9-29-10 As a photographer I have been working with a Kodak Retina llc which my wife gave me for my birthday. It is a completely mechanical film camera that was manufactured some 60 years ago but, due to its incredible Nagel/Zeiss steel construction, still functions as well as it did in the 50’s. There is [...]
Read On No Comments9.14.10 There’s a lovely bouquet of Lycoris and Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) flowers on the kitchen table, a sure sign that fall is near. The lantana and the cypress vine that ate Norman (Ipomoea quamoclit) are in full bloom and the Monarchs, Swallow tails and Hummers, along with the ocassional Sphinx moth, are frolicking in [...]
8-25-10 Of late I’ve been reading Jim Lahey’s ‘My Bread’ and watching Jamie Oliver’s ‘cooking at home’. My dear friend Walt, a retired Mathematics Professor, gave me Jim’ original version of the no-work, no knead method as printed in the New York Times several years ago and I have been playing with it ever since. [...]
When I walked out to the porch this evening the air was redolent with the scent of the four o’clock’s. Tomorrow morning the blue morning glories and the red cypress vine flowers will be open and mix their hues with the pinks and whites and reds of the marvel of Peru. There is a Spinks [...]
July 2, 2010 Today was a first. Just when you think you’ve seen everything in the garden center- a lady walked in with a kangaroo. She had a Hydrangea and the Kangaroo baby in a sling, it was only 6 months old. But we all, customers and the merry men and women of Huckabeeforest, had [...]
5-31-10 Tonight I’ll be eating the first tomatoes of the season steamed with the first green beans of the season and the first harvest of new potatoes. I attribute the vigor of my tomatoes this year to Espoma tomato-tone and the Thrive discussed in the last post. Lush plants furiously blooming with a heavy fruit [...]
5-26-10 So I’m sitting on the patio, then the front porch with this great big Minolta 450 lens, which weighs a ton, pre focused on the Hummer feeders or there about. I sit there all braced for an hour and a half, totally into getting a shot. No Hummers. The cat strolls over and laughs [...]
April 6, 2010 I live out in the country, typically the temperature is cooler out here than in town where the concrete concentrates the heat. Consequently, I will have a frost or a freeze every year about this time. The frost sitting on the plants actually is not doing much dammage, it’s when the sun hits the [...]
April 4, 2010 Yesterday, for the first time in my thirty three years in the horticultural trade, I had a customer ask me for a Black Gum ( Tupelo tree, Nyssa sylvatica). I Knew we had them but I had to ask Super Mario where they currently resided- (they have migrated around the nursery.) Great for wet conditions, [...]