Abigail Higgins
Garden Notes: The new garden year
The New Year is upon us; onward we go.
New Year’s resolutions are never a bad idea, even if they are promptly broken. These suggestions,...
Garden Notes: Wreaths and seed catalogues
The Dec. 11–12 “atmospheric river” rainstorm yielded almost five inches of welcome rain in our unofficial home rain gauge during the two-day period. Dukes...
Garden Notes: Shrinking a lawn
It is far from drab, even as winter dusk draws in. Rains, at long last, saturating fields and woods! Dampness intensifies the golds and...
Garden Notes: Time for digging
The goldenrod flowers pictured in the Sept. 26 “Garden Notes” have now aged to motley, brown-gray fuzz. Sitting at the dining table, I observe...
Garden Notes: Perennial siting and planting
The year is winding down: November weather and frosts, time change, elections, the holidays — this year it almost seems like impossible overload.
Buy trees...
Garden Notes: Settling into autumn
The recent trimming of our roadsides, giving them a landscaped look, gives additional visibility and lead time, maybe just nanoseconds, to avoid a deer...
Garden Notes: Tending to perennials in the fall
Soils are currently very dry, as is observed if doing any planting. Amazingly, the soil is powdery dry right under the surface, despite the...
Garden Notes: The slow glow of the late season
Wild goldenrod and asters dominate roadsides and open areas, against a backdrop of reddening little bluestem. Island life is slowing down, to the extent...
Garden Notes: Late summer harvest
It always provokes a bit of a negative response to walk full-face into a sticky spiderweb stretching invisibly across some shadowy corner of the...
Garden Notes: Late summer
As summer moves through its solar cycle, nights are cooler with dew, shadows are deeper, and midday sun intensifies with infrared rays. It feels...
Garden Notes: Summer chores
Vitex seems impossibly bluer than ever, this year. Surprise lilies, Lycoris squamigera, do literally surprise, as they suddenly pop up. Island gardens and sidewalks...
Garden Notes: Keeping the flowering alive
August is the high point of Island summer, and the M.V. Agricultural Society’s Agricultural Fair (August 15, 16, 17, 18) is the high point...
Garden Notes: Carry in, carry out
One finds all sorts of crazy trash in scenic Island spots. “Carry in, carry out” is a good precept for a place like the...
Garden Notes: Our terrifying friend, the white-faced hornet
Fourth of July rolls around once again, and the Season officially begins. Fireflies spotted here on June 18. Midsummer and June’s last weeks were...
Garden Notes: Your garden can aspire to rise
As we enter summer, Ron Rappaport’s death tears a large hole in the fabric of Island life. He and his partners in Edgartown maintained...
Garden Notes: Catching up to June
The rains, the weather, all seem to have converged to create wonderful gardens this spring. Now it is June, and the season hurtles along....
Garden Notes: Spring in full fragrance
Tonight’s full moon is called the Flower Moon. Memorial Day weekend is upon us, and the hardy garden fragrance plants are at their height....
Garden Notes: This spring is cool
The elegant native shadbush (amelanchier and its species) is in bloom but a short time, but is fleetingly graceful: matchless! Early morning, and the...
Garden Notes: Forsythia is a spring tonic
Forsythias across the Island seemed shy of blooming this year, turning out in full force a little later than usual. Their reluctance caused me...
Garden Notes: Welcome spring
This patch of weather has been wet and chilling, can we all agree? Nevertheless, the sun is with us for longer every day, even...