Author Archives: Liza

Nature’s first green is gold,  Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. … Continue reading →

My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — It gives a lovely light!                       — Edna St. … Continue reading →

I was given several canna lily rhizomes by a neighbor a few years back.  They were long and knobby, pale as parsnips, caked with dirt and dangling hairy roots. “They’re beautiful when they start to grow,” my neighbor assured me. … Continue reading →

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing … Continue reading →

 And I think of roses, roses, White and Red, in the wide six-hundred-foot greenhouses, And my father standing astride the cement benches, Lifting me high over the four-foot stems, the Mrs. Russells, and his             own elaborate hybrids, And how … Continue reading →

The wind was high on Florida’s Captiva Island this morning, whipping up whitecaps on the usually placid Gulf of Mexico and forcing the row of staid palms along the beach to bend southward in rigorous, calisthenic formation.  But less than a … Continue reading →

We like March — his shoes are Purple. He is new and high — Makes he Mud for Dog and Peddler — Makes he Forests Dry — Knows the Adders Tongue his coming And begets her spot — Stands the … Continue reading →

It’s been the cruelest of winters in southern New England.  The birds have been swarming the feeders and suet cages, and the squirrels, driven to suicidal measures to crack what had been our fool-proof Yankee bird feeder, took to digging … Continue reading →

The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
 And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
 He’ll sit in a barn and keep himself warm 
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.   It’s snowing … Continue reading →

One dull, chilly morning a few weeks ago, I looked up from my laptop to see a flutter of blue and red in the living room window of our house in the Berkshires.  An American bluebird was snacking on the … Continue reading →

French gardens are a lot like French women: chic and elegant and pulled together in a way that makes the average American gardener want to just throw in the spade.  I’ve made something of a study of the French garden … Continue reading →

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a small, close-knit community, but something in me periodically needs to break free, sail away, explore the wider world. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “Questions of Travel” she writes: “What childishness … Continue reading →

I think there must be a gardening gene, yet to be discovered in some secret strand of our DNA.  My paternal grandmother created one of the most beautiful and extensive rose gardens I’ve ever seen (and I’m a devoted rosarian) … Continue reading →

For me, few things are more satisfying than digging into the earth, uprooting weeds, pruning back shrubs, and planting bulbs. It’s also a beautiful way to commemorate someone you love.  We have neighbors in the Berkshires who plant a fruit … Continue reading →