Living and gardening in an older Hudson Valley home
What a name – Celastrus obiculatus! Toxicodendron radicans is no better. Perhaps Vitis Sipp is easier. These three names are the scientific names for the three most dreaded vines in my yard. Celasrus obiculatus is oriental bittersweet vine – a native of China, Japan and Korea. It is believed to have stowed away on cargo […]
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet.” Shakespeare famously wrote these lines in Romeo and Juliet. In my woodland garden I have altered them. A multiflora rose by any other name would still be a pest! New York has a list of invasive plants, […]
Living in the Hudson Valley has taught me a lot about nature. I am surrounded by an array of birds, foxes, chipmunks, squirrels, ground hogs and deer! The call of the cat bird is intriguing. I sincerely thought it was a kitten crying until I discovered, through the internet, this small bird has such an […]
The Harcourt’s installed a walled picnic area. The enclosure has a stone floor and short stone walls, with gates at each end. The former owners told me when they moved in it contained a 12 foot picnic table. The far end had a stone barbeque, the prior owners dismantled. The picnic table is long gone […]
Inviting people over is fun! I enjoy every aspect of it, from planning the guest list, choosing the date, selecting the menu, finding new recipes, setting the table, cooking and finally the conversation during the course of the meal. To me entertaining is an occasion. When I invite someone to my home I want them […]
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 […]
Hidden things are usually staring us in the face, they aren’t really hidden at all. Such is the case for an odd room in the house. The realtor, when I bought the home, described it as the Au Pair Suite. It is easy to tour the house and not realize the space is there. This […]
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 […]
