Cold Climate Gardening

According to the UK Phenology Network, “phenology is the study of the times of recurring natural phenomena especially in relation to climate.” It’s something gardeners tend to practice at this time of the year, as we’re all anxiously awaiting the arrival of spring. (Well, us northern gardeners are still waiting, even if the rest of […]

[Read more →]

This is a poem I wrote in college, 1978 or 1979.
Stuffed Artichokes
Paring knife in hand
she trims the tough outer bracts,
peels woodiness from the stem.
I slice the top third off.
Her thumb plumbs the center,
pries the fleshy leaves apart.
Grandma’s hands apprentice mine:
lacking the tongue and time
of my ancestors, I learn their food.
Pasquale Porazzo sits:
pear-shaped, propped with a […]

[Read more →]

Today is my grandma’s 98th birthday. I originally wrote this essay for a Fine Gardening contest (which I didn’t win), and decided to revise it and share it with you in honor of her special day.
It’s funny how gardens are such emotional things. You enter some gardens and feel as though you are in someone’s […]

[Read more →]

Since I’m trying to not overdo it in the typing department, I thought I’d dig through my files and serve up some of my earlier writing. In 1995 I had the opportunity to review A Year at North Hill for Fine Gardening magazine. This is not that review, which was published in the November 1995 […]

[Read more →]

I wrote this essay several years ago after the winter of 1993-1994 and I dig it out to reread every winter in which I feel I’m suffering excessively. Of course, no matter how bad your winter is, someone else can top you, so I don’t promote this as the worst cabin fever anyone ever had, […]

[Read more →]