Categories: book reviews
How is a local bouquet of seasonal blossoms like the first spring dinner of fava bean pasta? Both mark a unique moment in the season; a singular phase of the year that must be celebrated and cherished, acknowledged and savored before it’s past. My good friends Debra Prinzing and David Perry get this and after [...]
Categories: Handmade Garden Projects, writing
Here’s something you need to know about. The garden publishing market is crowded – you might even say it’s OVERPLANTED. Just how many ways can one be told to plant-this-not-that, or be banged over the head with seasonal do-this-now lists that always leave me exhausted before I even get started?!!? Leaf magazine is different. [issuu [...]
Categories: book reviews
The other night I shared dinner with my friend Willi Galloway before her presentation to a packed house of weather-weary, cooped-up gardeners at the March meeting of the Northwest Horticultural Society. Willi, a remarkably talented garden communicator and creator of the blog Digginfood.com, used to be my neighbor before she and her husband Jon, along [...]
Categories: book reviews, Handmade Garden Projects
I got a lovely Valentine — from the LA Times no less! Debra Prinzing’s review of my new book ran in today’s online L.A. at Home. Read ‘Handmade Garden Projects’: Face-lift for wire fencing then buy yourself a pair of TEKTON 3386 8-Inch Bolt Cutters, some humble wire fencing and get crafting~
Categories: Handmade Garden Projects, writing
Most gardeners with real dirt under their nails, if they’re being perfectly honest, will admit to several addictive behaviors. Never pass a seed rack without giving it a good once over (even if you already own enough seed to plant out several acres of farmland). Obsessively track the weather; day to day if not hour [...]
Categories: Handmade Garden Projects, writing
It’s cold, rainy and blustery and I’m stuck at home banging away on a deadline. My husband is in Boise visiting our son and my darling daughter is hopefully having a ball on a girlfriends weekend in San Francisco. Still struggling with the remains of a nasty cold, and, maybe I mentioned it – banging [...]
Categories: at home, book reviews
Fall is here and as sure as the days begin to shorten, this girl’s thoughts turn to… ice cream? Maybe it’s the brown sugar aroma wafting from the heart-shaped, apricot leaves of the Katsura trees (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) as they flutter to the ground and drift about in the front drive. I love my katsuras with [...]
Categories: Always learning, reading, Road Trip
This is a post with a point and an opportunity for you to win a copy of the book entitled Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees, by Nancy Ross Hugo & Robert Llewellyn, Timber Press 2011. But I’m all about the story and rarely do I take a direct path when I could [...]
Categories: eat your vegetables, Edibles, food, writing
…a little. Thank goodness I’m not one of those highly organized, incredibly inspired, prolific bloggers with a tight agenda for every day of the week/month/year. You know the type: if-it’s-Wednesday-it-must-be-wordless, or wooden, or whatever! Actually – I would love, love, love to be one of those bloggers. But I’ve come to realize it’s probably just [...]
Categories: at home, Navel Gazing, writing
Today is the summer solstice, that moment of the year when light and dark are wildly out of kilter. Night is a mere afterthought following the sun casting its most unflattering light from directly overhead for hours and hours on end. Don’t get me wrong. I love the sun. Lord knows we haven’t seen nearly [...]