Raising Flowers and Horses
Quest: Searching for Flowers My Hungry Deer Won’t Eat
As a flower farmer, I’ve struggled to find flowers that I can grow outside of my deer fence. I want my property to have flowers, but it is hard with the deer. After much trial and error and many lost deer-resistant plants, I’ve discovered a few plants that the deer do not eat.
September in the Home Garden
The calendar says September. Labor Day is over. My nieces have headed off to college. It’s truly the end of summer. To be honest, this summer felt a bit like an endurance test–drought, long stretches of intense heat, and even a bout of Covid just as I was set to head off for a few days away with my family. If you had asked me in July, I probably would have said this summer will never end. Now that it is actually almost over, I feel a little sad.
Hope Amidst the Native Plants
When I was finishing many of the fall chores last week, I found myself talking to myself, and starting many of those sentences with the words, I hope: I hope the ground doesn’t freeze before I get the ranunculus in the ground; I hope the covering for the low tunnel arrives before the baby plants freeze, I hope there can be world peace.
Ode to Women Who Garden
In this age when the planet feels like it might crumble beneath our feet, hope, the powerful antidote to feelings of helplessness, is in vastly short supply. It is hard to watch the effects of a warming climate and feel the fragility of the earth. It all feels so perilous. Yet, when I talk to women about their gardens, I feel hope. Women who garden deal in hope. Every plant in the ground is a vote of confidence that tomorrow can bring joy and beauty. It replaces monoculture lawn with a diverse source of plant life for bugs and birds. It creates color, beauty, serenity. While we wait and work for systematic change, planting a garden and cultivating beauty is a powerful act of hope.