We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
1870 barn behind a young Sequoia Gigantea planted in the 1920s.
The barn served a spa hotel where people came for the supposedly curative properties of the natural cold soda water springs on the property, but when the hotel burned to the ground in 1898, the property passed into private hands.
75° yesterday dropping to 44° at night. 70 now at 10:00.
- Ethanol-free gas (100% gasoline) for power tools is now available in some Home Depots
- For smaller trees and stumps, cut them to ground level with a reciprocating saw. I have a cordless Sawzall (wonderful tool), but the thought never occurred to me to do that. Chain saws can never touch dirt, but a Sawzall don't care.
Found in the back of Dad's garage during clean-up and clean-out. It's a fairly old machine but in good shape. With his mild Parkinson's, I doubt he had used this saw for at least five years. Still, it tried to start up and then sputtered out.
Brought it in to my excellent local power tool guy. There was water in the tank. He blamed that on the ethanol in the gas. Had to clean and flush. Needed a tune-up and a new blade. Cleaned it up inside and out so it looks like new, too. I do know that, for power tools, it is best to drain the gas tank if they will not be needed for a few months. I just run 'em until they empty the tank. Only occasionally do I have a job that needs a full tank, so I rarely fill it up.
This lightweight Huskie will be a good alternative to my heavy Stihl Farm Boss, for smaller jobs.
Collectively, our readers seem to know about everything.
I am having battery problems. I do not understand batteries. I think the main purpose of these batteries is ignition. Or are they for generating sparks too? I am ignorant.
Anyway, I have beeb experiencing a rash of dead batteries.
This excellent, heavy-duty baby takes a gel 6 V. battery. It died over the winter. I tried to recharge it but that didn't work. The guy said not to leave its batteries out in the winter.
A also have one of these cool trimmer-mowers which are fine and easier to use for weeds and tall grass in tight or steeply-sloped areas. It's like a gas-powered scythe. Luckily or not, it's a pull-start so no battery issue there.
Our Farmall tractor takes a regular 12 V car battery, so that's simple. Naturally, the battery dies over the winter from disuse, but is sometimes rechargeable by jumping it. However, our old Ford tractor takes a 6 V which will not hold a charge after jumping it and running it for hours.
I don't like that because I sometimes stall out on hills, and don't want to leave the tractor stuck outdoors. Do I need to buy a new 6 V tractor battery every Spring?
I love cucumbers from my garden in the summertime. I harvested my first few this weekend.
Is anything more refreshing than a hot cucumber fresh off the vine?
I guess I prefer them as a dominant component, and not as a minor ingredient. Mixing tomato with cucumber is an insult to Mr. Cucumber - except in a Greek tomato, cucumber and feta cheese salad - which is hardly a salad. More like a fine simple plate of food, with olive oil drizzled over it.
Cucumber sandwich: 2 or three 1/4 to 1/2 inch-thick lengthwise slices of peeled cucumber - try to minimize the seeds. Sprinkle a little salt. Put on bread with some mayo. This version is definitely not a lady's tea sandwich.
Cucumber and onion salad: My Granny made this all the time in the summer. Sometimes with shrimp in it as a light lunch, but I like it plain. I don't think she used the oil, but maybe she did. I make it without oil and with the clear-colored vinegar, sugar to taste, and definitely let it sit in the icebox an hour or so to absorb the flavor.
Yet another cucumber slaw: A favorite. Peel and seed them. Shred in Cuisinart. Always drain shredded cukes in a colander with a bit of salt and some weight on top for 20 minutes before making slaw or it gets too watery. Shred some carrots too. Toss together in a vinaigrette with a little salt and pepper. Really nice with lobster and fish, but also terrific with barbecue.
Cucumber and Dill Salad. A classic, and the only reason to bother growing dill in the garden.
In New England, haying - or at least the mowing - is generally done by the 4th of July depending on the weather. It's been a wet Spring but it's drying out now.
At the farm, we wait until a few weeks later so as not to destroy or disturb the nests of the meadow-nesting birds. We have Bobolinks, Savannah Sparrows, Woodcock, the occasional Meadowlark, and Mallard and Black Duck in the tall grass along the stream.
For our wild brushy fields, we'll brushwack them anytime we can between August and October.
Here's a detail from that painting. Peening, I think:
Here's our reader Buddy's scythe. I do not think he has used it lately.
They have good choices of blades and accessories too, some for brush and saplings. (h/t, reader)
I don't know whether I would have the time or energy to scythe the 8-acre brushy hillside meadow which sits above the bridge, but it would be good for some areas that we can't get the brushwacker into due to slope or boulders.
One of my grandpas, a capitalist industrialist who hated paperwork and hated business, loved nothing more than a weekend day scything at the farm until the sacred cocktail hour. Then Dewar's on the rocks, well-deserved. Usually two of them; one for the blood and one to stimulate the appetite along with Pall Mall cigarettes or a Habanos ceegar. He taught my Mom how to use a scythe, and she taught me. We still have his pedal-powered grinding wheel in the barn with the water pan.
Nonetheless, I enjoy a gas-powered brushwacker. It's a good workout just to muscle that heavy machine around, and it shreds everything to bits, even 2" saplings. Leaves no swaths of cuttings to suffocate the grasses.
Yes, they do sell Brown Turkey Fig, which is readily grown in New England. They also have the Celeste Fig.
In a tough winter, they will have to come back from the roots, but they usually do. Old-time Italians grow them in big pots, and drag them into the garage for the winter.
In the colder zones, grow them in a sheltered spot. My old fig finally succumbed to an especially cold winter, but I have a spot for a new one where I won't forget to keep it well-covered and mulched for winter.
Our kids loved to pick and chow down on hot, ripe figs out in the garden. And a big fig leaf is always useful for...summer clothing.
Came home from a busy and exertional family day last weekend to notice some of Mrs. BD's Digitalis in glorious bloom.
Whenever I see Digitalis - Foxglove - in bloom I remember "the Shropshire Crone," renowned in medical history for promoting the use of it for "dropsy" - congestive heart failure. The astute and open-minded Dr. William Withering took notice and got all of the credit - hence the continued use of Digitalis for heart failure. Many people we see walking around would be either dead or bed-ridden without this herbal treatment. Digitalis increases the contractility of the failing heart, but in higher doses it kills you.
Digitalis is a biennial, and self-sows generously when in a happy spot - half-day sun, rich soil. That is Nepeta in bloom in the foreground, and the low-growing Little Lamb's Ear Hydrangea on the left, which will bloom white in late summer.
Up here in the land of snow, we treasure our gardens especially because our growing season is so darn short. Our plants have to know how to carpe diem even if we do not. We try to learn from them. Winter is coming.
Mrs. BD loves flowers and all that - she and her pals call it "plant material" because they use all sorts of things in their design efforts.
Often, however, she will just toss flowers in a vase without too much design except basic color coordination and texture variation, and it is very pleasant.
Here are her tips to keep cut flowers looking good in water for a week or more:
- A fresh sharp cut to each stem at a 45 degree angle, and warm water
- 1 tsp of bleach per quart of water (prevents rotten, cloudy water which destroys the blooms)
- 1 tablespoon of sugar per quart of water (feeds the flowers - they aren't dead yet)
- Never let a leaf be submerged - but you can submerge blooms if you want for cool effects. You can submerge Hosta leaves too.
A lawn appreciates being plugged annually, spring or fall. This fellow omits one of the reasons to do it, which is the compacting of even good topsoil by people, dogs, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, etc. Earthworms do a good enough job of this in a meadow, but not in a lawn. You can rent a plugger for a day quite cheaply.
It's easy to forget that lawns are not natural. They are, in fact, grass gardens.
It's been many years since we have bought either fresh or dried Thyme at the store. It's the easiest herb to grow in full sun and dry, lousy soil, and it comes back after hard freezes and cold winters. An advantage is that the leaves stay on the plant all winter, so you can just go out and scratch the snow off and harvest the sprigs you need. (I just throw the sprigs in with the leaves on, so my cooking often ends up with denuded Thyme sprigs in it.) Cooking with Thyme.
Another advantage is simply the smell it creates in a garden on a hot summer day. 4 or 5 small plants in the Spring will spread all over, only needing a little watering the first year to get started.
Thyme is the ultimate "savoury" flavor, but it's mild enough to make it difficult to over-use. I think it's basic to most stews and soups, Italian or otherwise. My chef friend uses it in muffins and biscuits, and on vegetables. She uses chopped Thyme blossoms on fruit cocktail. It has to be part of any bouquet garni.
Thyme comes in many varieties, some man-made and some wild. Most is Thymus vulgaris - common Thyme, with variants thereof. I assume it has Mediterranean origins. In the Massachusetts Berkshires, we have acres of Creeping Thyme as weeds in the less-fertile meadows, and my Mom always planted it between flagstones. Smells good in the summer when stepping on it, but watch out for the bees.
As a lady with refined sensibilities, Mom was always attentive to the small, charming details of life. There were always small vases of wildflowers around.
It's still Fall Planting Season in the temperate zone. Most of these laurels will not thrive above Zone 7 unless in a shaltered location.
Lots of plants are called "laurel" without being real members of the Lauraceae family. Bay Laurel and Avocado are true laurels.
Our eastern Mountain Laurel, the state plant of CT which grows in dense, impenetrable 20' high thickets on our hills, is not a true laurel. Neither are the Cherry Laurels, which are (strangely) in the family Rosaceae, genus Prunus - same genus as roses, apples, and cherries. (Seems anything can get called "laurel" if it has glossy oval evergreen leaves.)
The Cherry Laurels (Prunus laurocerasus) appear in several forms, subspecies, or cultivars in the US, and few are native to the US. Here are a few of them. I like them for the lush, tropical evergreen appearance, and the birds like them for winter cover and for spring nesting.
Like hybrid Rhodadendrons, Zone 6 is pushing their limit unless they are sheltered, next to a warm building, or near salt water. The southern US is really a better place for them, but I like experimenting. Although they are considered semi-shade or filtered light plants, up here they seem to enjoy plenty of sun.
I have three varieties: the big, upright, fast-growing "Skip" Laurels ('Schipkaensis') which make a great tall (10-15' hedge), a few small hedges of Otto Luyken English Laurel, and a couple of handsome Portuguese Laurels, a compact, slow-growing rounded type with nice red stems. The latter two were produced by Monrovia.
Wonderful plants, all things considered, and a much better bet than trying to make the very picky Mountain Laurel and hybrid Rhodys happy in this neck of the woods. Mountain Laurel, like Blueberry, only grows well where it feels like growing. If they don't like the conditions, they just die, slowly.
Photos: Above: small row of Otto Luykens in from the of the wall, and some tall Skips behind. Left: A Portuguese Laurel, about 5' high.
First box arrived from Bluestone Perennials. Perfect timing to complete the installation of the new beds. Small plants now, but by June they will crowd out the weeds.
In case you're interested, here's what I am putting in them (much already done in the past 2 weeks):
Pink Knock-Out Roses Little Bunny Fountain Grass Dwarf Red Sedum Nepeta, tall blue and low white Creeping Phlox Boxwood Perennial Geranium Narcissus Scilla (Bluebell) Salvia Stella D'oro Daylily Giant Allium Asian Lily Aster Phlox Daisy Agastache Heliocanthus Red Salvia (Wild Thing) in defiance of Mrs. BD who believes that red is tacky in a garden.
Most of these good for Hummingbirds and butterflies. Many of them are transplants from places where they aren't thriving. If any annuals are needed, obviously I will add them in the Spring. Doubt I will need any, though. Well, for the first year I might need some.
Planning, preparing, and installing a new border is great fun but, like all gardening, it lacks immediate gratification unless you live south of the freezing line.
It takes 2 years for a perennial bed to begin to mature, 1 1/2 years if first planting is in the fall. If you plant in the fall, don't fertilize until Spring.
In case you are refurbishing any temperate-zone perennial borders this fall, here are some of my pics of some informal borders at the NYBG. Even informal borders need structure: a wall, a hedge, a path - some architecture.
Every plant here has a label, so I remember what a number of them are if you ask in the comments:
Among other sun perennials I plan to squeeze into my new borders are a Shasta Daisy variety, one that grows 2' max instead of the tall ones.
Nowadays, they come in varying heights. Who built the original Shasta Daisy? The great Luther Burbank, of course. The guy was a master and pioneer of genetic engineering for commercial purposes. His russet potato is still the biggest seller, especially for French Fries.
BTW, you can google Bluestone Perennials for a wide selection of well-priced, fall-shipping plants. They are small, but if you put them in now they will grow robustly in the Spring and triple their size in a few weeks.
We are re-building some perennial and shrub beds this fall. No garden is ever finished; most are usually in transformation. Having lost a large old Sugar Maple a few years ago, a shade border has become a full-sun border.
That's an opportunity, but it takes a lot of wheelbarrow and shovel work to prepare the beds (adding manure, peat moss, etc) and to get it planted before a frost - and I have a busy life. Designing a border is the fun part, and Mrs. BD has kindly told me that "It's your turn" to do it. Right now is the time to get the perennials in the ground, and shrubs and perennials planted or transplanted. Real gardeners try to plant in the fall, not in the Spring.
Most perennials can be bought online now for immediate delivery, while the local garden shop may have nothing but mums, asters, and pumpkins.
Part of the fun of design is ensuring early Spring through fall blooms, contrasting textures and heights, harmonious colors in the various bloom seasons, some degree of repetition, some plants which provide structure to the plan, something for winter interest, etc. It's a challenge, even if you are aiming for an informal "cottage garden." It's like painting.
Perhaps later I will list the plants I am putting in, but today just one of them: the late summer and fall-blooming Anemones (my pic from a NYBG border last week).
With deer fence. Nice garden. Mine is a complete mess right now, needs to be rebuilt. Dad has rows of raised beds, around 10 of them, inside the split-rail fence. One bed is asparagus, one is for my Mom's cut flowers. Peonies, Dahlias, Zinnias, etc.
As the trees have grown and begun to shade, the old folks want me to to come up with my chain saw and do some work. Dad's too old to be safe with a chainsaw, to put it mildly (Korean War vet, Second Lieut., US Army). Well, that's one more source of free firewood, but he needs some too. They have a wood stove in the kitchen. Yankees are cheap and proudly so, but we like to keep things looking orderly and respectable. Never know when the Pastor will stop by.
Maybe I will enlist my men's Bible study group for the job. Maybe my brother and my lad too. We like to do that sort of work, and all of them are young, strong, and enjoy chainsaws and wood-splitting. And we all enjoy doing hard work as a team. Lots of laughs, with beer. "Praise the Lord - the tree didn't fall on the truck." Wait until the ground freezes and I can get a truck back there.
That is happy Autumn Clematis growing on their garden gate.
Late September and early October is the time to re-seed and fertilize your lawns in the temperate zone. At this point, we have weeds, crab grass, holes from skunks and possums digging for grubs, chipmunk holes, wild strawberry infestations, and all sorts of other lawn miseries. (I do not have lawn irrigation - too much lawn to cover.)
Even though, in theory, we encourage minimizing lawn space (except for a good square for Croquet) and pleasant grass walking paths between gardens and borders, we do believe in pleasing, healthy lawn grass as a part of garden design.
We're doing NY this weekend. The New York Botanical Garden's Monet Show will be closing soon. They recreated his garden in Giverny, inside the Conservatory, right down to his lily pond and his bridge - painted in his own bridge color.
His gardens were a blooming frenzy of uncoordinated color. Dominant? Roses, Helianthus, and Dahlias this time of year. He scoured the world for interesting plants, and threw them in. In his later years, he only painted his garden.
We love gardens and gardening ideas, getting ready for Spring right about now. I believe that Mrs. BD is finally in recovery from her historic, purist insistence on not mixing annuals with perennials.
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees as I explained earlier.
Today, spring bulbs. You do not want to plant them until nights are regularly below 50 degrees F or the bulbs will either rot or try to send up shoots.
However, early enough to get some roots into the soil.
Early fall (ie late Sept to November) is the best time for planting or transplanting most things in the temperate zone.
There's less heat to stress the plants, there's more rain, and plants have just enough time to send out new roots so they will be established by Springtime (and also because all plants begin growing - underground - well before what we consider Spring planting season. Thus fall planting gives them a double head-start to prepare. Plants grow roots at least a month before they show any green).
I planted three Knock-Out Roses this weekend. They are the easiest, most care-free, toughest shrub roses around. That's why they have become the biggest sellers. (Bill Radler built them - not the government - and he is getting rich from his creation. It's called genetic engineering.)
September to early October is the time to plant Peonies, too. I remember when everybody's grandma had a circular peony patch somewhere, but now people just put them in borders. Prepare their soil well, because Peony plants last a long time and take a year or two to become established and strong.
People recommend full sun for them, but half-day sun seems fine.
These elegant stone barns were the dairy operation on the Rockefeller family's Kykuit Manor estate in Pocantico Hills, NY -a charming semi-rural hamlet nestled between the remarkably named villages of Sleepy Hollow and Pleasantville, one which has probably the highest-performing public schools in NY if not in the entire USA. Also, a famous Matisse and Chagall church.
The family recently deeded 1200 acres of their pasture and woodlands to New York State as parkland, now Rockefeller State Park Preserve. It has 20 miles of scenic riding and hiking trails, many overlooking the Hudson River. The parking lot was filled with horse trailers.
This land is only 25 miles north of Manhattan, 8 miles north of White Plains in Westchester County. That's what is remarkable about it.
The stone barns area of the preserve is now operated as a demonstration organic farm (definitely not vegan - they grow their own free-range pigs, beef, chickens, lamb, turkeys and geese), and is the site of the Blue Hill Restaurant. They only cook local, and pretty much all of their food comes from their farm, year-round, like old-timey farmers. They do not make their own Coke or Scotch whiskey, however. We stopped by for a stroll and a late lunch last weekend. Blue Hill has no menu, reservations required, but their cafe is casual.
OK, I think eating local is silly and that "organic" is a foolish fad. Harmless efforts, though. I did happen to notice that the natural gas which runs their a/c is imported from out-of-state because NY still has no fracking. Same for the greenhouse heating system for winter. Local food, imported energy. Guess that passes as "green" these days.
1870 barn behind a young Sequoia Gigantea planted in the 1920s. 
They make them to fit your height, weight, and arm length. Pretty snazzy to own a bespoke scythe. They even make them for southpaws.
Our annual 
Mrs. BD loves flowers and all that - she and her pals call it "plant material" because they use all sorts of things in their design efforts. 
Among other sun perennials I plan to squeeze into my new borders are a Shasta Daisy variety, one that grows 2' max instead of the tall ones. 
Late September and early October is the time to re-seed and fertilize your lawns in the temperate zone. At this point, we have weeds, crab grass, holes from skunks and possums digging for grubs, chipmunk holes, wild strawberry infestations, and all sorts of other lawn miseries. (I do not have lawn irrigation - too much lawn to cover.)
Springtime is the time to plant annuals, but fall is the best time to plant perennials, shrubs, and trees 
Early fall (ie late Sept to November) is the best time for planting or transplanting most things in the temperate zone.
