Abigail Higgins
Garden Notes: Late autumn miscellany
The flight of the winter moths appeared right on schedule, as did the Thanksgiving cactus flowers. Lawns are still green, and random planters in...
Garden Notes: Garlic and asparagus beds are calling
Autumn’s colorful tapestry is ending. 2025 Island fall has been beautiful and bright, and thanks partly to drought.
In the news: atmospheric rivers and flooding...
Garden Notes: Looking at trees, in our yard and our world
Nights draw in with the time change. We come home at day’s end in dusk, or even nighttime. It is amazing how many drivers...
Garden Notes: Bringing in the outdoors
The low, slanting light of late October transforms familiar places into new scenery, setting off the gloss and glimmer of foliage, and blinding homeward-bound...
Garden Notes: Answer your garden’s fall questions
Autumn colors arrive early, possibly drought-induced. Strands of vivid Virginia creeper decorating roadsides startle in contrast against the bluest of skies. Exulting in these...
Garden Notes: Fall’s shorter days arrive
Mornings with dewy grass. Raspberries and peppers heavily laden with fruit. A squirrel scampering across the road with a pignut. Beetlebung in ruddy groups...
Garden Notes: September
September, golden September: warm sun and lengthening shadows under the Corn Moon, eclipsed on Sept. 7. Find garden snakes (great vole control) basking on...
Garden Notes: The ‘surprise’ lilies have returned
Screech owls call from the woods; the season is turning. Last week’s three inches of rain could not have been timelier; it was absorbed...
Garden Notes: Handmade fertilizers and planning for fall
“The four laws of ecology: Everything is interconnected. Everything goes somewhere. Nature bats last. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” –attributed to...
Garden Notes: At summer’s turning point
The break between July and August is summer’s turning point. Meadowsong has begun, the trilling of Island insect life. Exoskeletons of cicadas cling, emptily...
Garden Notes: More on the glories of hydrangeas
Good thing summer in the temperate zones is just one season. Aftereffects of the heat wave continue to emerge, with yellowing, damaged foliage of...
Garden Notes: aftereffects of heat
The summer swings into full flourish with the Glorious Fourth. And gardens swing into full flower and fruitfulness post-solstice, with heat and lots of...
Garden Notes: Looking at dogwood options
A possible narrative for the past two weeks: swapping pollen for mosquitoes? The rain and damp conditions suggest checking everywhere for standing water, even...
Garden Notes: Rainfall and spring bloomers
The leafy woods surround us with pleasant soughing; the soothing sound contrasts with whistling and moaning of wintry winds in bare trees. And then...
Garden Notes: Evergreens, caterpillars, and ticks
It is not for nothing that some call the May full moon the Flower Moon. Scarcely have lilacs’ soft shades become passé when azaleas’...
Garden Notes: Supporting plants in the spring
The cardinal, the latest of a lineage that has been signaling from the tallest tree in the garden for generations; the delicacy of the...
Garden Notes: Gardeners exchange ideas
The fickleness of April is well known. So much of spring, and gardening, seems to be holding one’s breath: frosts, varmints, what else could...
Garden Notes: Blooms in early spring
We hope “April showers bring May flowers,” because it has been damp and chilly this first week of April. Drought status of our region...
Garden Notes: Spring is here
Spring has sprung! The vernal equinox took place March 20, when daytime and nighttime are the same length. The grass is rapidly greening, and...
Garden Notes: Dam removals, tick season, and pruning
Mornings, before anything except coffee, I go to the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) weather service site, forecast.weather.gov. Typing in “02575” gives the...