End of Month View: August Stumbles to a Close

Today we’re in Rotterdam, New York, visiting with Maxine Brisport.

While supporting businesses from the Black, AAPI, Latinx, and other marginalized groups should be a year-round endeavor, we're happy to highlight some of our favorite Latine-owned brands to kickstart Hispanic Heritage Month. The month-long celebration is observed from September 15th to October 15th, celebrating the influences and contributions of those across the Hispanic and Latine diaspora (Latine and Latinx can be used interchangeably. However, Latinx is a term used predominately in the U.S. by English speakers while Latine is more in line with other gender-neutral Spanish words like presidente).

Today we’re back in Carla Z. Mudry’s garden in Malvern, Pennsylvania, celebrating the blooms of the end of summer.

Sparrowhawks are one of the most agile birds of prey in the UK. They evolved to nip, dive and swerve around trees to hunt in forests, and this means they’re also well-adapted to hunt amongst the buildings in our urban centres. I’ve seen them several times in my garden in urban Cambridge. Either perched on my fence, streaking across in a blur, or, on one memorable occasion, swiping a Starling from the bird feeder and plucking it on the ground.

We’re in Malvern, Pennsylvania, today, visiting with Carla Z. Mudry. She’s reflecting on the tail end of summer in her garden.

September is a period of transition in the garden.

Another Trader Joe's recall, this time for Texas Tamale Company's Gourmet Black Bean Tamales (in nine states), has customers wondering what's going on with their much-loved grocery store. This is the sixth recall by the company, which has 564 markets nationwide. 

Lavender is a lovely and popular flowering herb. The lavender I grow in my garden isLavandula angustifolia, also known as English Lavender. The variety I have is called Hidcote, which is a relatively compact lavender with deep purple flowers. Versatile and easy to grow, this lavender is a useful wildlife attractant on the sunny fringe of my forest garden.

Are you a plant lover looking to add an exotic touch to your indoor garden? If so, you might want to consider growing Philodendron Billietiae, a stunning tropical plant known for its unique foliage and easy-to-care-for nature.

When we first moved into this house we had the sofa by the patio doors. At some point during the intervening two years we moved it to the other end of the living room, facing away from the garden, so that Ryan could have a corner for his ‘office’. It means we miss on on seeing a lot of the antics of the wild birds we entice into the garden with the feeders, which is a shame. In an ideal world we’d have a conservatory, but unfortunately it would take up too much of the garden. We’re pondering whether to move things around again, but in the meantime we need to make more of an effort to look out the window!

Day 3 started with the delivery of the aggregate and sand, and ended with quite a lot of the blocks being laid. We’re not allowed to walk on them yet, though!

It’s at this time of year, I think, that a polytunnel or greenhouse really comes in handy in the garden. Over the summer it may just be a tangle of tomato vines – productive, but a space that you really only go in to keep up with the watering chore, or to harvest ripe tomatoes. You know you’re going to come out with green stains on your clothes and hands that smell funny – tomatoes are like that. Those tomatoes will hang on longer into the autumn than you thought they would, and by the time you’ve cleared out the polytunnel the season will be so far advanced that it will be cold and dark and your crop of overwintering salads will barely be growing – just marking time until the days are long enough for them to actually grow.