Abigail Higgins

The existence of gardens, their creation and dynamics, is always evolving. Their scope, content, and care all shift according to knowledge, culture, and aesthetics....

The autumnal equinox arrived in a stormy setting of winds and rains befitting pessimism. Here, Jose’s winds at times blew fiercely: nothing even close...

Each formerly choked traffic bottleneck that one breezes through helps unwind the summer’s accumulated tensions. The sun is out, and the golden days of...

Last spring I spotted a lump on the overhanging branch of a tree near our back porch. I hopefully wished the lump might be...

The fair gets underway today, Thursday, and runs through Sunday. It is the Island’s homecoming weekend, beautiful baby contest, bragging-rights fest, and face-to-face meetup....

July ended on an odd note, with easy-sleeping low temperatures interspersed with some breathtakingly hot weather. The possibility of drought was held at bay,...

For a month generally known for clear skies and gentle seas, this seems a different July. It is the height of garden pathos to...

Honeysuckle sweetens the air, and fireflies are visible at dusk. Nights are warmer. Island roadways have filled noticeably; please observe speed limit signs. Anticipate...

In the time of the solstice we experience the most light, the most visible growth, the most light-driven activity of our natural year. The...

Rain-heavy tall bearded irises are growing at the horizontal, not vertical. The long-range summer forecast is for wetter and cooler weather. A prediction made...

We know this time as one of utmost sensory transcendence in the garden year, when, if there is time to be still and take...

There is no clicking the pause button; it cannot be stayed. Plentiful rains and daily increasing photons stoke the bursting-forth of leaves and shoots...

“Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the...

Gardens with sandy soil warm up fast; they are currently about 55° daytime soil temperature, with overnight soil temps dropping to the low 40s....

While humans await spring, there is a striking perennial that does not dawdle. In bloom now, Helleborus foetidus, the bearsfoot hellebore, belongs in shade...

Lots of snow and record cold temperatures — it laid early-blooming bulbs over, limp and wilted, vestiges of their days’-previous selves, and challenged the...

“Green winter, green graveyard” is an old adage carrying a hint of foreboding. I suspect I am just one among many fellow Island sufferers,...

There is nothing like a black-and-white day of “wintry mix” to intensify the colors of the landscape. The plain palette of winter disappears, replaced...

Quite different from the very ancient Imbolc or St. Brigid’s Day, which signified when water would again run unfrozen in streams and brooks, is...

Go closerThe sadness and time passing, the future unknowable, the mournful awareness that we won’t see the Ol’ Cuss again, makes it a day...