Read by Michael Flamel   Listen Now: To quote Wikipedia (which, yes, I send a donation to every year because one) I use it a lot in my work and two) I grew up Catholic, which means I can match the guilt of any member of an ethnic or religious group on the…  READ MORE

Two Springs ago (not counting the most recent one, which was lovely in early January but ran away on the [theoretical] “first day of Spring” and has not been seen since) I ordered a “Snow Joe” rechargeable ‘electric snow shovel,’ which, as Popeye the Sailor Man would say “it is what it is."  READ MORE

Warning: This story, like 90 percent of gardening, is a cliffhanger. Most of you will be familiar with that term, but in the interest of stalling for time, I will now explain. Back in the day, “going to the movies” involved not only the feature picture, but a cartoon, a Newsreel and a short subject beforehand.  READ MORE

Those of us who have achieved a certain age remember Summer and Fall in ways that no longer exist: Collecting empty soda (pop) bottles to take back to the store for the deposit. (Two cents for a regular empty; a nickel for a quart size: two of them and you could buy a comic book!)   READ MORE

The grand (or not so grand; your choice) illusion of GreenPrints is that we grizzled veterans are asked to write a seasonally appropriate story every quarter, months before that season actually appears. So, full disclosure: I am two-fingeredly pounding out this attempt at a Summertime story on March 20, the first day of Spring.  READ MORE

I always tell people that if they want to really show off their garden to plan to do so in the month of June (that’s still Spring, isn’t it?). Certainly not now: The weather’s been dreary since we dropped into the twenties (the cold ones, not the roaring ones) the first week of November, which is not officially ‘the cruelest month,’ but it might as well   READ MORE

As I have previously recounted in these pulse-pounding pages, the amazingly talented Hall of Fame ballplayer Rogers Hornsby (third-best batting average in all of baseball history!) was once asked by a reporter, “What do you do in the off-season?  READ MORE

“How did it come to this?” is admittedly a question I have asked out loud more than once. But this was the first time it was at 3:00 a.m. on a freezing cold April night as I feverishly try to turn the frosted-to-the-metal knobs of an ancient Weber grill ...  READ MORE

It was many years ago (Several? Decades? Where are my car keys?! Have Evil, Key-Stealing Squirrels become tired of planting black walnuts in every one of my garden beds and achieved forced entry into the house?) that a much younger me had had good success with many plants—and rationalized that the others were their own fault.  READ MORE

It occurred to me several years ago that two of my three passions were so intertwined that they followed the same season. Pinball, of course, has no season and was designed to help keep people like me (relatively) sane during the cold dark season of no baseball and no tomato growing.  READ MORE

Snags are dead trees left standing, which is the way of the world in the woods, but not in the American landscape, where imitation of Disney World plant sculptures is the desired ideal (until the homeowner finds out how much work it is to maintain a topiary of Uncle Scrooge).  READ MORE

Yes, we spent the Summer under construction. The old porch—which my wife called “ratty” but I thought looked “authentic”—(She just yelled: “We’re both right; it was authentically ratty!”) came down, as did the old Cowboy Architecture deck out back—which would have needed quite a bit of improvement to deserve an adjective as lofty as ratty.  READ MORE

I grew pumpkins this year. Yes, I know. I did it, anyway. Life just doesn’t seem as sweet when you only do things that make sense. My column(s) would have to actually be about gardening if I only did things that made sense. Pumpkins are lots of fun to grow. And, everyone together now: “We can always use the eggs!”  READ MORE

Boy—I’m showing my age with the classic duo in that headline, eh? Hey, kids—go ask your parents (please God, don’t make them have to go ask their grandparents, oh please, please! I’m still a kid! Really—I’m just a little old for my age!) who Mutt & Jeff were and get back here.  READ MORE

I must needs be pounding out these wascally words in the barely-of-Spring, whence I am (or should that be was? Or even will be, if you consider I’ll probably be equally—if somewhat differently—horticulturally foolish again next season [one thing that sets us gardening types apart from normal people is the wonderful personality trait that   READ MORE

It’s early December and I’m out driving when some folks at my public radio station call me with a Big Idea: Let’s send poinsettias to five stations that are on the fence about picking us up—they really like my weekly gardening show...  READ MORE

That’s ‘Spring’ the season, not ‘spring’ as in a body of water (which would HAVE to be wet or it wouldn’t BE a spring, come to think of it…) whose contents when packaged in small, cheap, toxic plastic containers retail for more than gasoline ...  READ MORE

First, I am pleased to announce that I have planted my peas earlier this year than ever before and certainly earlier than anyone in my native Pennsylvania would consider even remotely sane. As always, this is not my fault.  READ MORE

Before I get to this week’s Exciting Episode, I have to brag about my tomatoes. Almost everyone I spoke with said that this past year’s tomato harvest was awful. Mine was so good I had to go down into the basement.  READ MORE

It’s hard to imagine the words ‘casual’ and ‘leukemia’ together, but the pastor of my local church was extremely casual early this Spring when he casually told me in a very casual tone of voice that his youngest daughter had leukemia, wanted to grow some of her own food, and could I possibly come by and give them some gardening pointers.  READ MORE

Many years ago, the extremely horticultural expert (his license plate was in Latin and he had crossed out ‘make’ on his owner’s card and replaced it with ‘genus’) of a very well-known company that specializes in high-end perennials must have picked up the wrong list of garden writers  READ MORE

I know that some (OK—most to all) of you think that this stuff is funny, because it meets the Mel Brooks definition: “If I personally fall into an open manhole, it’s tragedy; but if somebody else does, it’s comedy;” but meanwhile, I’m the one falling into the manholes. Oy!  READ MORE

I knew I would get into trouble when I agreed to lead a tour through the south of France this past summer, and I thought I had already achieved my goal when my wife left her hairbrush behind.   READ MORE

Many things are my fault. The forsythia is/are not one of them. They were here when we moved in. Actually there were more forsythia(s) then in the front of the house but we wanted to see the front of the house so I ‘dug one up.’  READ MORE

Back when I was the editor of Organic Gardening magazine (which was back when there was an Organic Gardening magazine to edit [boo hoo]), many of my editorial columns were a personal “garden report,” which in the hands of a real gardener would have recounted inspiring celebrations ...  READ MORE

The first spirit to appear had a skirt so wide it had to leave the room to change its mind. “I remember you,” I said. “You’re the ‘Christmas tree’ I cleverly planned out many Christmaseseseses ago!  READ MORE