11 Jan What We Read This Week: ‘Moonwalking’ at Yosemite, the Lady With 300 Cats…

While we were procrastinating on the planting of our spring bulbs, we pawed our way through a stack of internet stories of horticultural (and zoological) import. A few prize pieces from recent days:

• Siglinda Scarpa is 72 years old and owns 300 cats, many of whom got a beautiful slideshow treatment in one of the most emailed stories right now on NYTimes.com. A mix of rustic textures and bright boho splash, Scarpa’s home is nestled in the woodlands of Pittsboro, North Carolina; its second-floor porch is “covered with the canes of Lady Banks’ roses, Carolina jasmine and wisteria, […] something out of a children’s book.” If anyone knows how to make herb and feline coexist in harmony, we reckon it would be Scarpa.

• “I like people, and farming by itself can be isolating, so sharing our wines with people from all over the world is enjoyable, a very social activity.” Well stated by vintner Anne Lerch of Hood River Vineyards in Oregon. Lerch and her husband/partner also grow cherries, pears, plums and berries on an orchard on their 50-acre property — in fact, fruit growing was how they got into viticulture in the first place. Read more of her illuminating Q&A on GardenRant.

•  Across the Pond, the Telegraph has some tips on brightening your garden in that most unexciting of gardening months (in the Northern Hemisphere): January. The Schefflera taiwaniana gets high marks thanks to its “elegant, fingered sprays of leaves” that bestow “handsome January impact.”

•  Another British garden dispatch excited us this week. Behold the “Snow White Strawberry,” aka the pineberry, as featured in The Guardian. With its white flesh and scarlet pips, it’s a strawberry in reverse. Oh, and it tastes like pineapple. We’re late-night obsessed with getting our hands on some of these albino treats.

• Finally, this is breathtaking — courtesy of This Is Colossal. The headline says it all, “Moonwalk: Free Climber Dean Potter Walks a Highline Across a Rising Full Moon at Yosemite National Park.” The post initially stated that the video is a time-lapse, but it turns out that Potter is rope-walking — and the moon is rising — in real time. Which makes the event even more stupendous.