Kitchen Gardening

Escalation of Hostilities

May 30, 2013 Kitchen Gardening

I went out to the garden the other morning to find signs of… an intruder! It has rained and some of the footprints were especially deep, like something fairly heavy, and cloven-hoofed. That liked to munch off the tops of my vegetable plants. It was unmistakable, my white-tailed enemies had encroached upon my territory. It was [...]

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Homegrown Potatoes

May 8, 2013 Family

The last week or so, I’ve been scouring the Internet for information about potato diseases and pests. What, I wondered, could be causing my potato plants to wilt with leaves eventually turning yellow and brown. Could it be black leg? Blight? Magnesium deficiency? Then I started to do some math and realized that I’d planted [...]

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Fruiting

April 23, 2013 Kitchen Gardening

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Chop Wood, Carry Water

April 20, 2013 Kitchen Gardening

I’m a late convert to a pleasure that many people probably discover much earlier in their lives — the joy of a job well done. And by job, I don’t mean my day job, or any kind of pushing-paper (virtually) endeavor. I mean labor of the “chop wood, carry water” variety — useful physical labor. [...]

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“Gardening is not a rational act.”

March 20, 2013 Kitchen Gardening

Heard a quote today that fits perfectly into my contention that we garden despite the challenges… “Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissing the tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant. In the spring, at the end [...]

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Gardening = Heartbreak

February 27, 2013 Food & Drink

This is what my garden looked like this weekend. Wasn’t it beautiful and full of promise? Notice the past tense. That’s because Monday was a day that brought winds — serious winds — to our little corner of the world. I sat inside working with my stomach clenched, keeping myself from peeking outside until the [...]

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Making Progress In The Garden

February 21, 2013 Austin

This part of the process is called “hardening off,” when I take my wee precious seedlings and start putting them out into the big bad sunny windy world — so they can get used to how life is going to be when they get planted this weekend. They’re all pretty “leggy,” which means their stems [...]

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I Am Determined to Have a Garden This Year

February 5, 2013 Food & Drink

Our soil is basically non-existent. One might call it limestone. (Note the ubiquitous rocks.) So, last weekend, we had a batch (2.5 cubic yards!) of garden soil trucked in, anticipating that this will be the foundation of our spring/summer kitchen garden. I know, I know, I’ve talked big about having a garden before. But it’s more complex [...]

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The New Twitter Nest

June 21, 2012 California

I’ve long been a huge fan of botanically-themed design, perhaps because it celebrates and elevates the beauty of the natural world around us. Perhaps you’ve noticed that here and there on this site. In our own home, we’ve incorporated an oak leaf motif on our fireplace screen, Japanese-style wave paintings in the master bath, and, [...]

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