Sunday, December 1, 2024
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Garden Notes

Garden Notes: Time for digging

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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 the patch’s activity through the window; it is constantly atwitter...

Garden Notes: Perennial siting and planting

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The year is winding down: November weather and frosts, time change, elections, the holidays — this year it almost seems like impossible overload. Buy trees and shrubs Fall sales are a chance to buy perennials, shrubs,...

Garden Notes: Settling into autumn

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The recent trimming of our roadsides, giving them a landscaped look, gives additional visibility and lead time, maybe just nanoseconds, to avoid a deer collision. Nightfall comes earlier, and as we head homeward at...

Garden Notes: Tending to perennials in the fall

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Soils are currently very dry, as is observed if doing any planting. Amazingly, the soil is powdery dry right under the surface, despite the long soaking from the three-day nor’easter week before last. It is...

Garden Notes: The slow glow of the late season

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Wild goldenrod and asters dominate roadsides and open areas, against a backdrop of reddening little bluestem. Island life is slowing down, to the extent that we can all appreciate the mundane beauty that surrounds...

Garden Notes: Late summer harvest

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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. Doing some weekend gardening to get in the mood...

Garden Notes: Late summer

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As summer moves through its solar cycle, nights are cooler with dew, shadows are deeper, and midday sun intensifies with infrared rays. It feels like early fall weather, which children greet with groans of...

Garden Notes: Summer chores

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Vitex seems impossibly bluer than ever, this year. Surprise lilies, Lycoris squamigera, do literally surprise, as they suddenly pop up. Island gardens and sidewalks are adorned with the bountiful burst of bloom of rose-of...

Garden Notes: Keeping the flowering alive

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  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 of August. Deadlines loom for making serious floral and vegetable...

Garden Notes: Carry in, carry out

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One finds all sorts of crazy trash in scenic Island spots. “Carry in, carry out” is a good precept for a place like the Vineyard, with heavy visitor pressure.  Unfortunately, our guests, and some residents,...

Garden Notes: Our terrifying friend, the white-faced hornet

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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 struck by July-like heat and humidity; there were some showers...

Garden Notes: Your garden can aspire to rise

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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 beautiful trees and plantings at the Cooke Street headquarters, a...

Garden Notes: Catching up to June

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The rains, the weather, all seem to have converged to create wonderful gardens this spring. Now it is June, and the season hurtles along. Seed-started zinnias and nasturtiums are in the ground; lupines and...

Garden Notes: Spring in full fragrance

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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. Is there any other time of year so flowery and...

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 cardinal, or “redbird,” according to Margaret Renkl, hops around in...

Garden Notes: Forsythia is a spring tonic

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Forsythias across the Island seemed shy of blooming this year, turning out in full force a little later than usual. Their reluctance caused me to ask, only partly in mock curiosity, “What does the...

Garden Notes: Welcome spring

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This patch of weather has been wet and chilling, can we all agree? Nevertheless, the sun is with us for longer every day, even behind overcast. Small leaves are emerging; many kinds of plants...

Garden Notes: Working with the spring

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“You know spring has sprung when the herring run.”  In “Finding a Better Balance,” Part 2 of Ollie Becker and Circuit Art’s Great Ponds documentary, watch herring filmed swimming to spawn at the Aquinnah herring...

Garden Notes: ‘The Island is our garden’

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Saluting the longtime motto of the Martha’s Vineyard Garden Club (est. 1926), “The Island is our garden”: Whether as a declaration or as a goal, it suits this Island we cherish. It is the Ides...

Garden Notes: Pruning and planting

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The Feb. 13 snowfall was glorious. Leap year February kicked in with its familiar self, but tardily, mid-month. And March — in like a lamb? Wintry conditions may give ticks pause, beech trees a break,...