Last night our local weather man dropped the news: the first freezing cold of the season would be here next Wednesday night. As if it had been listening in, this morning the garden shone with golden sunlight reflected and refracted through crystalline dewdrops, and was descended upon by hordes of pollinators. Butterflies, bees, wasps...all seemed to be gorging themselves on the last few drops of liquid sunshine. I couldn't res...

So many aspects of modern life feel like getting a fire hose blast to the face--overwhelming rivers of terrible news offered up alongside targeted advertisements and Internet drama by the metric ton. Every time I open my browser I'm hit with the relentless, horrifying stories of mass shooting after mass shooting, social media bullshit, and the latest salvos in the stinking cesspool that is modern politics. For my own mental we...

 As I've grown older I've come to appreciate the all the beauty in the natural world, even the wet stuff. It's damned inconvenient for driving into town, though.

Rough weather is predicted for our area today, but before it arrived, I took my camera on a quick walk around the garden.

Peggy Martin roses are wonderful climbers, with long, sturdy canes perfectly suited for training along espalier wires. They're tough as nails too, fully living up to their reputation as the only plant to survive under 20 feet of salt water for two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. Mine has been planted, dug up, hauled across town to our new home, planted, dug up again, and planted again, and each time it's bounced back with nary...

Every year in spring I tend to let the garden go a little wild.

While my neighbors are pulling out their lawnmowers to tame the quickly spreading green, I find that I just can't bear to  cut back all the beautiful wildflowers.

There are no neatly-edged sidewalks.

 No super-sanitized, concrete-covered areas for my kids to play.

Just acres and acres of white, yellow, blue, and green.

I'll mow, of course, when the summer com...