I’ve had several in-person interactions with people lately that have really, really sucked. One of them involved one of my oldest friends, and we have parted ways. It was a long time coming – he never respected me, not since our days together in high school. For so many years he constantly criticized me –…
Tag: vegetables
A Counter Garden: Adventures With Sprouting
It was so hot and tropical this fall. Finally, the day after Halloween, the cool weather came, blowing away the heavy, damp heat. The light is different now, beaming in long, honey-colored rays through the afternoon trees. The last yellow cherry leaves are wavering at the tips of tiny branches where little birds flutter and…
2019 Kale Trial
I love to try different varieties side by side because it gives you a good idea of the variability in flavor, appearance, and production. Besides that, i find it fascinating how different varieties can be from one another. They almost have their own personalities. Just like with meeting people, I will find myself drawn to…
The House of The Garden
I’m so lucky that I have such a big, sunny garden, but I’ve also come to realize that not being limited by space can be more difficult than having to squeeze things into a small area. Ethan called my garden plan this season “masochistic” after he offered to help and i told him what my goals were for the day.
The Best Pumpkin Dish Ever
It’s amazing what comes from one tiny seed, one small spark of life given at the end of the season, a hope for the next one, waiting in darkness until the light and rain call forth the potential. And the patience of those seeds that wait for years, maybe centuries, for that moment to unfurl. …
Garden Magic
We had the most wonderful surprise out of the garden yesterday. I’ve had many things this week that kept me away from the weeding and planting that really must be done soon… There are sad marigold starts, leggy sunflowers, and slow-to-start peppers left to be put somewhere. And the constant rain that has been drizzling…
Chicken, Chickpea, and Spinach Stew
The past two days have brought us grey skies and pouring, drizzling, sprinkling, thundering rain. Rain making a puddle out of the patio, pooling in old buckets, pattering and rattling on the roofs, and pinging like chimes on the pile of junk under the eves of the barn. Last night between rains the sky flashed…
Pumpkin and Broccoli Casserole
The dreamy blue-skied spring weather, so warm it is almost hot, has called forth the flowers of all kinds. There is a narrow definition of flower in our minds, the colorful, the beautiful, the many-petaled ones, but there are so many more, such as the scaly dimorphous cone flowers of the pines, or the catkins…
Wild Chickweed Salad with Ranch-Style Dressing
All around the earth is greening. The forest looks lacy with new leaves, and the pastures have begun to grow. Not only have the summer grasses thrown off their winter sleep and have started to poke up their heads and send out new shoots, all the pretty weeds of spring decorate the ground between the…
Garden Love
I love my winter garden right now. It is a place of brilliant color, where all the cares of the world fall away in the midst of the rows of singing green. These plants know me, they have known me since the whole of their being rattled around in my palm as I sowed seeds…
Building A Garden
I love, more than anything else about gardening, watching the garden grow. Even before the uncertainty of putting small seeds into earth, and waiting, there is the dreaming, where long straight rows of vigorous vegetables grow in the fertile imagination. I’ve tried different gardening methods over my seasons of gardening in the past 10 years, …
Radish Salad With Roselle Dressing
Radishes are one of my favorite things to grow, although they weren’t always. They are very easy and reliable, some years the only vegetable we could manage to grow in the early years of gardening, before we had cows and goats to enrich the land. I’ve pickled them, served them with butter, chopped the roots up for salad, …
Toadstools And Fairy Rings 