Summer 2020

First off, let me assure you that Becky, our kids, grandkids, and I are all doing well. Becky and I live beside a woodland mountain and creek. We already work at home. We have each other. And, of course, our garden is right out our door.   READ MORE

Cheryl L. Davison: From Florence, CO: “A healthcare worker, I have written for travel and trade magazines.” Cheryl had charming stories in last issue and GP No. 118!

Shannon Smith: “I am a retired highschool teacher and fifth-generation Kansan. Christopher is now a seventh grader, coming over to mow my lawn soon. And Zephy is waving at me.”  READ MORE

I grew up in Southern California during the 1950s. My father proudly built our square little bungalow alongside several others in a row on Moorpark Street in Los Angeles.   READ MORE

I once lived in an iris-blue Queen Anne house that was bordered with 20 pink, yellow, and white roses, but that was another lifetime. When my husband died, I took a teaching job in another county, farther west, one that provided teacher housing.  READ MORE

Just before the building permit was issued for our RV garage, my wife and I had an epiphany: the roof of the garage was going to be flat, get lots of sunshine, and be well out of reach of deer. Why not put a garden on it?  READ MORE

Are you a morning person or an evening person? I am very much a morning person. I seldom wake after 5 a.m., but by 7 p.m. it’s dull to be around me! My husband was an evening person. He tended to be withdrawn at breakfast, whereas I never wanted to do much after the sun went down.  READ MORE

I experienced a moment of sadness last week when the bolt-like button on my favorite pair of garden jeans fell onto the floor. The piece of fabric where it had been attached had simply worn away entirely. There’s no way to sew it back on, since there is no fabric left upon which to sew.  READ MORE

In the shade of mingling paulownias, eight children sprawled like a litter of puppies atop a blue tarp, fair heads and dark dappled by sunlight. Seasoned veterans of our library’s Summer reading program, they radiated skepticism.  READ MORE

How difficult can it be?” I said to my husband, the Silicon Valley computer nerd, on Wednesday morning. He peered at the magazine article with a cautious expression, no doubt wondering if this was a “Honey Do” item. It wasn’t.  READ MORE

Just to be clear here, I’m not a city gardener. I live in the country. The closest city to us, here in far northern Vermont, is Burlington (population 42,000) which our oldest son, who lives in New York City (population 8.6 million), tells us barely deserves the name.  READ MORE

It started with the death of my daughter’s horse. The cost of hiring someone to come with a truck to load and cart off its thousand-pound body was daunting, so I agreed to inter Kristina’s beloved Arabian pony near the root cellar, a good distance from the house.  READ MORE

A chunk of heaven. This was one gardener’s description of the late Elsa Bakalar’s teaching garden in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts. For the 12 students who had come to learn, the title was apt.  READ MORE

I live on a small property in a small town in Indiana, so I don’t have space to garden as I’d really like. If I could, I’d grow so much I could have a produce stand. As it is, I utilize small plots, a few straw bales, and a zeal that exceeds my allotted square feet.  READ MORE

I live on a heavily trafficked corner in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Cars race up the hill from the main drag and routinely collide with other cars crossing the avenue where my turreted stone house sits on its own little hill.  READ MORE

Down in a little stream valley in Virginia, where green comes in 48 shades and fireflies delight the senses on warm Summer evenings, a war has erupted between two otherwise sensible people.   READ MORE

Some of my earliest memories, from the 1950s, are of my mother’s huge garden, necessitated by the need to feed 11 children on a small farm in southern Minnesota. On the west side, the garden was edged by a row of hollyhocks that seemed to grow 10 feet tall.  READ MORE