Category Archives: Despatches from the Hollow

  It’s been a long, cool spring, but Memorial Day has unfolded like a lush, ripe flower and Milo is beginning to enjoy cooling afternoons on the glider. Of course the equinox won’t come for another few weeks, but this … Continue reading →

Ever since the Environmental Protection Agency has started taking steps to enforce a clean-up of the Chesapeake Bay, industrial agricultural has been fighting back. According to the April issue of the Chesapeake Bay Journal www.bayjournal.com, the American Farm Bureau Federation … Continue reading →

In honor of Earth Day, excerpts from – RIBBLESDALE by Gerard Manley Hopkins Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leav`es throng And louch`ed low grass, heaven that doest appeal To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel; . … Continue reading →

The early daffodils are gone – no more bright yellow ‘Tete-a-Tetes’ or  sturdy ‘Little Beauties’. Mid-season ‘Thalias’ (pure white and musky) and miniature ‘Segovias’ are in full bloom and the old double ‘Butter and Eggs’ is opening. ‘Twin Sisters’, the … Continue reading →

The first narcissus to bloom this year is ‘Little Gem’, a miniature trumpet daffodil. Species crocus are beginning to flower – royal purple ‘Ruby Giant’ and ‘Cloth of Gold’. The witchhazel ‘Diane’ continues to shimmer in pink and the first … Continue reading →

Looks like the captive groundhog up there in Puxatawney was right after all. Ever since they pulled the thematic rodent into his special day, it’s been spring down here in the hollow. Windy and dry, we’re starting off with a … Continue reading →

February is the month for garden seminars and I attended two last week that were top notch. Douglas Tallamy, Prof. of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the U. of Delaware, spoke at the venerable Piedmont Landscape Assn.’s annual gathering in … Continue reading →

The view from the front porch to the potting shed is much improved without last year’s ice shelf and our soil looks better, too. There’s so much you can do when you don’t have to slog through 2 feet of … Continue reading →

We’ve spent the first weeks of ought eleven clearing brush and thanking God for the dry weather, so different from the claustrophobic ice-cave of last year’s Snowpocalypse. Severe times make us grateful for what we have. This winter storms have … Continue reading →