When I am alone in my garden in late October I often think about music, especially Ralph Vaughn Williams’ elegiac settings of English folk tunes. My favorite is the haunting “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” because the musical images just seem right for the season of variable weather, early sunsets and mornings when the grass glistens with … Read more
After four years of waiting, at least one go-around with Mr. Antlers and a presumption of plant death, ‘Vick’s Caprice’ has finally bloomed in my garden. And even though the tough little rose put out only one flower, it was worth the time and anxiety. The cupped and quartered bloom is lovely–rose pink, accented with … Read more
I have always told people that there are no headaches in the garden. There are also no social faux pas, ranting politicians or demanding bosses. Some people, of course, bring those things into the garden because they refuse to be parted from their electronic devices. I try to avoid co-mingling of digging and devices because … Read more
Not long ago I gave a garden talk at the monthly meeting of a wonderful local garden club. They were, like so many passionate gardeners, warm and friendly and devoted to many aspects of horticulture—ecology, hands-on gardening and growing and showing flowers to perfection. It was heady company. The members work as horticulture volunteers at … Read more
Italian writer Andrea di Robilant has long been a man in search of the past. He mined a rich vein of family history in Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon, the 2008 biography of his ancestor Lucia Mocenigo, a late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Venetian aristocrat and friend of the French … Read more
