HI THERE! I'M BRIANNE TURCZYNSKI, FREELANCE WRITER, HISTORICAL RESEARCHER, & PERPETUAL SEEKER OF THE HUMAN CONDITION. WELCOME TO MY SPACE WHERE I SHARE THE BOOKS I'M READING, MY SPIRITUAL FINDINGS, FLOWERS IN MY GARDEN, AND LOST STORIES. ALL ARE WELCOME HERE.
Another vine which is giving me great pleasure at the moment is Vitis heterophylla, an East Asian. You can't eat it, but you can pick it and put it in a little glass on your table, where its curiously coloured berries and deeply cut leaves look oddly artificial, more like a spray designed by a … Continue reading Porcelain Berry Bright…
Spring and summer are well provided with flowering shrubs, but it is a puzzle to know what to grow of a shrubby nature for colour in the late months of July, August, and September. There are the hibiscus (Althea Frutex) which are attractive with their hollyhock-like flowers... -Vita Sackville-West In Your Garden June 25th, 1950 Everyday … Continue reading Hollyhocks That Grow On Trees?
People often ask what plants are suitable for a shady situation, by which they mean either the north side of a walk or house, or in the shadow cast by trees. There are so many plants that no one need despair. -Vita Sackville-West A Joy of Gardening; 1958 Astilbe and the Romanovs, perhaps that will … Continue reading Astilbe & The Romanovs
The bees think that I have laid it for their especial benefit. It really is a lovely sight; I do not want to boast, but I cannot help being pleased with it; it is so seldom that one's experiments in gardening are wholly successful. -Vita Sackville-West In Your Garden June 18, 1950 A couple years … Continue reading Survival of the Fittest: Milkweed
It is sufficiently remarkable that a great and powerful noble should have accepted so frank a criticism from a peasant, little more than a child. He was more accustomed to see such people tremble in his presence. Such impertinence must have taken his breath away. Besides, it attacked him in his most private feelings. -Vita … Continue reading Spiderwort or The Unfortunately Named
This remedy she rejected, saying that she would rather die than do anything that she believed to be a crime or contrary to God's will. -Vita Sackville-West Saint Joan of Arc: 1936 In one of my favorite books (I mean, if I was stranded on a deserted island (touch wood), this would be one of the books … Continue reading Deadly Nightshade
He kept them sitting for hours over the dinner table, he who was usually so impatient to move away; he kept them entertained by anecdote after anecdote, reminiscence after reminiscence, observation after observation... -V. Sackville-West Easter Parade: A Novel Copyright: 1953 Allow me, if you will, to ramble a bit? Ramble like a climbing, … Continue reading Ramble On…
Their beauty is beyond dispute. No velvet can rival the richness of their falls; or, let us say, it is to velvet only that we may compare them. -Vita Sackville-West In Your Garden June 26, 1949 I have thought of planting Iris for a long time, but they are rather expensive. Out my kitchen window … Continue reading Snatching Velvet in the Night
The sage is altogether an amiable plant; indeed, its Latin name, Salvia, comes from salvere, to save, or heal, and one of its nicknames is S. slavatrix, which sounds very reassuring....The garden sages are useful for the herbaceous border. I do not mean that half-hardy bedding-out plant beloved of the makers of public gardens, S. … Continue reading Salvia: A Variety That Should Be Forbidden
It took me years of gardening to appreciate the pale beauty of its leaves and flowers, but now that I have learnt to look at them in the right way I can begin to see what other gardeners meant when they extolled the merits of the Funkia. One has a lot, an endless lot, to … Continue reading I Hate Hostas, Don’t I?
BRIANNE TURCZYNSKI 