There is no word in English to describe the feeling of mingled joy and sadness at the beauty of fleeting experience. The Japanese have the concept of “mono no aware,” or the sadness of things. It’s very much connected to a Buddhist sense of the brevity of life and the transience of beauty, summed up in the old Japanese phrase “swirling petals, falling leaves.” . . . → Read More: Another Gift from the Mulberry Tree
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We’re now coming into the toughest part of the summer here in Washington. Days are a monotonous stretch of the triple H – “hazy, hot and humid”. August makes you understand why British embassy staff got hardship pay for being stationed here all the way up to the mid seventies. Longtime residents dread this month and do all they can to avoid it by fleeing to vacations at beaches and northern lakes. It’s the only time of the year that beltway traffic is bearable, because so many people are gone. . . . → Read More: Brutal Summer Mark and I maintain a small but intensively planted yard of about 1/3 of an acre with lots of flower beds and a decent-sized vegetable garden. Every year in early spring we have a five-minute moment of thinking, should we do something about our lawn this year? Should we put down some turfbuilder, or some weed-n-feed? But then we wake up. Nah. We’ve gone thirteen years doing nothing to the grass, why start now? You could call us lazy, but I prefer to think we’re practicing the Tao of Gardening. . . . → Read More: The Tao of Gardening After living here so many years, I know fairly precisely when the migratory birds of summer will be back. The wrens arrived just a bit late because of our cold weather, and have now been here a week. Since their arrival they’ve been busy setting up in the little bird house that hangs from one of my dogwood trees. The hole in the wren house is carefully sized to allow the passage of only the tiniest birds. The wrens fit nicely, as they’re only 4 1/2 inches long. That small entrance hole is a source of immense frustration to the larger, fatter sparrows, who try incessantly to squeeze themselves in. . . . → Read More: Wren and Catbird Are Back While it was still warm yesterday I picked the bouquet of daffodils you see here. These flowers are always the first to bloom in the very early spring. The cups are all ruffled and doubled, with petals in every shade of gold and green. When Mark and I moved in they were the only things blooming in the long-neglected garden, and I think they must be almost as old as our house. The house was built in 1948, so I imagine these hardy bulbs have bloomed every year for more than fifty years. I bless whoever it was that left them for me. At Manassas Battlefield I have seen the ruins of old farmsteads that date from the mid-nineteenth century. The farmhouses are long gone, but around the crumbling foundations you can see masses of daffodils that still bring their brightness in thick rows thanks to gardeners who are long gone. Those flowers look exactly like mine, with crazy mismatched petals that lack any distinctive cup. I wonder if they were they always that way or whether they gradually took on that form over the decades. Perhaps as the bulbs crowded in upon one another in the untended garden the petals grew wild as a result. . . . → Read More: Thanks to Old Gardeners We’ve been having a stretch of cold weather here in Washington, like so many other parts of the country. Nothing too horrible here, just a string of nights below 20 degrees and days that haven’t made it up above the freezing mark. Not very impressive if you live in Minneapolis, or upstate New York. Still, this is colder weather than we’ve had for a few winters. I’m afraid the rosemary shrub outside in my herb garden is probably done for by now. . . . → Read More: Surviving the Cold, Soaking up the Sun I’m so proud– I’ve finally managed to get an orchid to rebloom after years of trying. In fact, the house is decorated with several of my little projects right now. I have a reblooming amaryllis lighting up the kitchen with four fiery red flowers on one stalk, and another amaryllis in bud that should . . . → Read More: Winter Blooms As summer gives way to fall, I need to say a sad farewell to my small vegetable garden. It gave its all under very difficult conditions this year. A brilliant spring with gallons of crunchy lettuces and radishes gave way to a miserable summer of flooding rains followed by scorching drought. Midway through August . . . → Read More: Requiem for My Tomatoes |
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