The Long Story of Tea in America Have you ever wondered where your tea comes from? Tea is one of those everyday things that we can always find at the grocery or convenience store. You may remember that tea was imported to Boston in the Colonial era. Maybe you also remember the story of how colonists, dressed as Native Americans, dumped the British East India Company’s cargo of tea into the Boston Harbor in December 1773 to protest unfairly...
A Mystery and A Memory We found several large evergreen shrubs in our new yard that we couldn’t immediately identify, when we moved here over a decade ago. We could pick out the boxwood and Camellias, but we were especially curious about the very tall, open shrubs that the birds loved the most. It was August, and tiny bluish gray drupes were ripening along this shrub’s woody stems. Its leaves were fragrant. Birds gathered in its dense and twiggy...
You may already have everything you need to make a simple, wildlife friendly, natural Christmas wreath. Can you remember Christmas before the decorations were all made with plastic and came from a store? This is a simple wreath that you can make in an afternoon, enjoy during the season, and then add to your compost pile. It will be fresher, more fragrant, and will last longer than any purchased wreath. Best of all, you can find the materials as...
If fragrance is the gate of memory, the spicy aroma of Eastern red cedar takes me back to childhood holidays. My parents would load us in the car, about a week before Christmas, for a drive out to a friend’s farm where we could walk through the meadows in search of our Christmas tree. After a lively debate about the trees we found, Dad would pull out an old handsaw and begin cutting the tree. We would all help...
The first Camellia shrub usually chooses a stretch of damp, cool October days to burst into bloom. I am always taken by surprise when its luminous white, spring-like blossoms unfold, because they look rather out of place beside the colorful leaves falling from nearby trees. Bright flowers in shades of white, pink, and red open on our evergreen Camellia shrubs each October and November while the rest of the garden fades, and as we begin preparing for winter’s...
The Historic Red, White and Blue Red, White and Blue is the iconic color scheme of an American summer. These colors each have deep meanings and various interpretations. American revolutionaries adopted these colors for our colonial flags beginning in 1776. Yet red, white and blue were also the colors of the British flag, and the British Red Ensign Flag, a field of red with a Union Jack in the upper left corner, which flew over Colonial and British ships from...
The sweet fragrance of Magnolia flowers on a warm breeze announces summer in Virginia. But that wasn’t the case 400 years ago, before European colonists began exploring for interesting tree species, transplanting them to new areas, and exporting them back to Europe. The original native range of Magnolia grandiflora is only from the Carolinas south to Florida and westwards towards Texas along the Gulf Coast. Our iconic Southern Magnolia trees aren’t indigenous in this region, but they have since...
Benefits of Garden Herbs Herbs attract hummingbirds and butterflies like few other plants. It is worth planting a few herbs whether you plan to harvest and cook with them or not because they are tough, easy to grow, and beautiful. They come with side benefits; their essential oils not only offer fragrance and flavor, but they also deter grazers. If you have watched deer chew your roses and impatiens like deer candy, know that your herbs will survive their curiosity. ...
What is an Herb? Why is mint an herb, but clover isn’t? Have you ever given it much thought? Botanically, any plant with a soft stem, that dies back in winter, is ‘herbaceous.’ Were you give a stack of a dozen cards, each with the name and picture of a plant, could you sort them into ‘herbs’ and ‘not herbs’? If asked, most of us could probably name at least five herbs. Those used in cooking, like basil and thyme...
Once upon a time, I found herb gardening a topic of mystique and mystery. Maybe it was the herb gardening books I found, with their illustrations of medieval knot gardens, and the cute little pots of culinary herbs grown on the wide, sunny windowsill of someone’s gourmet kitchen. Or maybe it was learning that many herbs prefer a Mediterranean climate with dry, rocky soil and lots of sunshine. How could I replicate that in Virginia? It may have been...