Poplar leaves tip and glimmer dark chocolate and copper, as though they’re blowing in the moonlight. Ellen Driscoll paints them in walnut ink … and shows them healing the earth.
Read articleParks and gardens in the Berkshires can range from Gilded Age terraces to gathering places in the heart of town where volunteers tend the roses.
Early signs of fall color — #berkshireweekend
Up on Stone Hill, marigolds are flowering vividly in Pallavi Sen’s garden, and here by the reflecting pool I’m looking at the berries of a coffee plant and wondering if I’ve ever seen them before …
Read articleWing and Prayer’s wildflower meadow glows in the fall
Amy Pulley looks across toward the meadow. Fall, I’m learning, is a planting season, and the tables around us hold young plants she has propagated at Wing and a Prayer Native Plant Nursery.
Read articleHere be dragons … real ones #berkshireweekend
I met a dragon in the ruins at Ashintully. A live one — really. She’s a bearded dragon named Phoebe, and she came up with a young couple exploring the hills …
Read articleWe belong to the light, we belong to the thunder — #Berkshireweekend
A silvery stag’s antlers spindle into leaves, and I wonder what makes the patterns in them … or in lightening. I’d driven south through a thunderstorm to look for sculpture in Edith Wharton’s gardens.
Read articleCandidly we need to cultivate our gardens … — #Berkshireweekend
The strawberry plants are small enough to hold in a palm, but some of them have blossoms forming. I’m cupping them in my hands and pressing them gently into the earth.
Read articleFresh cheese and sourdough: Farmers markets and plant sales — #Berkshireweekend
And suddenly it’s May. We feel the change coming for weeks, fizzing in catkins and lapping up the lower slopes — and then the sun comes out and the maples open their leaves, and the world turns green again.
Read articleClay from an outdoor fire-pit carries ‘Volumes’
Wood-firing ceramics in an open-face pit is a volatile craft — Karlene Kantner can spend 12 hours and more stoking the fire when she makes the clay vessels she has shown at Berkshire Botanical Garden.
Read articleCuring cabin fever with bright color — #Berkshireweekend
I’ve walked into the Plant Connector on a winter night, whenNorth Adams is quiet, and Meg Bantle and Laura Tupper-Palches from Full Well Farm are teaching a workshop on how to make flower crowns.
Read articleThankful for the mountains — #berkshireweekend
Windy Hill Orchard grows rows of winterberry bushes every year. You can walk into a sea of scarlet higher than your head, and they’re bright even on cold, cloudy afternoons.
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