My gluttonous seed-hoarding habits seem to be behind me now, or have at least calmed for a spell. This year I have abstained from impulse buys from swollen turnstile racks and I only placed one mail order this season. Of course, I say this having bought 40 packets of seed in Tucson, Arizona last June. …
Last night we enjoyed dinner at The Black Skirt, a Sicilian/Calabrian Italian restaurant here in Toronto. Before the meal, we were served slices of Italian loaf, as is the custom in most Italian restaurants. But where most restaurants tend to provide a plate of good quality olive oil for dipping, The Black Skirt offered something …
Spring is happening here in Toronto. Flowering bulbs and hardy perennials are popping up in my garden quickly now and the local corner shops have begun hauling out carts full of plants to tempt us. Right on schedule, emails about basil have come flooding in. “Hi there, I bought a basil plant a few weeks …
The week I photographed this Herbaria was also the week that I started to seriously pick up the pace in shifting my houseplants indoors and I think it shows. The Japanese maple leaves have their autumn colour and this is the last sighting of outdoor basil until next June.
When I began this project, I set a parameter that allowed me to repeat a specific plant as long as a different stage in its development through the changing seasons was depicted. For example, I have included Columbine meadow rue (Thalictrum aquilegiifolium) twice: early in the season when it was in bloom and in August …
Again you are looking at last week’s photo, shot just before I took off for a road trip to teach a workshop at Margaret Roach’s garden in the Berkshires. The garden was fairly unruly and overgrown before I left, but nothing like it is right now. Total mayhem! I’m not exaggerating. Even the dog doesn’t …
It’s become a tradition and now that I live in an Italian neighbourhood it’s pretty much a requirement. When my local Italian greengrocer set out the seed rack I did a little happy dance, and it was then that I knew I was doomed to buy more seed than I will ever have room to …
While strolling through my neighbourhood, I recently came upon two rogue edibles, a basil plant and an amaranth that had escaped from front yard gardens nearby only to make a go at life in soiless conditions. I found the basil growing in a crack between the curb and the road. An attempt to rescue it …
They’re here! The slicing tomatoes are here! Yeah, sure, we’ve been enjoying the bite-sized determinates since June, and they are good. I won’t deny that they have been swell. The first two Caprese salads of the season were dynamite. I will never forget them. But in all honesty, what started this weekend is The Show. …
Last fall my friend Barry put me onto pots of green and purple ‘Holy’ basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum) for sale at a neighbourhood Indian food store. ‘Holy’ basil, also known as Tulsi, is a beautiful herb that brightens a dull spot in the garden. It’s a tough, woody plant with textured leaves that can take a …
Click the image to see full-size. I’m long overdue to present a mini roof garden tour this year, let alone a garden tour of any kind. As always I’m behind, which inevitably leads to thoughts that things aren’t just right yet. Or the light is wrong. Then of course there is the classic, “But wait …
