Seed Swap at Monitcello in Charlottesville, Virginia

Gardens at Monitcello. Photo by my sister, Mary Fassetta

I just received a press release from Monticello, the heritage site and home of the great Thomas Jefferson. It's located very near to Seven Oaks (my farm) in Charlottesville, Virginia.  The gardens alone make the trip worthwhile and I have written about the gardens of Monitcello for various websites. It's a favorite place for me to take out of town visitors.  They will be hosting the 5th Annual Seed Swap on September 17, 2011. Below is the press release I received from the events coordinator. It sounds like fun!

Flowers at Monitcello

Statue of Jefferson at University of Virginia

Heritage Harvest Festival seed swap encourages exchange of historical and heirloom seed varieties 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.—Seed savers will unite at the home of Thomas Jefferson September 17, to exchange historical and heirloom seed varietals at the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello’s third annual Old Timey Seed Swap. 

The 5^th annual Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello is a celebration of revolutionary gardener Thomas Jefferson.  Often considered America’s “first foodie,” Jefferson championed vegetable cuisine, plant experimentation and sustainable agriculture. Monticello’s West Lawn, the location for this year’s swap, reveals the importance Thomas Jefferson placed on sharing seeds with neighbors.  Jefferson’s excitement for botanical discoveries may have germinated with the Lewis and Clark expedition, from which he received a considerable amount of seed varieties.  Jefferson had a genuine enthusiasm for seed exchange and preservation and was passionate about passing along seeds to fellow gardeners.

Jefferson wrote to André Thoüin of the Jardin de Plantes in Paris that his seeds “came safely to hand and were committed to our best seedsmen, in order that they might be preserved and distributed so as to become general.”  Peter Hatch, Monticello’s director of gardeners and grounds, has dedicated his life’s work to restoring Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary garden.  His significant contributions to historic plant preservation and gardening have been manifested through seed saving.   

“Seed saving, a critical feature of Thomas Jefferson’s gardening efforts at Monticello, is integral to the sustainable gardening movement. The Heritage Harvest Festival’s seed swap, at 9 a.m. on September 17th, is a fun and engaging introduction to traditional and heirloom varieties of flowers and vegetables. Sharing the seeds of special plants is a great way to preserve cherished vegetables and build a sense of community among gardeners of all levels of interest and knowledge,” said Hatch.  

The seed swap allows festival goers to obtain and pass on rare seeds not available commercially.  The Old Timey Seed Swap is open to anyone who shares an interest in gardening.  Seed owners may give out samples or charge a fee for participants with no seeds to trade. Rodger Winn, host of the swap, anticipates a large response because of the participation of legendary seed savers, such as Debbie Donley and Rob Danford.  Winn says most participants are from Central Virginia; however, avid gardeners from Kentucky, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina also participate.  One of the many draws to the swap is the abundance of seeds from the Appalachia region, the birth place of many heirloom beans, corns, and tomatoes.  Although these seeds are considered to be the most notable of the region, gardeners from Appalachia save seeds of all types of vegetable and flower plants.       

The Old Timey Seed Swap attracts a multi-faceted group of people. Business professionals, home makers and farmers alike unite for networking and seed preservation.  The diversity of people, the seed stories, and anticipation of getting something new is the uniqueness of the seed swap.  

Join the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the Southern Seed Exchange, and Rodger Winn on Saturday September 17th at 9 a.m. to enjoy this exclusive sharing opportunity.  The Old Timey Seed Swap is included in the price of admission to the Heritage Harvest Festival, $8 in advance, $10 at the door.

Growing Rose of Sharon

Patty, my gardening buddy and neighbor, emailed to let me know that the beautiful Rose of Sharon plant I'm enjoying so much wasn't only from her - our mutual friend Joan gave her the original plant, which Patty added to her garden, and then Patty gave me an offspring. So it's like our little circle of friends and neighbors is connected by these beautiful plants!

I was so inspired that I sat down and researched the Rose of Sharon, then wrote a new article about it today for Hub Pages. One thing I forgot to put into the article is that Rose of Sharon is the national flower of South Korea.  It was also one of the first plants written about - over 1,400 years ago, in ancient Chinese texts!  Simply amazing.

Anyway, please enjoy the article. Click the link to read it:  How to Grow the Rose of Sharon.

Pollinators at Work in the Morning Glory Vine

On Monday mornings, I usually take my camera into the garden and take photographs for articles I plan to write during the week. We got just about 5 inches of rain last week from a strong thunderstorm and the outer rim of Hurricane Irene, and the flowers just love it. I noticed that the morning glory vine growing over the trellis at the garden entrance looked particularly lovely, so I stepped closer to get some closeup photos of the various hued flowers. It was then that I noticed that some of the flowers were bouncing up and down, but there was no wind. As I watched, this little bee backed out of the deep throat of the flower. He was so coated with pollen that he was nearly indistinguishable from the white throat of the flower. Bees have always been a symbol of industry and hard work, and watching this guy move from flower to flower, diving in headfirst, then wiggling his bulbous butt as he backed out of the flower made me laugh. He never rested, though. He kept moving from flower to flower no matter how much pollen stuck to his abdomen.  I tried to capture my new pollinator friend at work in these photos.  Can you spot him?

New Blooms in the Flower Garden-Rose of Sharon Bush

Today's flowers are courtesy of my friend, Patty. Two years ago she gave me a little seedling she'd transplanted from her garden - a Rose of Sharon. I've never grown Rose of Sharon before and had no idea what to expect. We planted it at the back of the flower garden, near my climbing rose. That area of the garden gets partial sun, partial shade, and the soil isn't great, but Patty assured me that Rose of Sharon bushes are tough plants and can tolerate a wide variety of conditions. So we planted and waited.

This morning I was rewarded by the first pink blossom on the Rose of Sharon. I like it because it reminds me of the hibiscus growing in the butterfly garden, which is another favorite plant. And for good reason: technically, this particular Rose of Sharon is called Hibiscus syriacus, and the two are related.

According to Plant Care Guides from the National Gardening Association, Rose of Sharon grow as high as 8 to 12 feet tall, so my little 2 ft plant will grow to be a giant if all goes well. Rose of Sharon are very easy care and flower abundantly in late summer and early fall, the perfect time in my garden when most other plants are finished flowering.  Plant Care Guides states that Rose of Sharon produces flowers on new wood, so pruning  in early spring is a must. I'll just give this one a little gentle pruning to encourage flowers. I don't want to cut it back too much and damage it.  There are plenty of buds on it this year, and I am looking forward to more of the display from my new Rose of Sharon bush.

*   *   * 

Thank you to those who sent me kind messages via social media regarding our string of amazing events last week. I told my sister Mary yesterday, "Every day held a new challenge, but I am hopeful that I will get a nice, boring peaceful week!"  Hurricane Irene gave us a great deal of wind and rain, mostly rain, and fortunately the power remained on.  We are still experiencing a few minor aftershocks from last Tuesday's 5.9 magnitude earthquake but nothing major. Thank you to all for your good wishes.

Hurricane Preparations for the Garden

The trellis view before the wind moved my morning glories.

I can't quite recall a more adventure-filled week. I listed the events somewhere else today: Monday, business setbacks; Tuesday, 5.9 earthquake; Wednesday, aftershocks that woke us all up at 1 am; Thursday, on my return from an all-day business meeting, violent thunderstorm tossed a tree in front of the train on the tracks, causing quite the delay; Friday, we prep for Hurricane Irene.  I am really hoping for a boring, peaceful, totally nothing to report week!

Yesterday's thunderstorms brought wind gusts of over 60 mph to our farm, giving me a taste of what the hurricane might bring. The rain gauge reported 3 1/2 inches of rain - in under two hours!  On top of that, some plants were absolutely flattened by the rain.  My morning glory vines are growing thickly along the top of the trellis, and the wind lifted up a big mat of vines and pulled it right off.

If you live in an area prone to hurricanes or affected by hurricanes, you may want to read my latest essay for Main Line Gardening:  Hurricane Preparations for the Garden.

Can I Have a Do Over, Please?

I'm a sunny optimist. I have an optimistic nature, carefully cultivated and nurtured by my background in meditation, positive thinking, and New Thought-style philosophy.  So, given all that, why am I asking for a do-over?

Let's see. I had an awesome weekend with little Michael.  I am not a big fan of little children, but something inside me changed this weekend, and I found myself able to comfortably communicate with my godson and nephew, and looking forward to spending more time with him. That was a big adjustment and I was sad to wave goodbye to their car as they pulled away on Sunday morning.

After a great church service, I came home on Sunday, ate lunch, puttered around the house cleaning up after our company, then decided to check emails.  And there, sitting in my in-box from Friday after I'd logged off for the workday, was a note from a company I'd worked for since 2008 as a telecommuting freelancer letting me know they were cancelling my contract effective immediately.

Just like that, my biggest gig was gone. No good bye note, just a cold email that read like it had been penned by the corporate lawyer. Now what?

On Monday I was still too upset to do much. I told myself I could have at least a day to process the sudden loss of what I'd perceived of as an oasis of job security in the tumbled world of freelance work. As a freelancer, you never know what your income is going to be like from month to month. Some months you get a lot of work, other months you get nothing. Having that steady gig each month meant I could take some risks and be choosier about my work because I had a rock to fall back upon. Well, somebody dynamited the rock and it was gone.

I kept plans to meet friends for a concert at the university and enjoyed the music very much, but more so, the time with my friends  Getting outside my own head and away from my worries and listening to beautiful music, then spending an hour or two socializing with friends was just what I needed.

I sat down to work on Tuesday in a much better frame of mind. Then, around 1:51...the earthquake struck. My house is about 70 miles from the epicenter. I was sitting at my desk and I heard a noise like a truck coming down the driveway. I was expecting a UPS delivery and thought it was just his truck, but the noise got so loud it was as if the truck was in the room with me. My chair began shaking violently from side to side. Suddenly my computer monitor was jumping up and down. I have a large china cabinet in my office filled with horse models, and models began flying through the air from the shelves, crashing into pieces on the floor.  The noise grew louder. There was a pause...then it started again! I gripped the sides of my chair and felt vibrations just pulsing up through the floor, through the walls of my office.

It was by then that I realized it was an earthquake. I came about as close to panicking as I've ever come. I ran downstairs to the front door. Poor Shadow was in such a panic she was running around in circles upstairs trying to find a place to hide, but where an you hide from an earthquake? Pierre streaked by, and ran to his safety zone in the basement where he goes whenever there's a loud noise or a commotion.

Shadow finally came to my repeated calls, and with the grandfather clock bonging crazily in the downstairs hallway and dishes jumping and clattering in the cabinets, I yanked open the front door and ran outside. I sat with my arms around Shadow for several minutes on the front porch while my heart raced and the adrenaline pumped.  I still didn't believe it was an earthquake. I live in central Virginia.  An earthquake?  After a few minutes, I ran upstairs and called a neighbor to ask if she had the same experience at her house.  I could hear her smiling at saying yup, same thing here, that was an earthquake and wasn't it a doozy?  We hung up so we could check our homes, but I knew I wasn't crazy!

Aside from some smashed horse models and crooked pictures on the walls, we escaped unharmed. I thank God for that. I walked around the house examining practically every inch of the walls, ceiling and floors, looking at where pipes come in and out in the basement, sniffing for gas leaks, the works, but we were spared. Aside from losing some pieces of art I really liked that got smashed when they fell to the floor, we were lucky.

This weekend it looks like Hurricane Irene will pass further to the east, so we will get the bands of rain. It's heading to my old home on Long Island. According to the map, the bull's eye of the storm will pass directly over my old home town of Huntington.  I keep hoping the rest of this week will be uneventful. I think I have had as much excitement as I can stand!

Gardening with Children

Did you garden alongside your mom or dad when you were little? How did you first become interested in gardening?

These past two weekends, I had the rare experience of having a small child in the home, my 7 year old nephew. His parents do not garden. They live in a modest suburban home with a lawn and a shrub or too and lots of concrete sidewalks, walkway and patio...nature just doesn't interest them. I don't understand that, because it feels like throughout my entire life, I've loved nature. I remember as a child marveling at the clouds and jumping into piles of leaves on the lawn in the autumn when my older brothers raked them up. I remember my mom teaching me the names of the birds sitting on the telephone wires as she pushed my stroller along - wait! That's the answer, isn't it?

It's our moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas and all the other grownups in our lives who either taught us to love the world around us or ignore it and focus on the ephemeral. My mom gave me a sense of curiosity about nature, and my dad's love of science and his amateur science experiments, like the time he tried to grow ferns on a brick from spores he picked from a fern growing in the backyard, instilled a healthy curiosity in my mind and heart as a child.

My dad gardened, my grandma gardened, and my next door neighbor gardened; gardening was as natural to me as breathing. Knowing the names of trees and shrubs, flowers and birds, insects and everything in between was deemed important in my household.  Knowing the name of the current hot rock band or whatever else was 'hip' was deemed unimportant.

So many kids today are growing up completely oblivious to nature. It's not just city kids. City kids can be very keen on nature too. I remember walking through Central Park on a bright summer's day when I worked near Lincoln Center and watching children playing near a pond. They were pointing at the ducks and feeding them bread and they were loving every minute of it. There were little gardens in Manhattan too sandwiched in alleyways between buildings, community gardens made from whatever space was available.  There's nature in the middle of the city, too.

My nephew doesn't live near anyone who gardens, and his parents don't really care about gardening. They mow their lawn and that's it.  Their neighborhood is like that; we've visited them several times, and I don't remember anyone planting flowers at all.

When we took everyone out to the vegetable garden to show them what was growing, my nephew grew excited for the first time during his visit. "Look mom! Peppers!" he shouted, running to point at the peppers.  He clapped his hands in delight.  We let him pull a carrot and he accidentally pulled two. As soon as he got into the house, he wanted to scrub the carrot and eat it.  He ate two raw carrots right there standing at the sink! Can you imagine if you said, "Honey, would you like a raw carrots?" He'd probably demand potato chips. Yet you let him pull his own vegetables, and he was so excited to taste the carrot.

He tasted beets for the first time too. He didn't know what a beet was, and he pulled one for me.  He marveled at the pretty purple color. I happened to have some leftover ones in the fridge already cooked in a Harvard sauce, which is sweet and sour, and we gave him one to taste cold.  "Good?" my husband asked. "Good!" he declared around a purple mouthful.

Every garden bed he peered into he squealed with excitement. "Strawberries! Tomatoes! What's this?" pointing at the Swiss Chard - "And that?"

We couldn't get him interested in the hummingbirds at the feeder, or even the deer tip toeing across the yard at dusk, but vegetables he got excited about.  And that's a good thing. Showing a child where his food comes from, teaching him that it is okay to leave bugs alone and that some bugs are good, and teaching him to compost - which he got the hang of very quickly, knowing what to put into the kitchen compost bucket and what not to - gave me a good sense of having passed along a bit of wisdom, along with one scrubbed carrot in his lunch sack to take with him in the car.  It was like I got to pass along a bit of my grandma, a bit of my dad, a bit of Mr Hoffman, and a bit of the joy I feel for my garden, too.

Telling People That They Matter

One of my favorite windows from my childhood church

My old home town has its own page on Facebook, and it's been a wonderful way for me to reconnect with former neighbors, grade school and high school friends, and memories long buried. We've been sharing memories of our favorite places to hang out as teenagers, the old playground and recreation center, and the people and places that meant so much to us as children.

We talked about....

• Billy, the retarded man who used to hang out at the playground and pretend to give you tickets. The kids called him Moose because he was well over 6' 4" tall, and we were afraid of him. But we all remember Moose and the games we played with him in the lat 1960s early 1970s
• Charlie the Good Humor ice cream truck driver.  He'd always remember to pull up at your street corner and he'd always remember what flavor of ice cream you wanted. He used to let kids climb into the cab of his truck and jingle the bells - JING JING JING!
• The Dingy Man. I have no idea what his real name is.  He drove a battered green truck up and down the street with an old bell that sounded like two chimes grinding together - Ding - D----i----n------G! Hence the nickname the "Dingy" man after the dinging sound of the truck bell.  He'd drive slowly up and down all the town streets, ringing the unique bell, and our moms would gather the knives, scissors and lawn mower to be sharpened. He would park the truck, grind the knives, and moms would pay him in cash.
• The store owners - the Levines on Tulip Avenue, who still sell the best jelly bean flavors in the world; old Herb who retired from running the tiny candy shop, Shannon's, after over 40 years behind the counter; Bob R at Grand Value who used to eye all the teens and follow up around like we were all shoplifters; Mrs. Price, mom of my prom date in high school, who was the town's reference librarian and her special way of "ssshing" us when we got too noisy.

Billy has long since passed on, and I'm pretty sure Charlie the Good Humor man has passed away too.  I don't know what happened to Mrs. Price. I don't know what happened to the folks who owned Grand Value before they sold it and it became Raindew variety store.

But I did stop by Shannon's in 2007, when I returned to town, to say goodbye to Herb before I moved to Virginia. Herb ran Shannons Candy Store from the early 1970s until it shut down for good in 2010.

I told him how much his store had meant to me all those years.  I think his eyes teared up a little.

I never got a change to tell Mrs. Cook, the organist and music director at my childhood church, how much she meant to me, or Mrs. Vincent the other organist.  I never got to thank a few other people for making my childhood better. (Today's picture is a stained glass window from the church of my childhood.)

I wish Billy and Charlie and the Dingy Man and all those characters from our childhoods could know how much we loved and remembered them.  Here we are, a bunch of middle aged ex-Floral Parkers, getting choked up about how Charlie let us climb into his truck and how he knew you wanted a Bomb Pop or an Italian ice each night.  How Billy was teased a lot and how we all wish we could take that back.  How we are sorry for swiping candy bars or how are loved the old Floral Movie Theater with its faded red velvet curtains and ancient murals you could barely see across the old Vaudeville stage.

It's all changed now, and we can't go back.  But we can move forward.  We can remember to tell people we appreciate all the little things.

Tell people in your life that they matter to you.

It's better to tell them now than sit around the nursing home later, swapping stories.

Summer Is Winding Down

Summer is winding down here at Seven Oaks...a few days ago, we walked on the High Bridge Trail and noticed red leaves on the sumacs. Today, looking out my office window, I see some of the underbrush trees already turning shades of gold and red. This morning while I sat on the front porch with Shadow, I needed a sweater.  First time since April.

Shadow's nemesis - the beeping, belching yellow school buses - are back on the road during her early morning walk. In Prospect, new deliveries of donated furniture are starting to show up at the fire house in anticipation of the fall auction, another sign that fall is here.

I'm canning peppers, freezing tomatoes, and readying the garden beds for the fall crops of vegetables. The flowers are at their peak, and I'm noticing second flowering on some of the spring bloomers, the dianthus and a stray pansy or two.

Last year, I felt like summer rushed by all too fast. I worked too many hours and didn't take time to enjoy any time off. This year, I don't want summer to end. Each morning, the light seems more gentle, and each evening darkness falls too soon.

We have a few more weeks of summer yet to come, but I feel like already it is winding down. How about you? How do you tell the seasons in your garden?

View from the High Bridge Trail, looking south in Prospect

Timing Is Everything

My furry guardian angel: Shadow

Have you ever heard the expression, "Timing is everything?"  I saw a news article that mentioned meteor showers visible this week, with the best days Thursday and Friday between 3 am and 5 am or so (no, that's not a typo...).  I love a good meteor shower. It's like God is putting on a fireworks show just for me.  So I decided I would get up early to watch the show. I asked Shadow to wake me up early, and she was true to her word. On Thursday around 4:15 am, a warm muzzle nudged me awake, and I opened my eyes to her whiskey-brown ones staring at me across the edge of the bed. I was so sleepy though...all I wanted to do was roll over and go back to sleep!  I thought, "Well, I can always get up tomorrow..." but then my next thought was, "Better go out now while I can."

I parked my lawn chair on the walkway in front of the porch, tipped my head back, sipped coffee, and watched the skies with Shadow by my side. It's such a unique experience to sit outside in the country in the dark. The darkness is like velvet pressing around you, and after your eyes adjust to the dark, the starlight and intricate patterns of the constellations become visible in ways I could never see when I lived on Long Island.

I don't worry about animals coming close or any other things to fear because Shadow is there. German shepherd dogs are the best protection I know of, and she lay down by my side and was on what I call "relaxed alert," with her ears perked up but her demeanor very calm, so we were fine. She has an uncanny ability to sense danger, and I trust my 'guardian angel in fur' to watch my back whenever I work outside. Her keen senses alert to the presence of animals or people before any of us humans notice them. She watches my back all the time.

Within half an hour I saw a lot of small meteors, and one really great one that was truly like a firework. By the time the sky lightened around 5:20, I gave a sigh of happy satisfaction and decided to head out again early on Friday morning.

Timing, however, is everything.  Last night around 1 a.m. a terrific noise woke me up. John thought it was hail. Shadow was running around the bedroom just trembling with fear. It was pouring rain so hard on the roof that even with the windows closed, we could barely hear one another speaking. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. I didn't get to sleep again until 3, because Shadow was such a wreck. She's not normally afraid of thunder. In fact, she usually rolls over and goes back to sleep during thunderstorms. At one point during last night's storms, however, she actually dove under the bed to hide.  That's her spot of last resort in the house, when she's absolutely terrified of something. I didn't understand why she was so frightened and why she couldn't settle down.  The cat was also unnerved. Pierre went into the guest bedroom to his special bolt hole.  With both of them so freaked out by the storms, I was upset too.  I lay in bed with one ear listening for tornadoes, which I was sure would come...but didn't.

Needless to say, I ended up sleeping until 6, and thunder was still growling and snarling out there.  The skies were cloudy and sitting in a metal lawn chair in an open lawn area would NOT have been a good idea this morning.  Tomorrow and Sunday we have house guests for the weekend, so I won't be able to go out and see the meteors then...and then they peak moments for them are gone.

Remember that timing is everything. Don't put off joy for tomorrow. If I had yielded to the temptation to go back to sleep Thursday morning, I would have missed one of my favorite natural displays in the whole world. You can't predict what happens tomorrow. Seize the day!

Unexpected Surprises

Sometimes you have things all planned out, and an unexpected surprise delights you.  The other day, I was busily working away when my Internet connection went down. Now, I work from home as a freelance writer, editor and marketing consultant, and I rely upon my Internet connection for the majority of my work. When it stops, often I must stop, too.  After half an hour of fruitless clicking the little antenna icon on my computer tray, I gave up and grabbed my camera. I figured I could take my week's worth of pictures out in the garden. I write about herbs and gardening a lot, and try to take many of the pictures myself, so at least once a week you can find me outside snapping images at dawn or dusk to capture what I need.

The sky was a brilliant blue with puffy, fleecy clouds, and I realized that many of the sunflowers growing along the south side of the house had bent under the weight of their flower heads. By standing underneath, I could snap the sunflower and the blue sky, and crop out the window screens and side of the house. So I started snapping away.

When I loaded the pictures onto the computer, I burst out laughing.  There, putting along, was a big fat bumble bee, and my camera not only captured him in mid-flight heading to the sunflower...it captured his journey away,  probably annoyed with me for disturbing his snack!

I love it. It reminded me that sometimes unexpected surprises are the best ones of all.

See my friend leaving (lower right corner?) Bee zooms away

My New Book - A Gift Just for You

Download it FREE

To celebrate the release of my latest gardening book, How to Attract Birds to the Garden, and to thank readers who purchased my books, I created a free inspirational eBook.  You may download it directly from my publisher's website, or if you buy one of my books, check the thank you email I send out with every purchase. It includes links to two free eBooks, one filled with inspirational nature and garden photography and scripture passages, and the second to a marketing eBook for those who buy my business books.

I was inspired to create this book thanks to reader feedback on my Facebook page. Each day,  I posted one of my garden pictures, many of them the ones you see here. I get so many kind comments and private emails from people saying how they are inspired by the pictures or the pictures cheered them up that I decided to create this book.


Right now only the eBook is available. It is totally free of charge. I hope to offer the paperback and hardcover versions soon.  Because the publisher needs to make a few bucks to cover the cost of paper and printing, I can't offer hardbound or paperbacks free (yet) but maybe some day. Or maybe I'll have a little content on the blog. Won't that be fun?


Please enjoy my photography if you wish by downloading the PDF.  Feel free to pass the book along, but please do not use the images inside for ANY reason. I do own the copyright. 

Gardening/Inspiration Book
Song of Joy: Daily Meditations
My original nature photography, particularly garden photography and inspiring Biblical passages. This is a large file (20 MB) eBook with full color photography and passages to warm your heart and inspire you.

Checkout says "Buy Now" but it should be free. If it's not, please let me know.  Thanks.

My latest book, How to Attract Birds to the Garden, is 50+ pages, and available as a paperback ($9.99) or eBook download ($5.97).  It will teach you how to plant trees, shrubs and flowers to attract birds; types of birdfeeders and feed to use; how to make your own suet feeders; and much more. 

At Last: Meet Your Blogger

Well, at last. A picture of me in my element...so to speak. I had a house guest here last week who decided that after all the garden writing I do, the world needed to see a picture of me doing what I do best. Weeding.  A glamor shot this is not, but next time I whine - er, write - about the weeds, weeding, or anything to do with weeding the flower garden, remember this:

A Full Pantry of Fresh Organic Vegetables

Let me see a show of hands. (Peering out at my reading audience...).

How many people feel a great sense of satisfaction when the pantry is full of fresh, home-grown organic vegetables? When you see rows of canning jars neatly lined up and labeled, or a freezer full of labeled bags of fresh produce? A kitchen table groaning under the weight of garden produce?

Isn't it a great feeling to know where your food is coming from?

Not everyone agrees with me. I've met people who think it's stupid to grow your own food. They think, "Why would I want to do that when I can just run to the supermarket and buy whatever I want when I want it?"

They have a point. Right now we are picking pounds of tomatoes a day, peppers, eggplants...and some green beans.  The onions and potatoes are harvested, dried and stored in the cool dark basement. I've got 16 pints of canned beets and another two dozen or more beets still in the garden. Today I'm stopping off to buy some freezer containers for carrots because I have a huge garden bed full of them, and I plan to plant more seeds today to try to get another crop in this fall.

I've been eating tomato sandwiches and tomato salads for lunch every day, followed by squash and eggplant at dinner.  So I can see their point.

Yet I still feel quite a sense of accomplishment when I walk into the kitchen and see my giant metal chef's mixing bowl, pictured here, filled with vegetables.  I actually have two big bowls now on the kitchen counter filled with organic vegetables from the garden. In the pantry, the current tally is 16 pints of pickled beets, 8 half pints of dill pickles, and 6 pints of pickled peppers. Today I will add more peppers to the mix, since they don't freeze well for me. In the basement, I have over 30 pounds of potatoes stored, enough onions for the winter, and garlic from the crop almost two years ago, plus sweet potatoes leftover and still keeping nicely from last fall's harvest.

Last year, I calculated that the sweet potatoes alone saved me a bundle of money. I spent $16 on the sweet potato "slips" or plants and the harvest was well over 70-80 pounds of sweet potatoes; at $1 a pound, the very cheapest you'll find them, that's still considerable savings.  This year, the potatoes alone are making me sit up and notice the money-saving benefits.  I spent $2.50 on the seed potatoes and got a bag of Yukon Gold seed potatoes from our friends, Mel and Joan. I have about 30 pounds of potatoes now stored in the basement. How much would that cost me? Well right now potatoes are going for $5.99 for a 10 pound sack. You can do the math...

Beets are $1 a can, and a can is less than a pint.  My 16 pints of pickled beets are probably worth $16 - $32, yet I spent $1.79 on the seed package.

So there you have it.  Oh and another benefit? The other day I was wearing a sleeveless top for the first time in years. It was really hot and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. I was sitting in the living room reading a book, and the television screen was off. It caught my reflection and I realized that I had actually developed some muscles in my arms! I have definition in my upper arms now thanks to lifting, digging, pushing a wheelbarrow and a lawn mower and carrying those heavy pails of gravel.  I have also lost a little weight since May, thanks to the extra walks I have been taking as well as all the gardening. Oh, and those tomatoes for lunch every day!

Truly, can you beat gardening? The benefits are amazing.  And every time I walk into my kitchen and see the fresh vegetables, I feel all happy inside.

Second Vegetable Planting

Did you know you can grow a second harvest of many vegetables? I just learned about this and am excited to plant beans again and make use of the now-empty garden space where the potatoes, lettuce, and beets used to be.  After dinner tonight, I plan to head out into the vegetable garden and dig through the remaining dirt in the potato beds to find any remaining Yukon golds. They are so delicious and tender that we have been enjoying the fingerling potatoes for many meals. I'm not a fan of eating potato skins, but when they're grown 100% organic and I know exactly what is in the soil, I even ate the skins and boy were they good. I plan to plant more Dutch brown and Jacob's Cattle heirloom beans. I've been collecting the seeds, but the yield is disappointing. I was too tentative in my planting this spring. After planting way too many green beans in 2009, I was hesitant to plant more than half a bed of each, but honestly when you're growing heirloom beans to dry and use the seeds, it's a different thing altogether. Green beans have to blanched, frozen and/or canned (if I had a pressure canner, which I don't); heirloom beans are solar dried and shelled, and that's it.

Now according to the Cooperative Extension sheet I printed out last night, my fall veggie should go in around August 20th.  I'll probably push that planting off a few more days, but I've already got turnip, Brussels sprouts and broccoli seeds waiting.  Maybe I will have better luck this year and not have to fight the worms and moths for them - wouldn't it be nice to have that last harvest, crisped by the frost, just in time for Thanksgiving?

Please enjoy my latest article today for Main Line Gardening, written on this very topic and with more instructions on how you can get a second harvest from the garden.

Read: Vegetable Gardening-Second Planting.

Gardening as Meditation

Have you ever looked up from your weeding to realize that an hour flew by in a quiet, gentle peace, like water flowing in a quiet stream?

Or you're pruning a shrub, and the breeze nuzzles your hair while birds sing, and you breathe the scent of a thousand flowers in the evening air, and you realize in your heart that this is peace?

Last night, we went on our usual 2-3 mile walk with Shadow, then returned home. It was a sticky evening, humid and warm, but there was nothing I wanted to watch on television and I'm tired of news programs. So I said to John, "I'm going outside to putter for a bit - I won't be long." I slipped on my gardening gloves and Shadow and I retreated to the flower garden. I had four large pots of perennials started from seed this spring that needed to be transplanted, columbine and penstemmon, and a pot of Dusty Millers my father in law had bought for me. Trowel in hand, I carried my pots to the garden, dug in the soft soil, and gently patted the flowers into their new homes.

Of course as I wandered among the flower beds, weeds demanded to be pulled, and so I used each empty plastic pot as a weed receptacle. Soon, I had weeded the pathways - yes, despite the landscape fabric, sand, gravel and stones, a few weeds do manage to sprout and must be pulled before they spread. Ditto for the various grasses, which always seem to prefer the flower beds to the lawn areas where we want them to grow.

As I puttered and pulled, patted and pruned, dusk descended on the garden. Birds sang quietly in the woods behind my back and the breeze stirred my perspiration-dampened hair. I looked up to a spectacular sky of blues and indigo shot with veins of pure ocher and gold; sunset.

During our walk, many worries and fears crowded my mind. I tend to be a worry wart. As a child,  I'd lay in bed at night and worry that I hadn't done all my homework or that I wouldn't hit the ball during gym class baseball games. I was a bundle of anxiety before I had a real reasons to be anxious. 

I'm like that now. I worry about everything. My mind can go in about a zillion fearful directions to the point where I feel paralyzed. No amount of logic helps. I've heard that fear is "False Evidence Appearing Real" and that's me to a T; false evidence appears real, and I worry.

So you can image how my evening walk went. I walked and talked with my husband, and we had fun playing with Shadow, and every time a bit of quiet came into the walk, my worrying mind started in again.

Yet as I picked my head up from the garden, my gloves caked with good red Virginia clay and a bucket of weeds by my feet, I realized that for the first time all day, my mind was quiet.  No worries chattered and poked at my subconscious; all was quiet, peace, serenity. My mind was tranquil, my spirit serene.

People go to great lengths to create meditation gardens, and they are lovely places for the spirit. But I find that gardening is meditation. It is better than anything I can take to sooth my spirit, it is more prayer for me than anything else. Gardening is my meditation, my serenity.  A simple evening of weeding resets my worry buttons like nothing else until this morning I rise secure, ready to face the challenges of the day, the spirit of lingering peace offering rest.

Update on Ann's Bloomerang Lilac

I've written about my Bloomerang lilac, a gift (well, purchased through a gift certificate from White Flower farms for my birthday a few years ago) from my sister Ann.  At my old house in Floral Park, my dad had planted a beautiful holly next to the front door; my Aunt Betty had given it to my parents as a house warming present in 1960 when they bought their house. I love that tradition, and so when Ann gave me the gift certificate, I purchased the Bloomerang lilac and planted it in roughly the same spot at my new home in Virginia; slightly to the left of my front steps and in the front of the house.

It's August 2nd, and going up to 97 degrees today, and still the lilac blooms on! This picture was taken today. We've had great rains over the past two weeks - 3 inches one week, 2 inches this weekend - and as long as it gets plenty of water, it does indeed produce new waves of blossoms. The Bloomerang lilac truly lives up to its name, like a boomerang returning again and again with new waves of blossoms. Best of all, the dwarf size makes it a good addition in front of my porch; it won't tower over the railing and block the garden views.

My (New) Home Town

This weekend, I had company staying with me. I got a chance to show off my new home town.  We hiked the High Bridge Trail and enjoyed gorgeous country vistas thanks to two inches of rain on top of three inches last week. The fields are emerald green, the wildflowers blooming. We saw Passion Flower and wild Rose of Sharon growing along the trail, as well as many beautiful butterflies. I hope you enjoy  glimpse of my new home town...and why I moved from New York City to rural Virginia....

View from High Bridge Trail, Virginia