Kathy Purdy

This is Pat Leuchtman. You may know her as the garden blogger Commonweeder. I first met Pat at a garden blogger's fling and chatted with her then and at other garden blogger gatherings. I thought she was a cheerful, conventional New Englander. When I started reading her book, The Roses at the End of the [...]

Flannel shirts have been around for ages, but have you ever tried to do stuff in one? Ever try to reach for that last weed without stepping in the bed, and feel your flannel shirt holding you back? Ever string up Christmas lights over your head and feel a draft up your back as your [...]

It happens to all of us. At least, it happens to me and a lot of other gardeners I know. Winter is right around the corner and you have all these plants in pots that you were sure you were going to have time to plant during the growing season. And now the growing season [...]

After a mild start to November, we have recently had snow and bitter cold*--down to 15F(-9C) one night and in the low 20s for several others. You would think there would not be any plant worth looking at after that, and you would be mostly right. However, if one looks carefully, there are still some [...]

Collecting seeds is an optional fall chore for me. Most of the time I depend on the plants' own willingness to disperse seeds, or the availability of the seed from seed companies. But every so often I grow a plant and I am not sure I will be able to buy more seed, or I [...]

In my previous post, I described my idea of a cabin fever bed as a way to enjoy at least a part of the garden from indoors, when the weather is too miserable to be outside. One of the goals of such a bed is to grow plants that provide interest as far into winter [...]

Cabin fever is a colloquial expression that means different things to different people. Wikipedia defines it as a claustrophobic reaction that takes place when a person or group is isolated and/or shut in a small space, with nothing to do for an extended period. Cabin fever describes the extreme irritability and restlessness a person may [...]

As those of you who follow me or the Cold Climate Gardening page on Facebook know, I gave a talk on colchicums yeseterday for the Adirondack Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society, which meets in Ithaca--not the Adirondacks. The day before my talk, I decided to pick any fresh-looking colchicums and take them [...]

This has been a very mild fall. We've had the occasional skin-of-the-teeth frost, which means some frost on the back lawn, but not enough to touch the plants in a raised bed, or the stone floor of the front porch, or the back deck, which is a floor above ground level. As a result, a [...]