HORTENSE WAS fascinated by the annual Moving of the Plants. She was making dovish noises and tilting her head this way and that, red eyes wondering: Will I be next?
I spent a few moments contemplating the installation of a dovecote in the back…

Green Acre #198: The Moving of the Plants

‘WHEN YOU get dressed, could you come outside and help me with some plants?” My Prince asked. It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon and I was still in my sleeping ensemble.
“I was just thinking about it,” I said. I’d been up since 6am and hadn’t quite…

Green Acre #197: Curb Your Plants

‘HOW MANY are too many chandeliers?” asked My Prince, admiring a new installation above the garden path.
This was a startling (and not particularly manly) question, I thought, though it gave me great ruffles of pleasure. “I don’t know, but we’ll find…

Green Acre #196:

AFTER 37 SUMMERS, the front yard is finally what one might call established—in great part thanks to having finally triumphed over the postal persons who for years trampled a path across the garden while talking (loudly) on their cell phones. Between…

Green Acre #195: Garden up Close, Mother’s Day From Afar

IT’S FUNNY to think that 40 years ago or so Washington’s National Arboretum was one of the least visited sights in the city. One could wander the 446-acre garden with its splendid roses, bonsai, hills blazing with azaleas, the dogwood grove, the…

Green Acre #194: Holy Roses

A IS FOR ASTER.
B is for begonia.
Lately I’m having trouble staying asleep. I nod off all right, but sometime around 4am I’m abruptly awake, listening for . . . something. There’s a lot of nothing out there. No cars. No horns. The birds are…

Green Acre #193: Gardening, A to Zzzzzz . . .

SNOW AT LAST!
It’s an inch or so deep in the backyard and pink as a ballerina’s tutu. The blossoms are falling from the Kwanzan cherry, covering the pond, the stone path, the flower borders. It’s gorgeous today, and will be tomorrow, but by the…

Green Acre #192: Rooting for Plants

HORTENSE WAS sitting on the floor in a corner of the solarium much of yesterday morning. There is nothing to see there, just the grayish-white molding and a scatter of potting soil. She had been sitting on a leaf of the bird of paradise earlier,…

Green Acre #191: Bird-Watching

CAUTION! Gallows humor ahead. Also, puns.
Dirt ain’t cheap. Say you want to construct your own hillock, or fill in a swimming pool (would that you could give that pool to me), or the base for some other Grand Scale Project. Nothing fancy required. No…

Green Acre #190: The Dirt on Dirt

I’VE BECOME newly creative in the kitchen. Living in the city, surrounded by markets and specialty food shops, whatever substance my stomach craves at any particular moment is usually within a 10-minute walk from home. I stop at one place for spices,…

Green Acre #189: These Roots Are Growing!

YOU THINK you have toilet paper trauma?
“It’s been a while since I thought about wiping my ass with leaves,” an ex-military pilot mused the other day.
He’s been through SERE training—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape—a course…

Green Acre #188: Real Green ‘Toilet Paper’

THE WASHINGTON POST’S Capital Weather Gang just announced that peak bloom for the Tidal Basin cherry blossoms has now been moved back five days to March 22nd—with one tree already fully flush with blossoms. If there’s anything positive to be said for…

Green Acre #187: Spray Away the Winter

IF THERE’S anything good to say about global warming, it’s probably accountable for the spring we’re about to have (fingers crossed, bang on wood). They come around rarely, though more frequently in recent years, springs that appear endless, like…

Green Acre #186: Spring Is Early and Right Outside Your Door

I OPENED my office door this morning and . . . WHOOSH! . . . a billow of orange and jasmine perfume smacked my nose, wafting in from the open door to my little greenhouse, a step away from my desk. It is a most delightful, if distracting, way to…

Green Acre #185: Shelving Ideas . . . to Shelve

PASSIONATE ABOUT hydrangeas? African violets? Bonsai? Orchids? There’s a Facebook group, or 10, for that.
Plonk the name of your floral or arboreal obsession into the search bar at the top of your Facebook page and the choices mushroom with…

Green Acre #184: Facebook Flowers

MILD PANIC is setting in.
(Cue ominous music)
Last week was the 10th anniversary of Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, or Snowzilla: However you wish to remember it, that blizzard piled 35 inches or so on the Northeast, burying cars and small dogs, and…

Green Acre #183: Nature May Be Playing a Nasty Trick on Us

STEP RIGHT up! The Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest and most fabulous garden exposition in the nation, opens on February 29 and runs through March 8 at the Philadelphia Convention Center.
This year the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which…

Green Acre #182: She’d Rather Be in Philadelphia

IN THE MIDST of winter there’s nothing like a cozy brunch or dinner to celebrate something—or nothing. But even if you dish up naught but a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, the setting should be spectacular. Or, at least,…

Green Acre #181: Set It With Flowers

AT THE TENDER age of 70, our friend Jill left Washington DC for New York for two years to take a master’s degree in art. She left her ponytail palm, a Dr. Seussian plant that resembles a pineapple with a Rasta wig, in our care. As she’d nurtured the…

Green Acre #180: Babysitting Nature

I’M SITTING on the back porch, toes wriggling in my flip-flops, staring at the wood pile, stacked here for easy access to the living-room fireplace. For the wood we’ll have no use, this week at least.
It’s January 12th.
While the rest of the country…