Living and gardening in an older Hudson Valley home
Posts about the yard and gardening
My most ambitious project yet, a woodland garden, has begun in earnest. The woodland is a triangular area of the property that is completely overgrown. The original owners had horses in this area (I have found full size and pony size horse shoes while digging in the yard). The fence, except for a decorative section […]
When I bought the house there was an overgrown part of the yard that I could not figure out how to landscape. There were very large yew bushes covering a sizable area. They had obviously been pruned on occasion, but not recently and all the lower branches had died. The lower branches were about 10 […]
The Harcourts, the builders of the home, planted this beautiful Japanese Maple in the front yard. For an ornamental Japanese maple it is a large tree. When the Harcourt’s sold the property, they told the new owners (the Parisers) the tree was a “century tree” meaning it was a 100 years old. The Parisers lived […]
After I had two old spruce trees removed in the back yard, the pool equipment and air conditioning unit were eyesores. I wanted to camouflage them and I wanted a vegetable garden. We have a lot of deer in the neighborhood, so any vegetable garden requires a fence. I decided to install a wooden fence […]
Having a swimming pool is an amazing luxury. After working in the yard on a hot summer’s day, jumping into the pool is a wonderful relaxing ritual. A few short months ago I would not have imagined this possible. The pool had not been opened for at least 2 seasons. I wasn’t sure what the […]
My friend Andrew and I had been hiking in Minnewaska State Park in 2017. We stayed at the Minnewaska Lodge. One of the nice things they had for their guests were pre-arranged s’mores. You could take a packet with a marshmallow and chocolate. Skewers were available to take to their fire pit to make s’mores. […]
The closing for the purchase of the house happened in the first week of May in 2018. I was in Sao Paulo working, so the attorney went to the closing for me. I longed to be there, but that was impossible. A week after closing I was sitting in my office in Sao Paulo and […]
