Watering mistakes kill plants sooner than nearly any other factor, and letting plants sit in standing water is one of the common ones. J. P. Casey, author of Treatise on the Culture and Growth of Different Sorts of Flower Roots, and of Green House Plants Kept in Rooms (1821), notes: “All green house plants… must […]
garden
Massachusetts
Earned Gifts of a Boston Winter
The life of the city comes into sharper focus when the cold settles in. Here, we take a closer look at Boston in winter.
There are two temperature ranges that will determine what you can grow in a given location. … The low temperature range would be a night reading of just above freezing and a daytime reading in the mid-40s Fahrenheit. In that range, you could winter over geraniums and delicate perennials. … The second temperature range is […]
Yankee
Expressionist Island
The gentle Cranberry Isles scattered off the shores of rugged Mount Desert Island have provided shelter and subject matter to some of the best artists in modern Maine art history – William Kienbusch, John Heliker, Robert LaHotan, Dorothy Eisner, Emily Nelligan, Ashley Bryan, Gretna Campbell, and Campbell’s son Henry Finkelstein. Like most of the artists […]
Beth Richardson scoops peach and hot-pepper salsa out of a mason jar and into a small bowl and pushes it toward me. “Try this!” she says, her voice reflecting a mix of pride and unrestrained gusto for good food. The salsa is bright yellow with specks of green and tastes hot and sweet to the […]
Magazine
The Iceland Diaries, Part Seven
Iceland, when I was there, had no trees. None. A naked land. I was told that the reason there were no trees was because of the sheep, which ranged free all over the country at that time, and because of the wind, which I knew stunted the growth of trees on places such as Cape […]
Here’s a life list of 75 essential things for anyone who loves New England, native and visitor alike. How many have you done?
Magazine
The Iceland Diaries, Part Five
It was difficult, perhaps the most difficult thing, to be without a common language. I have always said that being in Iceland gave me perspective and I think that related to many aspects of life. I could easily relate now to the many who travel to a new country, looking for work, unable to speak […]
Yankee
Bright , Shiny and Kinetic
George Sherwood brings a somewhat unusual background to the creation of art. The Ipswich, Massachusetts, resident earned a BFA at the Hartford Art School back in 1976 and spent time as a street performer in Burlington, Vermont, before enrolling at the University of Vermont to a study for a degree in engineering (B.S. 1984). He […]
Magazine
The Iceland Diaries, Part One
For the next few blogs, I’ll be writing about Iceland, which is, to me, the most fascinating country on earth. I hope you will agree. In June of 1969, when I was twenty years old, I traveled to Iceland and found work on a farm called Frodastadir (Froe-tha-stah-theer) herding sheep on horseback, milking cows, shoveling […]
Clarence Rhodes, celebrated rosarian and longtime judge for the American Rose Society, lives in Portland, Maine, where this retired electrical engineer has dispelled the notion that New England’s harsh winters kill the prospects of anything outside of, say, an ‘Elina’, ‘Dublin Bay’, or ‘Hot Princess’. More than 250 bushes consume his backyard, line his driveway, […]
How New England Can Save the World, Part III in a series Part I: The Maine Way: Aroostook County Part II: Vermont Neighbors Part IIII: A Bang for Your Buck in the Berkshires When you think of Vermont–white church on the tidy green–you’re not actually thinking of Hardwick, which in its days as the “Building […]