Be inspired by beautiful botanical artwork, writing, and crafts. here you will also find instruction and help related to building projects, photography, personal garden writing projects, and more.
Today marks one year since I started the Grow Write Guild. Thanks so much to those of you who have followed along, commented, posted, or promoted this endeavour over the last year. It’s been a lot of fun dreaming up the prompts and following along with your responses. Special thanks to Davin Risk who drew/designed …
Houseplants are often where many of us nurture a love of cultivating plants, and through winter, they can be an important way to stay connected to the gardener part of ourselves. Grow Write Guild Prompt #23: Write about a houseplant.
Starting from seed is not just an economical way to produce edible crops or access unusual plants and specific varieties. Over the years I have found that it is also a good way to really get to know a specific plant type more intimately and I’ve found myself ordering seed from all types of plants …
Some of us begin working the soil fully consciousness of a desire to become a gardener, while others can spend years growing plants before we awaken to the realization of who we have become. For me it was the latter. I spent years, on and off, collecting houseplants, nurturing cuttings, and messing around with the …
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, it wasn’t uncommon to find a collectable card or sticker inside packages of potato chips, cereal, and other junky treats and snacks. We’d save our pennies to buy them, enticed more by the possibility of finding a River Phoenix or Cyndi Lauper card than the treats themselves. It’s …
I must admit that despite the myriad of wood spoons, boards, and whatnot in my kitchen, I didn’t think about protecting them from the dry, winter air until we bought a kitchen island with a solid wood countertop. The instructions that came with the island suggested liberal applications of mineral oil to prevent cracking, and …
I’ll be the first to admit that my banter this winter is grating and repetitive, a broken record stuck on a particularly whoa woe is me whine. “This winter is brutal. It’s too cold. It’s too dark! Waaa!” While I don’t believe in the notion that you can magically make everything better by begging the …
Inside this box is something that perhaps we all could use, a small validation that our efforts in the garden — all of our triumphs, failures, attempts to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone — are worthy of praise, support, and a little self-congratulation.
Header hand drawn by Davin Risk Over the last year I’ve posted about some of my experiments in dyeing fabrics and threads with plants gleaned from my garden to be used in my winter, off-season stitching projects. Since then I have expanded beyond my own garden to use plant materials foraged from the world beyond. …
Maybe it’s just me being a big baby, but it feels as if this winter has been especially cruel. Ice storms, weeks of darkness, power outages, damaged trees, and “extreme cold” are just some of the events of the season. The days locked inside have jump-started fantasies about the coming growing season. What am I …
I was browsing through some of my old photos this morning and happened upon this one, taken on a trip to New York City back in May 2005 when I was promoting my first book. Looking at this image now, on a cold winter day, the soil long ago buried underneath snow, fills me with …
I found this hand painted postcard at a vintage paper show. It is dated on the back, December 18, 1941 and was sent to Long Island, USA from New York City.