…I started to tell the story of our garden here in Gardner, and even posted the image above that showed part of the garden’s past we had inherited when buying this land.
Category: Stories
Snippets and longer passages about what came before us; some specific to our time here; and some bits are just plain old stories that don’t really fit well anywhere else.
Thankful for gnats.
The gnats were suddenly back yesterday, and it made me a bit sad and glad which I’m sure a lot of folks will think the latter is a bit daft. So allow me to explain.
A neighbor of ours, Louise, had explained to me last year about how here they were black flies and they tend to show up after Mother’s Day and are typically gone by Father’s Day. Continue reading “Thankful for gnats.”
Lilies left the valley
Two years ago today (sort of)…
…I started to tell the story of our garden here in Gardner, and even posted the image above that showed part of the garden’s past we had inherited when buying this land.
In truth, I’m now writing this quite late–on May 11, 2020. I abused the magic of backdating to get the date at the top right. As folks reading this know, our whole world was swept up by March 31st with news about a novel coronavirus spreading. At the time, Massachusetts was just one place struggling with it in spades. I was spending more time than I like to admit watching the daily videos our local hospital was putting out, scanning news articles, watching broadcast news, and bookmarking more C-19 stat sites than now seems sane in hindsight. Can you blame me, though? My partner is “an essential worker”, a postal carrier. Heck yeah, we had some scares. But enough with the excuses! (I will end this topic by saying if he did get it from work and passed it to me, we still don’t know.) Continue reading “Two years ago today (sort of)…”
One year ago today…
…I started to tell the story of our garden here in Gardner, and even posted the image above that showed part of the garden’s past we had inherited when buying this land.
Short term sale from long term loss.
When we drove by one of our local stores not long ago to do a large grocery run, I noticed they were having a “customer appreciation sale” with everything marked 25% off. When I walked to the grocery store across the street from there yesterday to pick up a few things I was short on, the street sign then said “50% off”, and a sign in the window said “up to 75%”. That’s when I started to suspect they might be closing.
Sadly, I was right, but it’s a local buyout so it’s not the end of the world, I guess? Continue reading “Short term sale from long term loss.”
Let your garden grow
Sometimes you don’t have a lot of time or resources to do what you want. Life happens and postpones things. You just can’t make up your mind. Mistakes can be made even by experienced gardeners that cause setbacks as well.
Most of what we have done last year and so far this year hasn’t felt like enough even though I’d be a dunce not to acknowledge what has changed and acknowledge we really couldn’t do much more with the time and resources we had to spare. Continue reading “Let your garden grow”
A personal rant about landscape fabric
Think of the future!
More specifically, think of your future, especially if you’re the poor sod that will have to deal with the problems it causes down the road.
Don’t try to fool yourself for a minute about landscape fabric, folks. Continue reading “A personal rant about landscape fabric”
Learning to work with a new climate
The gardens I grew up in and near were in southern NJ, on a barrier island where if you dug too deep, you’d hit soggy brimed soil. The property was one block from the bay, two from the ocean, on the northernmost part of the island which was narrow there compared to most of the island.
Despite that, my maternal grandparents had thriving gardens full of ornamentals as well as food crops, though we didn’t have a lot of tall trees. Continue reading “Learning to work with a new climate”