Nature

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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Time Flies

April 12, 2013 Nature

Remember that nest, and those eggs, belonging to the bird family residing in our garage? Well, after our weekend away, more eggs appeared. And, not long thereafter, we began to see the mother and father bird bringing in bugs for these little baldies… (click on any of these pics to take a closer look) And [...]

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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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New Life

March 12, 2013 Nature

We’ve had a novel problem since moving to the sticks. It’s not unusual to find a bird, sometimes a hummingbird, stuck in our garage. They sometimes can’t figure out how to get out (even when the door is open), and fling themselves against the windows. We’ve even occasionally had to catch them in a net, [...]

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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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Snow In Central TX

January 4, 2013 Austin

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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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