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Author Archives: Beverly Keane
The Long View – Meditations on Gardening: The Soft Season
Undefined, blurred, softened – that’s how the gardens look under snow. We call it harsh winter, but, in fact, it’s a soft season in many ways. We cannot garden outdoors during snow, nor trample the beds afterward while the soil is all soft and damp and sheltering the turmoil of life under the surface. So we ourselves get a little soft, physically, in terms of outdoor labor. Continue reading
The Long View – Meditations on Gardening: The Thing About Gardeners
Gardening strikes me as the perfect metaphor for life. Everything goes swimmingly well for a while, then adversity strikes and we need to plod through it until we’ve solved the problem or survived the crisis or found a new pathway. Continue reading
The Long View – Meditations on Gardening: A Venture in Guerrilla Gardening
Not all gardeners have big plots. So sometimes we just exploit what’s nearby. It’s a bit iffy, but taking a little risk and adding a dollop of luck and patience, some digging and weeding and a mix of bought and donated plants can pay off. Witness the former parking lot island near my town house. It used to be a dog- and sun-seared plot of weedy grass that never looked good after the first green flush of spring. Continue reading
Posted in MG in the Garden, The Long View – Meditations on Gardening
Tagged allium bulbs, bees, butterflies, cleome, daffodils, Echinacea, lavender, Master Gardener, MGNV, pollinators, redbud, rosemary, Shasta daisies, tulips, zinnia
The Long View – Meditations on Gardening: This Odd Season Called Spring
We’ve edged into May, smack in the middle of spring. The delight we gardeners take in the arrival of the season has been tested this year. After the long cold winter, spring finally arrived about mid-April. And then it had second thoughts and retreated, only to turn the heat up to almost 80 for a day or two and then retreat again. Rain has fallen pretty regularly. So while we can’t quite trust the season (what’s new about that? “April is the cruelest month,” said the poet in 1922) and we struggle with its fickleness, still we rejoice. And then we take stock of what winter meant to our particular plots: What died, what lived, how is the seasonal progression going this year? Continue reading
Posted in MG in the Garden, Public Education, The Long View – Meditations on Gardening
Tagged " spring bulbs, "April is the cruelest month, anemones, celandine poppies, cherry blossoms, crabapples, crocuses, daffodils, dogwoods, ephemerals, forest, gardening, Hellebores, hyacinths, magnolias, May, petals, poppies, redbuds, spring, squirrels, tulips, wood phlox
