They’re regulars at this time of year. Lily, Dorothy Perkins and that fresh-faced Daisy and her many, many look-alike sisters. This year they all arrived on the very same day – the first of July. It was late for Lily and Daisy and just about on...
As usual, I am amazed that time is flying by and I can’t keep up. Only two more days and June will be history. I can just hear my grandmother’s soft voice saying with the same sense of disbelief, “It’s getting on for July already. How time...
Despite (and party because of) a hefty wind and periodic drenching rain, there was lots going on in the Oysterville Churchyard yesterday. Specifically on and around the flagpole. It was one of those mornings that the wind whistled and rattled...
My Master Gardener friends will no doubt shake their heads at me yet again, but yesterday I honestly thought that we had skipped fall and gone straight to winter. It wasn’t the weather (which was mild but still fall-ish feeling.) It was the...
Our friends Paul and Lana Jane Brent are arriving this morning to go on the Music in the Gardens Tour with us. I am sorely tempted to hand them blinders as they get out of their car – blinders to keep firmly in place as they pass by our south...
Our big blue ceanothus is a-buzz with bees. Our honeysuckle intrudes its sweet fragrance into all corners of the garden and our Dorothy Perkins are plump and pink on their twining branches. It’s summer here. No doubt about it and never mind when...
Lawn care is a perennial topic for discussion around here. By ‘discussion’ I mean, of course, civilized disagreement between members of the household. It’s one of the areas in our particular marriage contract on which I get an opinion but not...
Even though the calendar says we have ten days to go, it’s summer here in Oysterville. I know that because of our lawn. It is suddenly that yucky yellow-green-soon-to-be-brown. A Summer Lawn at the Beach. One day it was green and lush. The next day...
For more than forty years, the dahlias in our garden have begun blooming in August. Not in July. And certainly not in June. But this crazy year, right in line with our Jean Marie rhododendrons in April, the dahlias are way, way early! Some...
My father often told me that I was a lot like his mother, Mary Woods Little. My Nana of ‘Nana and Bumpa.’ I really didn’t know her well. They lived in Boston and I grew up out here on the West Coast so, except for the occasional visit (like three...
What a day we had yesterday with Kuzzin Kris! It began with the Rhododendron Breakfast and Lecture at the Shelburne – a sell-out with forty of us in the audience enjoying our choice from David’s breakfast menu and then a power point...
I meet the nicest people in our lane! This is the time of year when ‘pedestrian traffic’ here in Oysterville starts picking up. The weather is pleasant, the gardens are bright with flowers, and visitors seem to spend more time walking around with...