Have you ever felt a chick’s feet in your hair — warm fluff and cheeping around your temple? Have you stood surrounded by flowers, ankle deep, knee deep and so bright in the sunlight after endless overcast days, you want to laugh with the sheer vivid color? Spring is tangible…
Baby animals at the Shaker village
“At night animals take on a whole different look,” said farm manager Bill Mangiardi at Hancock Shaker Village. He will sit quietly in the Round Stone Barn in the small hours, bottle feeding a lamb whose mother hasn’t had enough milk for twins, and listening to the stillness. During the…
Kids and lambs meet ...…
Naumkeag daffodil and tulip festival
The sun was dancing with the haze, so fine drops fuzzed the petals if you came near enough to see. It always feels like one of the advantages of walking in with a press pass — I can kneel on the grass in a public garden and lean in close….
You're going to see some gentle people there…
Berkshire Botanical Garden opens in spring
t’s a day out of mid-August, 90 degrees in the car and a sky too hot to be blue — without shade. Trees that looked bare five days ago are shaggy with seed pods now. In the Berkshire Botanical Garden, magnolias are already shedding white petals. I got to walk…
I love seeing things from the inside, while people are working in their everyday clothes
Re-imagining how we make a garden
If you have earth to plant, even a few feet of flower bed or a window sill, are you thinking about how you want to be with them? Do you want to get your hands muddy and feel the ground, or stretch out on a warm evening and listen to…
What if we thought about what we want to feel in a garden?
Azaleas are in full blow on the Taconic crest
It’s hard to explain the feeling of a whole hillside of azaleas in bloom. Blossoms rise in waves twice my height, blossoms thick on the bushes in clusters — somehow I feel unbound by so much color. And it’s been years since I’ve hit it exactly right. In late May…
Azalea fields in full bloom…
