The unnaturally warm weather earlier this week gave Kirk and me a chance to check our hives. So far the news is pretty good. We lost one hive but the other was roiling with activity. I am thinking of it as “we are batting 500” which is really, really good (yes, I had to look [...]

In 2012 I will continue to refine my designs in some of the larger gardens at MacKenzie-Childs. A gardener will tell you that a plan is never finished; a living garden continues to grow and evolve as the gardener becomes enchanted with new plants, falls out of love with other plants, finds that a plant [...]

  Plans or resolutions, I have great intentions for 2012. Last year went by at such a breakneck pace; it felt like we were at a dead run much of the time. In 2011 we tried out so many new things that it seamed like we were constantly climbing the learning curve. I am really [...]

  We have been using every day-lit, non rainy moment in the last six weeks to cut down gardens, plant bulbs, and most importantly, decorate for the winter holidays. As I mentioned previously, Corinne and Ellie worked four weeks putting lights in the deciduous trees in the Courtly Check Courtyard and in two trees in [...]

You may not know this but in my heart, I promised to try to blog at least once a week. I have failed, repeatedly and dismally. You see, for me, writing does not come easily nor does it come as elegantly as I would like. While I am working in the gardens I am filled [...]

  According to the forecast we are likely to have our first flakes of snow that will undoubtedly mark the end of our tender annuals for the season. We have had a few days of “English” weather (misty, cool, not quite rain, but everything is wet) that have kept us out of the gardens. Our [...]

This is the hardest time of the year for me. I love everything about Autumn in the Finger Lakes. The air is crisp, the apples are tasty, the trees take on scarlet, russet, yellow, and purple tones, and rain has made the soil dark and friable- a lovely word that, to me, means the weeds [...]

This last weekend we celebrated our annual Fall Festival here at MacKenzie-Childs in Aurora. Despite a few weeks of cloudy, rainy, cool weather preceeding the festival, Mother Nature provided a week of very workable fall days with a spectacular weekend gaurenteed to provide our visitors with lovely days to visit, tour, and shop. Enjoy the [...]

  Simon kept climbing on our piles of decorations. We now call him King of the Cornstalks   We spent the week decorating for the Fall Festival. I love the transition from steamy summer (which I am quite over now) to crisp fall. Autum in the Finger Lakes cannot be beat! We have great fun [...]

A few weeks ago I posted about the honey harvest: it was exciting for Kirk and me- we actually harvested honey! And it tasted good! We felt like true beekeepers. One of the pluses of the harvesting the honey was that we also spent more time looking over the hive. Prior to that time, most [...]