So It May Secretly Begin (listen) is a song track from my favorite Pat Metheny album, Still Life (Talking). I have listened to this album, especially this song, hundreds of times—driving, falling asleep, studying, romancing. I like its fluid elegance. It starts softly, tentatively, as if expressing contemplation or uncertainty. As itContinue Reading
By the end of May 2014, I had mapped the sun’s movement, chosen plants, and bought topsoil, mulch, and composted manure. I owned two types of shovels, a garden rake, a hatchet, a digging fork, a kneeling bench, and various smaller implements— all I needed were the plants. I hadContinue Reading
Gardening magazines have a way of filling one’s head with all kinds of blossomy dreams only to have them dashed by the local big box garden center. The perennials at most big box stores are usually limited to two types of daylilies (yellow Stella d’Oro and maybe an orange variety),Continue Reading
When people at a nursery warn you about a plant, believe them. Here are my four cautionary tales. I had never heard of bee balm before deciding to dig up the yard. It earned a spot in the garden because the flowers are so oddly shaped. They resemble jester’s hatsContinue Reading
Hostas were a favorite of my mother-in-law. I, on the other hand, was only vaguely aware of them, having seen them before but paid little attention. Once it became clear that the front yard next to the porch was always going to be shaded, I became interested in hostas. IContinue Reading
Flip through a gardening book or magazine, and there will be page after page of beautiful flowers nestled together, colors flowing, blending, complementing—a paradise on every page. Wonderful! But time to get back to reality. Those pictures represent hundreds of carefully-considered choices and never-mentioned mistakes. A brand-new gardener with EdenicContinue Reading
Gardening magazines and books joyfully extol the wonders and pleasures of having a flower garden. At the top of the list of reasons to have one is the fact that a flower garden is great for pollinators. What they fail to mention—maybe it’s in the fine print—is that pollinators, likeContinue Reading
Around the time the fifth camera arrived, it dawned on me that I had become a Minolta collector—that certainly wasn’t my goal initially. My first purchase, the Maxxum 7000i, was solely for the purpose of solving the bokeh problem. Awareness of the 7000i had been with me for years asContinue Reading
After ripping out the liriope, a new problem arose— the yard was even with the sidewalk, so there was no way to prevent mulch from spilling from the beds. The two obvious choices for solving the problem were digging around the perimeter of the bed to lower it below theContinue Reading
When plotting the yard, I had two goals in mind. The first was figuring out where the sun would hit between March 21 and September 21. The second was trying to figure out what plants could coexist in terms of water needs, sunlight, colors, and textures. The yard is small,Continue Reading
