If I were to create an alphabetical summary of my garden’s current status, I would say, “L is for leggy lilacs looking lovely.” The “lovely’ part is the abundant, perfumed blooms. I grow three lilacs, all Syringa vulgaris, the most common type. Two have pale purple flowers and one, which is the newest, features deep … Read more
The countryside around my family’s summer cottage in Central New York State is studded with former farm sites. Sometimes buildings or their dilapidated remains are evident on the overgrown lots that were once the hubs of working family farms. More often, all that remains are the horticultural memories of those farms—garden plants once tended by … Read more
The blooming lilacs in my garden are a joyful celebration of spring, but also remind me of “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” Walt Whitman’s beautiful 1865 elegy to Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated on April 14 of that year. The first stanza says it all: When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And … Read more
When I was much younger and had very little life experience under my belt, I lapped up elegiac poetry. I am pretty sure that many bookish teenage girls did the same thing before the advent of 24/7 texting. Elegiac poetry also paired nicely with the hunger pains engendered by the tea and strawberry yogurt diet … Read more
