The grasses are arching above the places where the perennials had bloomed only weeks ago. The Purple Fountain grass is darker than most of my garden now, which is still a lush, verdant green. Like icing on its cake, feathery festoons topple from the tips of each spire of the ornamental grass. Some of the…
Month: October 2023
How to Create a Garden Journal – More about the Nature Writer Dorothy Wordsworth’s Nature Writing
If you are wondering how to create a garden journal, the most obvious answer is: Write. As usual, however, obvious answers are hardly ever true answers. Many times, they are insults thrust toward what a true answer might be, and while I often tell journalists and writers to do just that — just write! Nature…
Dorothy Wordsworth – Excerpts from Her Grasmere Journal
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH’S JOURNAL WRITTEN AT GRASMERE (14th May to 21st December 1800) MAY 14TH, 1800.—The lake looked to me, I knew not why, dull and melancholy, and the weltering on the shores seemed a heavy sound. I walked as long as I could amongst the stones of the shore. The wood rich in flowers; a…
Louisa May Alcott – Biography – Includes Journal Entries
Louisa May Alcott: HER Life, Letters, and Journals. EDITED BY EDNAH D. CHENEY BOSTON. LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1898 Copyright, 1889, By J. S. P. Alcott. INTRODUCTION. It is therefore impossible to understand Miss Alcott’s works fully without a knowledge of her own life and experiences. By inheritance and education she had rich and peculiar…
Memories of Going to the Fair
I grew up in the Bootheel of Southeast Missouri, which is about 120 miles up the Mississippi River from Memphis, Tennessee. The highlight of my autumns was that of going to the Midsouth Fair in Memphis. My mother lived to be 97, and every time I saw her, I heard her repeat: “Brush your teeth…
Squirrels at Harvest Time
Many people view harvest time as the weeks during which Starbucks serves Pumpkin Spice Latte, or as the time when the craft stores line their shelves with fake pumpkins, orange garlands, and scarecrows that are not scary at all. The funny thing about craft stores, however, is that if you move a couple of rows…
The Hudson River & the Hudson River Painters
“The Hudson River is a 315-mile (507 km) river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York in the United States. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the Upper New York Bay between New York City and Jersey City, eventually…