Life Style & Travel

Division Renovates Tired Old Perennials

division
UNITED STATES—Autumn is a time for planting partly because it is when many plants are beginning their winter dormancy. They are, or will soon be, less active than they would be at any other time of year. Some may not start to grow again until after winter ends. Others will want to secretly disperse their roots through the rainy...

Autumn Weather Prompts Foliar Color

UNITED STATES—Mild climates allow more flowers to bloom through autumn and winter here than in most other parts of America. That is why cool season annuals like pansies and violas are so popular. Cyclamen can be planted now too. None will be obscured by snow. By the time cool season annuals start to fade, warm season annuals will be...

Evergreen Trees Drop Leaves Too

evergreen
UNITED STATES—As the deciduous trees that will soon be coloring for autumn defoliate for winter, the evergreen trees will become more prominent. Some evergreen trees will drop some of their foliage along with deciduous trees through autumn and winter. Many drop some of their old foliage as new foliage develops in spring, or later in summer. All are on...

Segovia

UNITED STATES—Not Toledo, as promised for the mythical roasted rabbit... but Segovia. We departed mid-morning after a sluggish morning due to the cumulative effects of all the merrymaking. Midday hunger drove us out of Madrid. We reached Segovia clustered around hills and ravines, full of tan buildings from the 1500s. A Roman aqueduct sweeps across one end of the town....

Sweet Thursday

UNITED STATES—The transcendental discovery in parque El Retiro in Madrid that it was possible to walk in the street and drink wine was mollified by something that happened outside the bar Aleatorio, where we presented out bilingual journal. I took a bottle of beer outside and was harshly rebuked by a man from Tunesia, who had a very harsh...

Arborists Maintain The Big Trees

arborists
UNITED STATES—The trees know what time of year it is. Even evergreen trees have shed some of their older foliage through late summer. Deciduous trees generally start later, but will be more blatant about their process as they defoliate completely through autumn to winter. Some get strikingly colorful first, as if to brag about it. Foliage is not so...

Miriam

UNITED STATES—A striking invitation was sent out by Miriam, the girlfriend of Dave America who engineered the trip to Madrid to present our bilingual anthology, "80 mph." When we arrived at the literary bar in the Malasana neighborhood Thursday night, we were greeted by a mood different from that which met us at Tuesday night's story reading. The place...

Squash For Autumn And Winter

squash
UNITED STATES—Winter squash are not exactly the sort of cool season vegetables that their designation implies. They grow through the summer just like summer squash do. Both winter and summer squash are warm season vegetables that get planted early in spring. The difference is that summer squash get harvested regularly through summer, and winter squash get harvested only once...

A Second Chance

UNITED STATES—Wednesday turned out to be a day of surprises. The focus was for Colombian filmmaker, Juan David, to submit his recently completed movie to film festivals. It took us to an unlikely, un-Spanish setting: the Grove of Madrid. It is a huge hit with the busloads of Asian tourists. They love shopping at the homogenized same classy stores...

Bulbs For Spring Get Planted Now

bulbs
UNITED STATES—To those who do not enjoy gardening, the process of planting dormant bulbs must seem to be blatantly unproductive. Those of us who know what we are doing are so dutiful to select the bulbs we want, only to bury them in shallow graves in the garden, with nothing to show for all the effort. Knowing that the...