One of fall's last hurrahs. Symphiotrichum (Aster) oblongifloium on October 27th. The old joke among horticulturists is that shuffling and splitting plant names keeps botanists off the dole. [...]
Early February. Pam Spaulding photo. I squeaked by in high school chemistry doing little more than fiddling around with the Bunsen burner so it would throw flames like [...]
Otis Knox in his 2018 sunflower field. I would not have batted an eye at Mr. Stripey if Otis Knox had not insisted it was the best [...]
In the beginning there were blessed, soaking rains. Then came the curse of the tangled hose. The Romans built aqueducts to move water around. I, on the other hand, drag [...]
Rufus patrols the border. It’s hard to stay on top of runaway name-calling. Most of the tried and true insults now look like tread-bare bald tires, but [...]
Big Rock Tai Chi Club, May 2020 I have spent nearly 20 years at the Big Rock corner of Louisville’s Cherokee Park. I meet here regularly with [...]
Neither sorrow nor fear has diminished home gardening’s potential to heal during this pandemic spring. Chris Beytes of Grower Talks, the respected commercial trade magazine, has been keeping tabs [...]
Rose and Cooper—mother and son. “Time is not a movement, a flowing, a wind then, but is, rather, a kind of climate in which things are, and [...]
The Table Tennis Arena If COVID-19 wasn’t worrisome enough, we dodged tornadoes, scared off black vultures, and survived two nights of hard freezes this month. Gardening and Ping-Pong, [...]
Dead Horse Gap in Prospect, KY. Rose and I are lying low in Salvisa, but we drive to Louisville once a week for grocery shopping at the Dirty [...]
Library of Congress archival photo. I began dreaming of a walled sanctuary soon after I began gardening in the 1970s. I wondered what it would be like to [...]
