It’s tomato season in Connecticut. It has been for a few weeks. When everyone started planting their victory gardens, the first thing most thought of was the tomato. In fact, around here, tomato transplants were as scarce as toilet paper. People had to settle for anything. Not the madman – he starts all his…
The madman and the wasps – all summer I have watched him chase them away from his hummingbird feeders. It was a futile effort because there were just too many of them. All of a sudden, he stopped. At first, I thought he’d just given up (so unlike him!). But I found out he’d…
Wow! It’s time for the Perseids, the madman’s favorite meteor shower. It’s not the most prolific of the year, but it comes at a time when the weather is warm. The madman imagines some ancient gardener saying, “the heavens are showering, time to plant the fall crops.” If you were fortunate enough to…
Bulbs in July? Yep, now is the time to start thinking about what blooms you want to see after a long winter. Sounds crazy in July, but the catalogs have been here for a while. Pages are turned down; selections are circled, and lists are started. My problem is that everything looks so good, but…
It’s the middle of July – time to weed. The madman says if we’re lucky our bug problems are under control. We have found, squished and drowned large numbers of the big three – the ones that cause us the most problems. You may have a different list, but our big three are the Squash…
We’ve been getting a lot of questions from friends and others. Seems the Victory Gardens are truly springing up all over the place. The madman has been surprised by the source of some of these questions – people he thought would never consider growing a plant. Yet, here they are with a problem. But…
Justice. We wondered what we could do – after all, we are only two people. If people stay silent, nothing will be done. So, we add our voices to the call to end social injustice. We hope all our gardening friends will follow suit. Speaking of gardening friends, after all the time spent in quarantine,…
We’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: these are strange times we live in. We certainly appreciate all those who are out there doing what they do so we can stay safe and continue following the stay at home orders. After all, we’ve been in the over 65 category for some time now. Fortunately,…
The madman got a call from his friend Bill the other day saying he couldn’t find his dandelion seeds. He calls them dandelions, but they are actually Radichetta. We’re the only ones who eat dandelions and they are starting to bloom now so they are starting to get bitter. The madman replied, “You know,…