This time of year when I take my walks, it seems that every few yards I pass tall lilac bushes loaded with blossoms. Their fragrance hits me before I even see them; the aroma more beautiful than any man-made perfume possibly could be, and rich with a thousand memories.

Lest you think that lilacs are only one color or one shape, there’s actually a great deal of variety: white, light purple, darker purple, darkest purple, and even pink; feathery or plain; tall or short; early-blooming or late; powerfully-scented or delicate (here’s everything you might want to know about lilacs).

I used to own some lilac bushes, but right now I don’t. So I have to depend on the kindness of others. Yesterday I was walking past a friend’s house while she was in her yard, and she waved her hand at the many lilac bushes there and said I should cut some blooms. And so I did.

Lilacs don’t last long in vases—but then, they don’t last very long on bushes either. But they make wonderful, if ephemeral, additions to the table or counter or shelf. Here are mine—enjoy them, they may not last another day:

In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle……and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break.

The post Lilac time appeared first on The New Neo.

But spring’s no slouch either, as I was reminded once again yesterday (as though I needed reminding) on a brief visit to Boston. The trees were in full bloom: magnolias, cherries and apples, and the feathery dogwoods that look from afar like gossamer clouds. The bulbs, too—taxi-yellow daffodils, and tulips in a riot of colors.

But the most beautiful sight of all was the drive I took down Cambridge’s Brattle Street, dwelling-place of some of Harvard’s most illustrious profs, and other movers and shakers of the Cambridge world. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow used to be one of them; you can still visit his home there.

But that’s hardly the only grand mansion; Brattle street is filled with them—all different from each other, and nearly all displaying gardens with a spring beauty that seems almost paradisiacal.

Most unfortunately, I had no camera with me. Yeah, I know; mea culpa. So these stock photos of Boston in spring (courtesy of the Boston Globe, and minus the beautiful homes) will have to do.

The post New England springs to life appeared first on The New Neo.

I used to joke that my home was a hospice for plants, a gentle place where they came to be ministered to while they slowly—or in some cases, quickly (a particularly fragile specimen lasted only a day)—died.

But that’s hyperbole. There are actually a number of plants I’ve cared for that have managed to stay alive in my home a long time, even decades. These survivors tend to be types that do well despite lowish light and a bit of neglect, such as philodendron.

A Thanksgiving cactus of mine has been going great guns for about two decades, blooming twice a year with an abundance of peach-colored flowers, and all I seem to have to do is to water it whenever it occurs to me.

And then there’s a pink spathyllum I’ve had for six years. When purchased, it sported lovely blooms, and my previous experience with spaths and their modest needs gave me great hope that this one would follow suit and continue to produce abundantly and almost indefinitely.

But its early promise didn’t pan out. Oh, it grew all right, but only green foliage. Not a single bloom followed in the footsteps of the ones it possessed when I bought it, despite coaxing and special feedings and various manipulations designed to get it to strut its stuff.

But right before I sold my house towards the end of this past summer, when I thought I’d probably leave that spath behind—why bother with the uncooperative boring little thing?—I glanced at it one day and noticed the following:

When I least expected it, there it was: blooming and beaming and just begging me to take it with me.

And so I did, to my temporary digs with friends. And there it sat until today, when I make another temporary move, this time to an apartment. We’ll see what may bloom there.

The post My late bloomer appeared first on The New Neo.

To those who don’t garden (and until a few years ago I counted myself among their ranks) this sort of post seems a bit quaint and more than a little dull. My apologies. But to those of us who garden or who like flowers, especially in the short and therefore greatly-appreciated gardening season in the Northeast, it’s a deeply satisfying time of year.

And so, without further ado, I’ll show you what I mean:

And I think even Van Gogh might be pleased with this one:

The post Garden pride appeared first on The New Neo.

I tried to take some photos that conveyed how very nasty it is right now, but they just don’t (of course, maybe if I suited up suitably and ventured outside to take them it would be different. But I draw the line there).

The front garden:

From the back deck (imagine lots of wind):

Not only howling wind and lots of snow, but little icy pellets on top of it. As you can see, despite the wind the trees are heavily laden, always a worrisome sight where I live because the power goes out if you so much as breath heavily and/or a feather drops on a tree limb.

I’m planning to post on the new blogsite later today. If I don’t, it will mean I’m sitting here powerless in the cold and the dark, with only my ipod and a candle to keep me company.

[ADDENDUM: By the way, this site is now officially on New Blogger, for all you techies out there. The transfer was relatively smooth.]

The post Weather: housebound appeared first on The New Neo.

The post Wintertime and the gardening is easy appeared first on The New Neo.

I’ve posted photos of the garden bed in the front, the sunny one–in spring, in summer (can’t find those, so no link), and in fall. It’s always beautiful.

And here it is now, in very late fall, before being cut down and put to sleep for the winter. Although you might say it’s dead, it’s really not; it’s just resting.

Even in this brown and faded state, it seems quite beautiful nonetheless, in a sad and subtle way. At least, I think so. And strangely enough, the roses are still in bloom.

Last year I published this same poem around this same time. It’s Robert Frost’s “Reluctance,” very appropriate to the season:

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

The post Garden, late fall appeared first on The New Neo.

That wasn’t my main concern. Just having a marginally affordable place to live was the important thing, because I managed to buy my house in a seller’s market (and I bet that, whenever I move, it will be a buyer’s market. Ah, well.)

The garden was an unintended responsibility, one I wasn’t sure I could meet. Actually, although the house is fairly small, there were three gardens–one in front, the sun garden; a terraced rock one on the side and one in the back, both shade gardens. I had to do a lot of reading and learning about growing flowers to rise to the occasion and do right by those gardens, since I knew virtually nothing on the subject when I first moved here.

But I think, all things considering, I’ve done rather well. Some plants died and I replaced them with others. Some thrived. I moved things around. I learned that what looks good in June or July can look crummy and bloomless in August. I learned my favorite garden joke, which I’ve written before but will repeat once more, with feeling:

Q: What’s the definition of a perennial?
A: It’s a plant that comes back every year, if it had lived.

It’s not always easy to get the garden to look good in September. But I will restrain my innate modesty to say that I think mine isn’t all that shabby right now. And, getting an even tighter grip on that innate modesty, I’m going to post a couple of photos of the front garden, taken just yesterday, when it wasn’t pouring rain, unlike today:

The post Almost-fall garden interlude appeared first on The New Neo.

My name is neo-neocon, and I’m a warmonger. Not only have I declared war, but I’m deriving some pleasure from killing.

But don’t get me wrong. It’s not total war; I’m saving the big guns for when I might really need them. After all, in all-out, total war, everybody loses.

This is a war with that transcends issues of race (although some might argue it has aspects of class); this battle has inter-species connotations. The enemy: the Japanese beetle.

I know it’s really summer when they arrive. Their numbers are legion; the proverbial hordes. I know that spraying (otherwise known as total war) would be most effective, but I’m liberal enough and ecology-minded enough to not want to foul my own nest with pesticides unless absolutely necessary.

So, over the years, I’ve tried other methods.

Those pheromone-based lures are attractive–and not just to the beetles, but to me. Using their own sexual drives to entice them into traps seems a bit diabolical, but has the advantage of being harmless to the environment. And the technique works, in a way–as soon as I would set out a bag, I’d invariably catch about a pound of the critters (and believe me, a pound is a lot of beetle for the money).

But the lures seemed to attract as many as they killed. The beetles just kept coming and coming (and I know, I know; those who criticize the entire neocon endeavor would say that the same thing is happening in Iraq).

In the last couple of years I’ve fastened on my present approach.

I fill a jar with alcohol,

and stealthily approach the favored, already slightly decimated, feeding grounds:

or the alternative, but still somewhat popular, rest and recreation area:

The beetles are lazily, happily feeding (or procreating?), blissfully unaware of the fate that awaits them. They are slow in the midday sun, heavy and lethargic, and all it takes is a little bit of pressure on the plant with my free hand as the other holds the jar into which the happy beetles plop.

Death, I’m glad to say, is instantaneous. I’ve experimented with different concentrations of alcohol/water, and I’ve found that only the pure stuff keeps them from writhing and squirming for many long seconds. I have no wish to make them suffer; I just want them gone.

Wish me well. Wish them ill.

The post Neo-neocon at war appeared first on The New Neo.

I write about my garden every now and then, as you may have noticed. But don’t conclude that I’m some sort of garden freak, or even a garden expert. I most assuredly am not.

In fact, growing up, I didn’t know much about gardening at all. Oh, we had a few plants in the yard–very few. The neighborhood boasted some flowers, mostly tulips and daffodils and some annuals like marigolds. I only knew the names of the first two; I was fairly garden illiterate. No one I knew had a perennial garden, and I didn’t even know the difference between annuals and perennials.

By the way, this might be as good a time as any to introduce my perennial joke (that is to say, my joke about perennials):

Q: What’s the definition of a perennial?

A: A plant that comes back every year, if it had lived.

Yet, quite a few years back, I had a family and a house and a yard and I decided I’d spruce it up a bit with a bit of gardening. I started with vegetables–in much of New England, when you say you have a garden, a vegetable garden is what you actually mean.

I knew nothing about growing vegetables or growing much of anything else, but I got a bunch of books out of the library and set forth. After a couple of years of this I learned the bitter truth of vegetable gardening in northern New England, at least as neophytes such as myself often experience it, and that is: you get a ton of green tomatoes, and I don’t like them (even though I bought a book of recipes for green tomatoes and gamely tried a few), and you can’t even give zucchini away.

So I switched to flowers, which I like better anyway. Books again; I learned the perennial/annual distinction (duh!) and ordered a bunch of plants from a mail order catalogue because in those days it was much harder to find interesting perennials at the local garden store.

I thereby learned the truth of the above joke. Much of what I planted didn’t return, and the portion that did was random. Speaking of random, when I decided to plant a bed of poppies, I ordered six plants that were supposed to be a paler version of the traditional ones–a beautiful peachy color instead of the usual flame red. They arrived, I planted, and when they flowered it turned out I’d been sent five peach ones and one red. They looked rather odd together, not at all what I’d planned. Not at all what I’d planned–remember that as your gardening mantra.

But in the end it turned out to be A Good Thing, because those peachy ones died after that first year, while the red one lived. Turns out that those specialty items tend to be far less hardy than the originals, which have stood the test of time and evolution (hmmm, there must be a message there). The red ones thrived for about fifteen years before they finally died after an especially wet and cold winter.

That particular garden never really got going, though. Perhaps something about the soil, the light, my tender loving care–who knows? But when I moved to my present home I took custody of a fairly well-established perennial garden, or set of gardens.

My home is actually quite modest, as is the yard. But my predecessor was a gardening fiend. There’s a sun garden in front, a semishade rock garden on the side, and a shade garden in back. When I was looking for a home I was so happy to find one that I didn’t think much about the gardens, but that first spring-summer in residence I realized I had a choice: let it all go to seed, as it were; or rise to the occasion.

I’ve tried to do the latter. I’ve moved things around, cleaned things up, planted new ones, replaced those that died out. And I have to say I think it looks pretty good, although I sometimes resent the chore I’ve taken on as a sort of inheritance. But I love looking at the garden, and I love the compliments I get–just don’t ask me too many gardening questions!

This is all a long-winded intro (long winded? moi?) to my central point, which is this: I love this particular time in the garden year. It’s been raining (as it often does in late spring), so things are lush and green, not dried out as they often get later on.

For this is the time of garden hope: everything will be wonderful this year, of course! I can tell. The weeds haven’t really taken hold yet. There are hardly any bugs in sight. Those repulsive Japanese beetles and voracious lily beetles that take over every year and force me to confront the toxic spray decision won’t come back this year, right? Right.

The first flowering plants are in delicate bloom:

After my dog of fifteen years died and I decided not to take on the pet responsibility right now, I got this one, who chases a metal butterfly in the rock garden. I don’t usually like cutesy little garden sculptures, but this one–well:

And then there are the irises. When I moved in, one of the pleasant surprises was a couple of irises of a very spectacular variety. I don’t know their name, but I did a search once and I think it’s “Witch of Endor.” At any rate, they look like this, only much much more beautiful (the color is much deeper and richer than it photographs):

Last spring those iris plants came up far more plentifully than in the past. I had two sections of them with about fifteen plants each. I was eagerly anticipating their beautiful bloom, so I waited. And waited. And it turns out that all I got was foliage–not a single flower.

No one could tell me exactly what had happened. So this year I watched that plentiful that foliage come up with more trepidation–would they, or wouldn’t they? And, sure enough, here they are, about to bloom. Although it’s clear that most of the plants still aren’t going to flower this year, but some clearly will:

I can’t wait.

You might say, “get a life.” But I think I have one, and flowers happen to have become part of it. A person could do worse than looking forward to the return of spring.

The post Hope–and spring–springs eternal appeared first on The New Neo.