A close friend gave a copy of my book, Digging Deep, to a friend of his by the name of Bar. Within a matter of weeks, I received an e-mail from Bar thanking me and saying that as a songwriter and a songwriting teacher, she could identify with and find the truths in what I [...]
I’m all for encouraging the use of natives in the garden, but sometimes, exotics can have a place too. Shown above are my own favorite non-native garden residents: Lama pacos (Vicugna pacos) ‘RRA Granite’s Laser’ and ‘RRA Granite’s Limited Edition’, commonly known as Duncan and Daniel. Ok, so my alpacas technically don’t live in my [...]
Natural Disguise, or in French, Desguisement naturel, has been on my bookshelf for at least the past ten years. It is a composite of one artist’s work that is deeply entwined with nature. Judy Garfin is a Canadian artist who resides in Montreal. Natural Disguise is filled with astounding renderings of her paintings of Nature. [...]
“Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.” William Congreve (1670-1729) I can’t pretend to know exactly what inspired Mr. Congreve’s rhyme, but if he were alive today, he could easily be referring to a gardener confronted with some of the brown-leaved plants that have appeared in nurseries and garden centers [...]
Until a few years ago, glads definitely wouldn’t have appeared on my list of top 10 (or 50, or even 100) plants. If I thought of them at all, I pictured rows of long-stemmed, huge-flowered spikes leaning at precarious angles, with color that lasted all of about two days. I do like the look of [...]