Fun
A Way to Garden
Dear Kay,
I’m such a lapsed gardener.
Before knitting hit me, and I met you, and all THIS happened, I was curious about gardening—flowers and herbs, not vegetables. Vegetables always seemed too high stakes, too goal oriented. If a perennial flopped, nobody was going to starve.
Along with plant catalogs, plant dictionaries, and how-to-grow-plants books, I spent my fair share of time back in the previous millennium admiring whatever gardens happened to show up in Martha Stewart Living.
Margaret Roach was the garden editor at Martha Stewart Living for many years, before becoming editorial director. So I like to think that I’ve been admiring her ideas for a really long time.
Now, Margaret has an epic gardening enterprise, including a juicy website, awaytogarden.com, that explores vegetable and flower gardening from her light-hearted, straight-talking point of view. She reminds us that for her, gardening is not a hobby—it’s her spiritual practice. The older I get, the more this idea resonates with me.
ANYway. She hosts a podcast, which runs the gamut from prescriptive (“The Latest on Backyard Tick Research”) to the poetic (“Braiding Sweetgrass”).
I like this conversation with garden designer Susan Morrison, “The Less Is More Garden.”
It’s a conversation that really makes me want to rejigger my whole yard.
As soon as I finish knitting up this sleeve, I mean.
Love,
Ann
Ah, japonica ! – how beautiful is that look of stems without leaves and only glorious blooms ?! Yesyes, I know it’s now referred to as ornamental quince; but I grew up loving japonica, and will die that way. 🙂
Oh back in the day before my knitting obsession kicked in I even entered green thumb contests and won small prizes. I even came in 2nd place behind a 12 year old boy in a tallest sunflower contest. Now, I start seeds inside, some live and some don’t, fight the deer and turkeys for the seedlings who survive the sprouting. Then, all summer long I sit on my porch in my comfy knitting spot and just look at the disaster that could be my garden. Last fall, on a warm day, I put down my knitting and dug out the perennials that took over.
They say spring is here, I have 6 baby lettuces popping up in my mini-greenhouse, and the summer knitting is progressing. Two tunics done, a polo will be done today.
Oh, that top “blossoming” photo fills my heart with hope… and joy! Thank you.
This is wonderful! A new podcast and perhaps, encouragement to expand the wee zinnia patch that I view from the kitchen window.
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” — Audrey Hepburn
(BTW, no Snippets today?)
Yay! I found my Snippets today. For some reason they had been divered to my spam folder.
As I cross stitched years ago, “who plants a seed beneath the sod, and waits to see, believes in God “. Don’t know whose quote that is.
Welcome back from Scotland and other parts 🙂
I try very hard to grow as much of my food as possible in the mostly-stone also-rusty-dusty (no exaggeration) “soil” here. 2017 was the year that, despite months of very determined effort, I would have starved by December if I was truly dependent upon just my garden produce. BUT! I am hitching up my dungarees and preparing for another “go” as soon as this snow melts. If it ever does. I mean, of course it will. Right?
I have been reading her blog for several years and last summer I went on a garden tour of her house in the little hamlet of Copake Falls, NY. It was everything I imagined it would be, so peaceful and pretty, and not overdone, as some garden tour houses can be. It was no nice to meet her, I would love to do this again.
I am speechless. Thank you. And confession: I cannot knit. (Better with a shovel.) My sister? Serious w/the needles. Me? Disaster.
So pleased to see A Way to Garden getting a shout-out here! It’s a total delight!! I love it even though I’m now in upside-down seasons in the Antipodes…her good garden talk knows no borders! : )