Category: Thoughtlines
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We’re living in interesting times – honestly, I wish the days were rather more dull. In Colorado along the Front Range where I garden we’ve had a few drops of rain and some snowflakes floating around without purpose. Everything and everybody is stressed out; a couple of days ago, howling winds shook the remaining leaves…
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I have just had a look at my blog for the first time since February. I am not the most dedicated of bloggers, obviously. In doing so, I discovered that yesterday, 22 April, there were 85 views of my blogs about my work on Cecil Pinsent. This has made me curious as to WHY? Who…
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One of the enduring frustrations of living in the States again is not being able to purchase a piece of meat that is still attached to its bone, should the cut have been near one, or jacketed in its flavor-giving layer of fat. It, of course, has been excised for my own good. Whether I…
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“Today, when visitors first encounter the charm and elegance of Tuscan villas and gardens, they see what they want to see—Renaissance beauty—not recognizing that they are admiring is the work of a 20th-century English architect. In 1986, I was one of these starry-eyed admirers, gazing out over the Florentine landscape in awe and ignorance, which…
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Working with plants and soil takes us out of ourselves and our daily rut, letting us connect not just with nature, but with our inner child. And goodness knows, in these straitened times we need to remember, and embrace, the simple joy of simple pleasures. I’m about to move into a new house. It was…
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The Iowa winter seems to have dragged on interminably. Perhaps it seems that way because I’m preparing to move and deadlines always seem so far off, until, that is, the few days before D-day, and then you’re left wondering, where did the time go. Enough of this quasi-metaphysical mooning. I planted the garden in front…
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I have no doubt that improving my property is worth every penny spent. Especially in these down-turn times. Of course I want to spend my pennies in the garden—it’s what I do. But Himself would rather build shelves to hold his collection of CDs, which is really what he’d rather be investing in, because it’s…
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Oh goody! Quite a few months ago it was announced that there are three more planets in our solar system. That changed everything, and it continues. It seems that not a day goes by but what was once safe and familiar is suddenly a walk on the wild side. The things that made it possible…
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The NYT is on a tear about bugs and grub, and so am I, it seems. Today’s Op-Ed has a contribution from E. J. Levy, a creative writing prof at the University of Missouri. To sum up the parts of his story, we are, he writes, “probably ingesting one to two pounds of tasty flies,…
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I love it, and once wrote a book on it, titled English Topiary Gardens, for which I traveled the length and not-so-wide breadth of England hunting for topiary gardens. They weren’t hard to find since topiary breeds a showmanship of sorts, with the best examples of the pruner’s art ghettoed in the front garden, framing…
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