We had decided to give in to our protesting backs and retire my gardening business, to live where property maintenance would no longer be our direct concern. Fifteen years earlier, we had carved beds and borders into a blank slate of lush green lawn, planting perennials, roses, cut flowers, and flowering shrubs.

We found a New York buyer with little, if any, gardening experience, but who seemed willing to try. We found homes for our three Nigerian Dwarf goats and a healthy flock of fancy hens, and moved from our bucolic setting to live small.

In our new condo life, rules required that planting be strictly limited to the “mulch beds.” But we were not content with the builder’s lackluster shrubs and were determined to have our flowers. We reshaped the tiny beds around our unit and added rich organic compost to soil stripped of its top layer.

My gardening business had afforded me aesthetic freedom to design pleasing plant combinations on large estates and suburban gardens. Now I was faced with whittling a long wish list down to what would thrive in this small space.

Many perennials, hardy plants that increase from year to year, bloom for only two to three weeks. Some, like coreopsis, bloom all summer if sheared after the first flush. The challenge is to select flowers for the longest bloom period, and shrubs that stay small while offering texture and color. Pods and seed heads from iris and black-eyed Susan extend interest into fall and even winter, if not cut back until spring.

Snowdrops for late winter, crocus, and miniature tulips for early spring. Small gardens call for diminutive plants. A cottage garden is composed of informal, old-fashioned favorites. Among my summer choices were dianthus, perennial geraniums in mauve, pink, and blue, and campanula, the lovely bluebells. Fall brought the quiet beauty of dried hydrangea blooms.

Getting familiar with exposure, the variations in sun and shade, helps guide selection. Which plants will hold through heat, humidity, or drought? Which are suited to a smaller scale? Smaller gardens ask new questions.

I like to create vignettes to be enjoyed up close. Annuals fill gaps until perennials mature. A brief bloom can be placed beside a generous neighbor, or against steady green foliage, so there are no empty spaces in the picture. Knowing the mature size of each plant helps the garden maintain its balance. Repetition of color and form gently guides the eye through the space.

For us, gardening is therapy. We take pleasure in the sun, air, and the smaller tasks. Grooming plants, removing faded leaves and spent blooms, encourages what comes next.

Crocus --
the soil awakens
in tiny gestures

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© copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2016, 2026

Late Winter Gardening
Mary Ellen Gambutti

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, my anticipation heightens with periodic bursts of mild air. Each day, a strengthening sun calls crocuses and daffodils to rise. No matter that there are still snow patches at the end of March, they cool and temper a day that turns suddenly too warm. I peel off layers of down and wool as activity warms me.

It’s time to begin. Time to start in the garden. I know what I’ll do first. Leaves, having lain in moist beds since autumn rains, oak and maple matted and stuck to frosted soil, can be pulled off in small sheets. Nothing is more delightful than revealing strong yellow-green growth, the musty smell of humus. Even wearing neoprene, I feel the slight bite of fingertips on part-frozen earth. I resist gloves, preferring direct contact in all seasons, but late winter tasks demand them.

Warmth settles on my back as I crouch along the border, still stiff from the winter couch. I know it will be weeks before I freely maneuver through the beds, hauling soil and mulch, planting, before the need for water returns.

With this bed free and breathing, I pull my Felco pruner from my jeans pocket and move to clip the Perovskia, Russian sage, dried, bleached, still faintly fragrant. Left to bloom out its blue scraggle and twist, now leaning and broken from months of snow, I shape it back toward its base, to any new pale growth along the stems, as I would lavender. If there is nothing but wood, I go further, to the bottom tuft of green. By May, it will be full and fragrant in the breeze.

These tasks bring joy, to feel the life around me, the life within me. Snipping rose bushes encourages April growth. I recall how: just above a five-leaflet leaf. How deep the satisfaction in simple actions that will create blooms. And again, more bloom, if, in a month, the work is repeated.

towering tulip tree
buds dance in the breeze,
trill of a pine warbler

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Dear Readers,
How many of us have a similar sensory memory?
I hope you’ll enjoy mine while keeping cozy. Here in New Jersey, we’re contentedly snowed in.
Much love and warmth,
Mel

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved 2026

Winter Haibun - A Farmland Reverie
Springfield Twp., Bucks County, PA

In memory, I escape from the moral uncertainty of the times into a place where sweet air satisfies, and the spirit of nature presides. A touch of rustic charm once inspired me to restore a German merchant-farmer’s house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and create an acre of gardens. After Mr. Trumbauer improved an earlier version of an 1800s farmhouse, it was a charming turn-of-the-century village home. We did our research and, within our budget, paid homage to its original character.

One sparkling, still morning when ice and snow encased the valley, I pulled on layers of wool and down, laced up insulated boots, and, careful on the unshoveled steps, I trudged beyond our carriage house into a crisp, crystalline world.

German immigrant families from the Rhineland and the Palatinate left Schoharie-Albany, where British rule had taken their farmlands in the 1700s. With their cattle, they trekked overland along the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, and their vast farms of corn and wheat spread through the fertile valleys. They displaced the indigenous Leni Lenape, who were forced to leave their campgrounds as they had when the earliest Dutch and Huguenot colonists arrived.

Our village remained alive with grain and dairy commerce through the 1950s. Old fallow fields are now copses of scrub oak, wild dogwood, juniper, crabapple, and vine that have sprung up where the plow avoided rocks, providing food and cover for wildlife. I follow deer tracks below glistening boughs to a silverberry enclosure, where blue jays and cardinals feast on the tiny red fruits, and excited finches flit through the twigs. Snow has drifted in the snow-muffled thicket where deer sheltered overnight; the air still holding their musk and hot breath.

Where I sit on a mature, uprooted, golden-barked mulberry tree screened by branches, an array of remnants of farm life is visible through the snow: an antique tractor long ago lodged in mud, its steering wheel a rusted peace sign; an abandoned mule plow replaced by gas power, and a ruined tire wheel that succumbed to shale shards in this fertile soil. I breathe a meditation, grateful for my parka, wool hat, mittens, warm boots, and the pure air.

Our elderly neighbor’s property begins behind our carriage barn, but I’m not intruding here. He came in the 1950’s, his home a way-stop built, like ours, in the early 1800s. From my vantage on the fallen mulberry, I glimpse back toward his dilapidated barn. Collapsed and useless, the slate roof was sadly neglected through too many winters. Had he made repairs, shored up the massive chestnut footings, and repaired the board siding, the barn might have withstood the weight of heavy snow.

Even amid ruin, the land reshapes itself, purposed. The crumbled fieldstone wall that once divided our parcels, another centuries-old relic, is a habitat for the white ferret that crosses the rubble, hunting field mice. Lithe and lean, she is absorbed into the snow-scene. I peer through woody growth, senses alive to the brilliant cardinal’s cheery tune and the screech of nuthatches. Finches flit in and out of the brush, swaying on frost-weakened twigs. They all share my space, but I don’t complain.

I linger in quiet, in the private depths of nature, perhaps the last of a millennium, while, maybe, the backhoe and builder are next. I think of the children who trudged through these snow-covered woodlands, fields, and hillsides. Sere grasses nod in the breeze. Light snowflakes drift like my thoughts.

A collapsed corn bin,
the bleakness of a snow field
No more cows remain

©Mary Ellen Gambutti
First published November 22, 2017, in Vignette Review.

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Welcome Back!

Today, in Roots & Branches, I invite you to the start of a story I’ve been growing for a lifetime. My debut novella, “Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic” is threaded with questions of loss, secrecy, truth, belonging, and the right to know one’s origins, all stuck in the psyche of this adopted person. The fabric of fairy tales, fables, and myth is firmly in place, held by the glue of memory and belief in forbidding forests and friendly gardens. Humans fashion manageable versions of the natural world in the microcosms that hold us securely and powerfully. We all hope for happy endings.

In another lifetime, I planted and cared for estate gardens. Never giving up my passion for plants, I reached for literature to carry the burden of sudden disability. Since my late fifties, I tend a landscape of words and images. Thank you for being with me for the start of this new chapter, as I venture from Memoir to Magical Realism.

I’ll publish a new installment of my novella Through The Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic each Wednesday. I hope you’ll enjoy the garden tour, and that a rare flower blooms for you.

With gratitude,
Mary Ellen (Mel) Gambutti writing fiction as Islay Corwin

Hello, dear readers ~ I hope this first post in the new section, Seasons, finds you well, and that you enjoy a full measure of peace this November. (1st posted Nov. 2024)

I enjoyed putting together this set of image poems, my take on an ancient Japanese art form, haiga. In contemporary or Western style with verse and digital photo art, it is called ‘shahai.’

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I believe we can agree that the fall of 2024 has put a lot on our minds as Americans. I haven’t posted politics here as I do elsewhere, but this evening, I share what means the most to me as a 73 year old woman. I trust that the person I voted for will keep her oath to protect and defend our democracy, won't selfishly, stupidly, and maliciously squander our freedoms, and will not sell out to our enemies, because, I believe, she cares about our grandchildren's future as she does ours. I want government to keep us safe. I want a system that won't neglect those who need and want help, instead of treating them with contempt. I want fair and just treatment of immigrants, allowing those who want to contribute to our economy a chance. I feel we have the right to essential health care, and wholesome food. We have a right to and the need for freedom of expression, freedom to love as we choose, and reproductive freedom. We must have a free press, freedom from destructive, demoralizing lies, and propaganda, freedom of assembly, and freedom to speak our minds. I trust our beautiful natural places will be preserved so future generations will be free to roam them.

Having said that, I'd like to share a small set of my image poems: haiga, or shahai, in the Japanese style. All images, haiku, and senryu by myself. I hope you enjoy.

Until next time!

Hello, has your day been as cool and crisp as a fall apple? Here, near the N.J. shore, I welcome these temps. Change is in the air, and I hope the season brings what is needed to unify us in freedom, hope, justice, and humanity.

This autumn weekend I have a set of diverse image poems for you. Several shahai or haiga are reminiscent of Sarasota, FL. We're relieved friends are safe after Hurricane Milton.

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2024

Thanks for being here. Until next week!

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Dear Readers,

I hope you are well this Thanksgiving weekend. To those who have been with me since Ibis and Hibiscus, the Florida Blogger, and through my WIX adoptee blog era, thanks so much for being here! And to my new followers and subscribers, I’m so glad you’re here, and welcome!

Here in south-central New Jersey, it’s a dreary football Sunday, with nothing to offer me but my keyboard and cozy room. This final day of November I’ve updated an Early Fall post — from 2024 — now in its new section, Seasons.

Haiga - An image paired with a Japanese style poem, like Haiku, Senryu, or Tanka, is called Haiga or Shahai.

I invite you to read this description and history of the Japanese art form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiga#/media/File:Basho_by_Kinkoku_c1820.jpg and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiga

Thank you for being here at Seasons/Roots&Branches. Your subscriptions, follows, and comments support my work.

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P.S. Wednesday will be the third installment of “Through The Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic” (by my fiction pen name, Islay Corwin). Here’s a brief description, should you like to venture a read:

“When infant Ruth Ann is found in a fairy ring on the Winter Solstice, botanist Sarah Caldwell becomes mother to a foundling whose heritage bridges two worlds. As the child grows into her three names—Ruth Ann, Stella, and Questa—morning glories bloom out of season, mirrors show more than reflections, and a medieval garden reveals its magical purpose. A story of adoption, identity, and the search for belonging, where Celtic folklore meets botanical mystery in a garden that remembers everything.”

Catch up here