Cotton is a plant that, pardon the pun, had woven its way into the everyday fabric of my mom’s family so effectively as to be rote. Cotton-themed paraphernalia and cotton farming accoutrement played bit parts in the tableau of almost every room of my grandparents’ house. Tastefully; this is my grandmother we’re talking about here.

Say hi to the main display bed in my backyard, pictured in “Before.” Two old crabapples frame the “view,” backed by a suburban New England fence I hate but must live with. It’s supposed to be white, but the constant shower from the crabs ensures it will be forever dingy.

BIG NEWS! In case you hadn’t heard me jumping up and down, I’ve been invited to join Garden Designers Roundtable, an inveterate group of designers who blog monthly about a chosen topic. My first post airs tomorrow, Feb. 23, at 1 p.m. EST, the topic is foliage, and I AM STOKED. Ahem. You may have [...]

The doors of the house, wide open from dawn until bedtime, were closed during siesta time under the pretext that the sun heated up the bedrooms and in the end they were closed for good. The aloe branch and loaf of bread that had been hanging over the door since the days of the founding [...]

Last week, we packed our bags and flew south to warmer climes. Caribbean climes, to be exact: we flew to Curaçao, a small island off the Venezuela coast, neighbor to popular Aruba. Curaçao is an arid island with native flora to match, which was fascinating — a cacti-studded desert with ocean views. One notable imported [...]

This song has been jangling around in my head for like a week. For once, I haven’t minded. Seu browser não suporta iframes. Buy this album on Amazon* → *Amazon Associates link. If you buy, you support the artist, and you support me too!

OK! Full disclosure: the photo here is not Cephalotaxus ‘Prostrata,’ it’s a you-get-the-point shot of similar, upright C. sinensis. I was MOST CONVINCED I had a photo of ‘Prostrata.’ It was all in my head. See slideshow link below for honest to god ‘Prostrata’ pics. Today’s pronunciation provided by Lynn Felici-Gallant, one of my favorite [...]

I’m thinking about light, and new ways to think about light. For example, light as seen through the eyes of tiny animals who live between blades of grass. The light, gold and smooth, lay like a gold rind over the turf, the furze and yew bushes, the few wind-stunted trees. From the ridge, the light [...]

“They’ll give you back to the water.” Seu browser não suporta iframes.

Leave it to Andrew Bird to bring an actual plant genus, Anthurium, into song. He said he just “thought it was a cool word,” although there is no Anthurium lacrimae — he made up the species. Hortheads, he’s our kind of guy. Seu browser não suporta iframes.