a quick assessment. As usual,...
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Summer Arrives
Summer arrived in Salem in a big way this past weekend with several days of 90+ degree heat; it felt more like early August than June. This is a bit of an aberration, and we should be back in the 70s...
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Yellow Roses
The combination of last week’s very hot weather followed by serious rain meant that this weekend the roses started popping out, about a week or so earlier than usual. In the past I have been a...
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St. John’s Wort
Today marks the anniversary of the nativity (as opposed to the death by beheading, or decollation) of one of the most important medieval saints, St. John the Baptist. The devout veneration of the Saint...
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Thunder Month
In his annual almanac, the seventeenth-century astrologer John Gadbury calls July the Thunder Month, [when] it was customary at Malmsbury-Abbey, to ring the great bell call’d St. Adam’s Bell, to drive...
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Surviving Summer
Like much of the country, last week was hot and humid, with nearly every day in the 90s: it was hazy, still, and repressive. On Friday it reached 100 degrees. By Saturday I had almost lost the will to...
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Tansy Time
In my garden the tansy is “riding high”, to use the words of the nineteenth-century “peasant poet” John Clare. An old medicinal and culinary herb native to Eurasia, tanacetum is part of the large aster...
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