Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Gardening”
This heirloom narcissus—whose name escapes me now—decided to bloom on the coldest day so far this winter, when a wintry mix of rain and snow has insisted on tumbling thickly out of the sky already three times today. The clouds are pale gray bruises in front of brilliant slices of blue. Other flowers are blooming as well—hellebore, camellia, a few scattered snowdrops hither and yon
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And the witch hazels are blooming in our backyard habitat garden. Crimson, fire-engine red, and this sunny, cheerful yellow. I just learned that the North American species of this shrub are occasionally called winterbloom because (obviously) that is when they come into flower. Good for them for cheering us on to spring. I suspect more than a few of us need such harbingers now. Saturday we did not, for the first time in forever, march in that anti-ICE rally that ended up being tear-gassed and flash-banged down in southwest Portland as they peacefully made their way to the building ICE rents on Macadam Avenue
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This past Monday marked the passage from summer into autumn—a day of balance between light and dark—even though most of these late September days are still cloudless and warm. Tomatoes continue to ripen on the vine. Assorted flowers are in riotous late-season bloom. In spite of the growing menace—and very real harms—flowing 24/7 from the unhinged actions of too many
This afternoon we made our annual pilgrimage to Canby, Oregon—an hour or so south of Portland near the Willamette River—to see the forty-plus acres of dahlias in peak bloom at Swan Island Dahlias. Every August and September, they open their fields to visitors—there are food carts, music, fresh-cut bouquets, and general festivities all around for the attendees. Sunday afternoon was no exception as we lucked into a performance by the Salem-area blues band, Hank Shreve…
I have been thinking lately about the myriad ways one can construct a poem in multiple parts. I did exactly that when I wrote Great Hunger, my multi-part poem investigating the intersection of landscape and place as it relates to one ecological and humanitarian disaster, the mid-19th century Irish potato famine that was published by Anchor & Plume Press in Baton Rouge, Louisiana…
We could all use a shot of delight and beauty right about now, early September in this year of ascendant authoritarianism 2025. So I present a truly glorious, curious flower, G. callianthus, the Abyssinian gladiolus first discovered and cultivated in 1888, the years when Reconstruction had been decisively defeated and abandoned after the U.S. Civil War…
What could be better than to take the exit for Brooks, Oregon just north of Salem and went your way on a two-lane road to bear witness to dozens of acres of peonies almost at the peak of their springtime bloom? That is what we managed to find the time to do on our drive back from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon a week or so ago
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Spring with all of its blooming and blossoming is a good time of year to learn how to see the world anew again. About a month ago, I had cataracts removed from both of my eyes. Since then, I not only have extraordinary distance vision for the first time almost sixty years but the world seems somehow brighter than ever. Throughout the day, I find myself startled…
I picked the last batch of dahlias on November 22nd, seventeen days after the disastrous, shameful results in the U.S. presidential election. It had been a relatively warm fall overall and the dahlias just kept on blooming right up until the day when it was time to cut down the stalks, cover the beds with thick plastic, shovel then rake a thick layer of bark mulch on top—their over-wintering insulation so I did not have to dig up all the tubers and put them into crates full of peat moss and newspaper for storage…
The red twig dogwood, Cornus sericea, in our backyard habitat is early to bloom this year. I have to wonder if it is because Phil, our wonderful garden helper, did his expert pruning magic with it last fall and that cleaning up somehow gave the shrub permission to gussy up and shine. Its flower start yellow then open to blooms of white. These blossoms will come to be a favorite for the wild bees living in the big leaf maple and the butterflies when they return come spring…
