As I’ve noted in these pages before, mine is not a subsistence garden. The growing season here is short, the high-altitude weather is extreme, the space is limited. The gardener, meanwhile, is easily distracted, typically unable or unwilling to devote the sort of effort that would a) yield an ample edible harvest, or b) preserve…
Fourteen degrees as a daytime high is somewhat easier to take now that the calendar reads December…even if that same calendar assures me that winter is, technically, still more than two weeks away. We are on the far side of fall. The autumnal show is over: the leaves, having revealed their not-green alter egos, have…
January last seems impossibly distant. Memories from back then are round-edged and worn, like relics of a lost civilization. The pandemic was dawning, of course, although few of us in this country had a clue what was to come. Lockdowns, masks, grimly mounting death tolls? Other people’s burdens, far away. I was more concerned with…
In this interval, we hauled the hay, stacked the wood, stowed the cushions from the outdoor furniture. We transported the flowerpots that spent the summer adorning the decks around the house down the hill to the greenhouse. If the plants survive the travails of overwintering, they’ll take the ride uphill again in spring; otherwise they’ll…
Revolting. If you had asked me when I was a kid what I thought of tomatoes, that’s probably the word I would have offered—or “gross” maybe, or “disgusting” when I was a little older. Actually, you probably wouldn’t have had to ask. If a tomato, or slice or dice thereof, was anywhere in my vicinity,…
Senecio species I’d need to dig deeper to narrow down the name, since we have a couple of variations in leaf shape/wooliness and some differences in the ray shape and arrangement. Based on the habitat here, chances are pretty good that these are Rocky Mountain groundsel, S. streptanthifolius. In any event, these flowers have quite…
I thought about writing about these fall days: the glossy blue skies, the serene air, the landscape golden and splashed with umber and gilt. The temperature hovers in that curious cool-mild zone, so you go out wearing a jacket but you’re soon too warm and have to strip to shirtsleeves. You need keep the jacket…
I promised myself last spring it wouldn’t happen again: the summer, this year, would not spiral out of control. I would manage my time, balance my obligations, ride herd on my expectations. But the summer got away from me. Again. I can never figure out how this happens, can never reconstruct where, exactly, the days…
Every year it’s the same: as temperatures start creeping up, offering reassurance that winter is winding down, I start obsessing over color. This is a spring thing for many of us living in the world’s temperate zones, I suppose, but I can’t help but feel there’s something slightly dysfunctional about my preoccupation. Don’t get me…
Years ago, reflecting on our move from the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado to the more rural center of the state, I wrote about planning the space that would be our garden in the mountains: Despite the high elevation, short growing season, and abundant wildlife…we knew we wanted a garden, so we built a walled one,…