The writer's garden

I don't know if writers garden, on average, more often than other people of equivalent age and social class.  Writers are too various for some kind of analysis.

The most prominent gardening writer I know is my friend James Patrick Kelly.  He used to live in Portsmouth, where he had a big suburban garden.  Now he lives on Lake Pawtuckaway, where he has a sprawling estate with shady areas, waterside plantings, and a croquet pitch.  There don't seem to be any pictures of his work on his site, which, oddly, is focused on his writing.

I don't write as much, or as well, as Jim, so I will have fill things out a bit.  But my yard, like my oevre, is a bit smaller--actually, 40 feet square, crammed between several concrete block garages.  I've done my best.

Here rudbeckia, phlox, and liatris near my garage.  You can see that I don't favor a crisply organized look.  Sun is hitting the rudbeckia, which makes them glow.

This is along the garage in the other direction, a few weeks earlier.  Daylilies, Russian sage, butterfly bush, cranesbill.  All easy to grow and with satisfying results.

Most weekends I must write, or drown.  But when I can, I work in the garden.  I have the front and side to do yet--they make the house look abandoned, or lived in by a more traditional type of alcoholic writer.