I was in Boston last weekend and hoped to share some spring photos from some of my favourite places there. But no luck. Instead of sunny April, the days felt like frigid, rainy March. And then came Monday, with the horrific Marathon bombings. Last year I was in Boston on the same Marathon weekend and…
This is what’s happening in my neck of the woods: making maple syrup. Part of the Sugar Bush at Glen Villa We tapped trees in late February and have only now stopped boiling the sap into syrup. Steam rises as the sap boils down into syrup. It takes 40 litres of sap to make 1 litre…
I spent Easter weekend visiting Washington D.C. with my husband and my sister. We were hoping to see cherry blossoms colouring the sky but it has been too cold and the buds are only now beginning to open. So no photos of pink blossoms, although the photo below shows how gloriously bent and mis-shapen the…
Flowers do not a garden make. Nor a garden show. Nonetheless, for me flower arrangements were the highlight of this year’s Canada Blooms. And I am not a flower arranger. Not any good at it, and not interested in becoming any better. But I do like art, and to see amazingly artful compositions made with…
An extra post, from Toronto As I write, I’m on my way to Toronto to visit Canada Blooms, Canada’s largest garden show. I’m speaking tomorrow about using art in a garden and am pleased to be doing this. I set myself a goal when I first started giving talks about gardens and garden design, and…
Several weeks ago I started a three-part series about an art installation at Glen Villa called In Transit / en Route. I posted the first two parts and intended to post the third in week three. But California and all I saw there captured my attention and my blogging time. So the third part of In…
It seems perverse to write about the sound of summer when winter winds still howl and more snow is forecast. But how better to keep warm than to anticipate? And to remember. For years my husband and I spent our summer vacation with our children at a cottage next door to Glen Villa. My brother-in-law…
I visited one well-designed public garden in and around Palm Springs, the garden that surrounds the visitor’s centre at Sunnylands, the modernist house built for Walter and Leonora Annenberg. Entering the estate, you get a preview of what’s to come: lots of barrel cactus arranged in rows that reminded me of dots on an old-style…
This week I’d planned to post the third and final piece about In Transit / En Route, the art installation I created in the woods at Glen Villa. I will post it, but not today. Instead, I need to write about where I am today, which is California. Visiting friends in Palm Desert, I find myself…
The In Transit / En Route trail starts at the edge of a field. with a sign that asks a rather odd question. Where are you? Où êtes-vous? As I wrote in my previous post (In Transit / En Route: the beginning), the words aren’t easy to read. The letters are small and the words run together with…