Virag: Forgot eggplants? What was I thinking

July 20, 2008

I don't know whether time speeded up when I wasn't looking in my vegetable garden this season or I was simply too busy worrying about the roses to notice the Swiss chard, but suddenly everything was going wild. The lettuce was about to bolt, the squash was trying to strangle the tomatoes, the beans were reaching over the obelisk and the eggplant - ohmygod, the eggplant was missing, and it was all my fault.

Recent columns

• Sturdy rudbeckias brighten summer

  July 13, 2008

  I grew up calling them black-eyed Susans, those bright yellow daisylike flowers with big brown eyes. I'm not exactly sure where and when I first saw them, but I know they made an impression. For most of my pre-gardening life, which endured until I moved into a home of my own, they were one of the few plants I could identify with confidence. The others were pansies and petunias.

• Garden exhibit goes to pots at LongHouse Reserve

  July 6, 2008

  Like a lot of things in the garden, a well-planted pot is a work of art. But you need more than plant material and potting mix. You need an eye, a sense of daring, an inspiration.

• JULY 2008

  June 29, 2008

  If all goes as expected, it should be hot, hot, hot as July fires up and lilies glow and those coldblooded wonders called butterflies sparkle amid the salvia. Noel Coward knew what he was talking about when he said that only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. So save your weeding, watering, deadheading and other chores for the morning or late afternoon. Harry Truman advised that if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, but I think it's OK if you have a glass of iced tea and a salad fresh from your own garden waiting.

• Nurturing a nation of gardeners

  June 22, 2008

  At twilight, in the sultry haze of a Southern heat spell, the gardens glistened. I strolled through them quickly, admiring the purple clematis scrambling over a brick wall and knew that I would come back to admire the boxwoods. I looked at the vast meadow sloping down to the Potomac. In the fading light I could still see the bluebird boxes and the purple coneflowers and wild bee balm and the palest pink penstemon. Birds sang to the evening and I thought that all I needed was a white parasol and a hoop skirt - although I never could understand how those antebellum belles dealt with those things, especially in the heat - and I could imagine I was waiting for a beau named Beau to carry me off to a ball. To me, even the name of the place resonated with a certain romance - River Farm.

• Students and plants bloom in horticulture class

  May 25, 2008

  Spring and students bloom in the four-acre garden that is Professor Richard Iversen's classroom at Farmingdale State College.

• Woolly’s bully, so attack it fully

  May 18, 2008

  A few weeks ago, I told you the bittersweet story of Jean and Tillie Sklar of Hauppauge and the living fence of hemlocks they planted when they moved into a new home 42 years ago. The trees had to be taken down and replaced by a vinyl barrier when a killer came to call.

• Greener gardening: More people turn to organics

  May 4, 2008

  I first thought hard about chemicals poisoning the Earth years ago when I wrote about a small group of naturalists that fought successfully to ban DDT from the fields of Long Island and save ospreys from extinction. Soon afterward, I thought even harder. That happened on a December night 11 years ago when I was getting ready for bed and my hand - for no reason I have ever been able to explain - strayed to my right breast and touched a lump.

• GARDENS: MAY 2008

  April 27, 2008

  It's a truism that time flies, but for gardeners the month of May is when it's really fleeting in the garden. We're busy digging, planting and even weeding. So don't hang on to the maypole too long. Besides, there's lots to revel in - crabapple trees and cherry trees and dogwoods and magnolias in bloom. Columbine and weigela and peonies and azaleas. By the end of the month, tomatoes should be growing and eggplants and peppers, too - the whole ratatouille. There's work to do, but May is surely a merry month.

• Showhouse envy: Do try this at home

  July 21, 2005

  When I go to a showhouse, I get wrapped up in it as if I'm at a terrific art exhibition or a film documentary. I'm thrilled by furnishings big and small, by wood floors and fabric-covered ceilings and state-of-the-art stoves. By things I wish I had the space and the money to try out. But I'm also inspired by real possibilities. By ideas I can pull off in my own home.

• Homage to an extraordinary spirit

  May 16, 2004

  It is spring and my memories of Kathy Pufahl come in waves like flowers.

• A journey ends, but the cycle continues

  March 14, 2004

  It is a year since I began this journey into the natural world that lives around us. That defines itself in an everlasting cycle. Or as I have always thought of it - the cycle of the seasons.

• The Real Dirt on Earthworms

  February 8, 2004

  When it comes to heroes, the natural world is full of surprises. A few chapters back, I expressed my disillusion upon discovering that ladybugs were not all sweetness and light. Now another icon has lost some of its luster. I have to turn on worms.

• Winged Wonders Inherit the Wind

  January 11, 2004

  I have crossed Long Island Sound by ferry and voyaged across the English Channel in abject misery. But I have never crossed the Atlantic or any other ocean by boat. Except for the time I covered a tuna-fishing tournament and covered myself with disgrace in the process, I have never been out to sea.

• Why They Interrupt Us

  November 9, 2003

  It started with a terrific banging at the front door. "What are you doing?" I hollered at my husband. He was hollering pretty much the same thing. I was in the kitchen; he was at the other end of the house in the bedroom. We met at the front entrance.

• Gently Down the Stream

  October 12, 2003

  Oceans are too vast for me to contemplate. They dwarf the land and put me in my place. They're just there - always and forever, both comforting and terrifying. Lakes, on the other hand, even the greatest of them, seem oddly self-contained. But rivers - well, rivers are something else. They wind and flow, they meander and rush. They have a beginning and an end. They carve their own paths. I can understand rivers.

• They're Not So Innocent

  September 14, 2003

  Hornets give me the heebie-jeebies, mosquitoes make me itch and I shudder at the sight of carpenter ants. I do not court the company of spiders. Roaches revolt me and I reach for a swatter at the buzz of a fly.

• Great Adaptations

  August 10, 2003

  The carnivores huddled together in the bog, still and waiting. They seemed innocent, oddly attractive - their only weapons gaping pitcher-shaped mouths with maroon traceries and a ring of glands that secrete sweet nectar to lure their victims.

• Of Sights and the Sound

  July 13, 2003

  It rained during the day, and the sand is damp and firm, a grainy beige carpet decorated with delicate traceries etched by the receding tide.

• Spirits Soar With Birds of Prey

  June 8, 2003

  By politics and nature, I have never been a hawk. I think of myself as prey rather than predator. And yet when it comes to birds, I have always been fascinated by raptors - especially by red-tailed hawks.

• Silent Spring Peeps Up at Last

  May 11, 2003

  At the edge of a clearing, just steps away from a vernal pond, I stand and listen. I lean forward as if somehow that will help my hearing.

• Magic of the Dwarf Pine Plains

  April 13, 2003

  It's a gray misty day and I'm in a forest. Not that most people would recognize it as such. Everybody knows that forests are places where sunlight streams through leafy canopies and oaks touch the sky. Where we mere humans look up in reverence at great green giants.

• Phew! Must Be Spring

  March 16, 2003

  Snow coats the path and ice still grips the bare branches of the hickory trees and clings to the broom sedge and the red hips of the swamp rose. Yet, I am searching for spring. And perhaps something more. I am a pilgrim in the woods on a winter day looking for nature's great design.