The shallots I planted last July are blooming now, and replacing the lost nodding onions up on the hill. The sky has noticed. Welcome, Sky! These blue beauties were in the mariposa […]
The Day the Sky Came Down to Earth
Please, Please, Please Don’t Plant That Lavender!
If you plant that lavender, the crab spiders will have nowhere to go, and they are the wolves of this ecosystem. Removing the top predator from a chain, in this case a […]
It is the Most Beautiful Day
My seven year-old Transparent apple tree and her sister branch of Benvoulin apples are blooming gloriously today. We have all been getting ready for this for a year now, and are very […]
It’s Slowwwwww Salad Time!
I asked the garden what was for dinner 2 nights ago. She was very kind. Some of these I planted a year ago, they went to seed, and came through the snow […]
Joy in the Week of Bees and Wind
When the wind is a bee. Filbert catkins, waiting for the wind. When a bee is the wind. Well, a wasp, but what a tiny beauty with her fur stole! […]
Sweet Apricot Kernels
Move over California, with your water-hungry almonds. 4.5 litres of water to grow one almond? Ridiculous! We have apricots with sweet kernels here in the north, that can grow in the shrub […]
In Memory of Hans Rhenisch, Gardener, 1932-2017
Hansel in 1935 It begins with a grandfather taking a boy out into the garden. Then comes eight decades (and a bit more) of working with the earth to keep that moment […]
Plastic, Gardens and Drought
The replacement of lawn with gravel to save a rain shadow valley from drought is based on the principle of laying plastic down over the living earth and smothering it so that […]
Who is the Gardener?
I have learned this week what I already knew but had no words for. I am not the gardener in this land, but the garden that the land makes. Needle-and-thread grass makes […]
A Summer Home for the Family, On Earth and in the Sky
Here we are in a community garden in Stein am Rhein, Switzerland, an old roman fortress, and before that a 4000-year-old settlement where Lake Constance becomes the Rhine. A shaded picnic bench […]
