Thoughtful musings on various topics by interesting people at Blithewold

The bare minimum

When the cicadas start buzzing early in the morning we know we’re in for a scorcher. With temps in the 90’s, high humidity and ground level ozone levels that were predicted to “approach or exceed … Read more.

Cool veg

In the last post I mentioned that Gail and I just picked more vegetables for the East Bay Food Pantry. It’s no accident that we still have veg to pick. Back in the middle of … Read more.

Harvest hurrah

It’s a challenge to keep a vegetable garden productive and handsome into the fall. Cool nights set back and do in the hot season crops like cucumbers, beans and summer squash. Tomatoes are slowing down … Read more.

A perfect partnership

Ever since Dick, our vegetable gardener extraordinaire, first joined his wife Mary in the Blithewold gardens, we’ve had more produce than we know what to do with. (Dick orders the vegetable seeds, starts them, plants … Read more.

Expected surprises

I’ve always wondered a little at the seeming redundancy of the phrase “unexpected surprise”. But I think I get it now. I came back from vacation fully anticipating certain changes and was still caught off … Read more.

Every Green Pocket Counts

For the last three years I have not let up begging our gardens intern, Lilah “Weed Woman” Anderson to write a guest post for the blog – on any garden topic of  her choosing (vegetable … Read more.

A chill wind

We’re currently experiencing the weather that your local nursery professionals warned you about. We haven’t had a frost here but I’m still glad that our tender plants are still safely tucked up in the greenhouse. … Read more.

Fight or blight

Pretty safe to say that it’s not going to be a great tomato year. If we’re very very lucky maybe we’ll get some honker waterlogged fruit with split skins but conditions are apparently favorable for … Read more.