This is the navel-gazing section where I ponder gardening beyond the how-to and sometimes go off-topic entirely.
“Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.” – Henry David Thoreau I’ve been having some trouble settling down to write about gardening these days. Bad things happen all over the world daily. Each day we must wake up and get on with it, regardless. …
Like many of you I’ve been watching the reports coming out of Ferguson, Missouri anxiously. I was up hours past my bedtime last night rhythmically refreshing social media over and over. What is happening now? What is happening now? What is happening now? This morning I was up early and spent the first few hours …
A recent Grow Write Guild writing prompt asked you to write about loss, attachment, and letting go. The idea for the prompt came to me as a result of the volume of beloved plants that I lost this spring due to a particularly harsh winter. However, I suspect that there were other losses in the …
The time has come for me to accept the losses suffered as a result of a peculiarly difficult winter and move on. I’ve known for months that some of these plants were not going to pull through. It is May now, and well past the time when many of them begin to wake up from …
Chalkboard illustration by Davin Risk. There’s a double meaning to this title and if you’re over 21 I suspect that you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve got aches and pains all over. I took advantage of the great weather this weekend to cross several items off of my April garden to-do list. I …
Organic Gardening magazine recently unearthed a personal piece by me that was originally published in their February 2008 print edition. Some confusion was created by the timing of the story’s promotion. Many people, including in-real-life friends thought it was newly written and couldn’t comprehend why it fixated on gardens that I have long since moved …
Happy New Year and welcome to 2014! I started doing new year wrap-ups back in 2010, and while I have since identified that as a gardener, January 1 doesn’t feel like a time of renewal in the way that spring does, the start of a calendar year is a convenient time to look back and …
This morning I walked into the kitchen to make my tea, as I do at the start of every morning. The kitchen is a mess. If I’m being honest it is always a mess, but right now the disaster has taken the form of camera gear, photo props, 300 pounds of pumpkin, and a few …
….but not before smoking a full pack of smokes. WARNING: This video is NSFW and definitely not something you want to watch if you are offended by the swears. The foraging woman in this video goes off something fierce. —— I’ve had some strange experiences gardening in a public space, a handful of which I …
This was a tough one. Even now, as I force myself to sit down and write this thing more than a week after it is due, I am still fidgeting, still looking for a way out. Hoping for some little task of not so great importance to divert my attention. “I should really clean my …
The following is my response to the first prompt. It isn’t about my first plant. I decided to go in another direction because I have already written about my first plant and didn’t have anything further to say. Instead, I jumped ahead several years to another time in my life when the impulse to grow …
My friend and fellow plant/collecting enthusiast Uli Havermann (you may remember her from this incredible succulent pot, this stunning blue sea holly, and these beautiful urns) is a member of a large community greenhouse here in Toronto. Last week she treated me to a glimpse inside. Like community gardens and allotments, community greenhouses are not …