winter garden chores

The Taming of the Quince

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Winter has temporarily abated, with temperatures consistently above freezing and even jumping into spring-like territory.  The weekend looks promising.  It is past time for me to prune the flowering quince. That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and it would be, except for one small detail—the flowering quince, or Chaenomeles speciosa, is armed … Read more

Cleaning Up

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Jane Austen introduced Pride and Prejudice with the line, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”  If Miss Austen wrote about gardening, she would certainly have said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of … Read more