Open View Gardens

Cross-posted at Eating Well Magazine. We’ve reached the turning point–the fields and woods have shrugged off their winter torpor and are decking themselves out in glorious shades of green. The female coyote who hunts in our back field is clearly a nursing mother; the birdboxes all have residents; the turtles are digging holes to lay […]

Published in the Addison Independent PATCHwork Column 4/21/11 Some call them uninvited guests, interlopers, opportunists, ne’er-do-wells, even weeds. Earnest gardeners work hard at banishing these trespassers from vegetable beds, pulling them in fall and spring, evicting them when they pop up during the summer. It makes sense, I suppose. If left to their druthers, they’ll […]

It’s warm outside—warm—and has been for three days.  A thunderstorm blew through this morning, and the grass is responding with green, the trees with buds, the birds with song. The phoebes and flickers are back; the peepers sang for the first time last night. I’ve finally informed the birds that gleaning season is done in […]

Looking out the window right now, I’m hard pressed to declare winter’s demise.  It is snowing … on April 4.  And it’s windy.  Raw. Not nice at all, especially when I want to get outside and start planting some things under the tunnels!  My garden notes from last year tell me that it was HOT […]

I’m sure there are a number of April Fool’s posts about the snow falling in New England right now.  But I’m taking a different tack on April and a slow spring with this week’s column for the Addison Independent. Slow Gardening: Spring Takes its Time, and So Does the Garden As spring hems and haws […]

Because we have one big winter storm forecast for Friday–naturally on April Fool’s–I thought it important to keep thinking spring: Down by the front stream

Cross-posted on Eating Well Magazine’s website: Along with my friend and garden-writing cohort, painter Kate Gridley, I am starting a new season of writing for The Addison Independent, and blogging about healthy gardening for Eating Well Magazine.  I will cross-post those articles and entries here as well as continue to chronicle the new season at […]

In today’s Addison Independent, our food column, PATCH work, features my piece on the pleasures and pitfalls of growing mint.  Just yesterday, I was wishing I had planted mint all around the perimeter of the garden; perhaps if I had done so, I would now have fenugreek, the kale would not be looking chewed up, […]

Note: Every other Thursday I contribute to a shared column, PATCH work, Three Gardens, Many Kitchens, in our local newspaper, The Addison Independent.  This week I’m thinking artichokes–here’s how it reads with its images (the online newspaper version does not include the visuals). As a child I wanted swordfish and artichokes for my birthday dinner. […]

I love to make pizza. There’s little as satisfying as kneading dough and having it scent the house with its yeasty goodness during the day as it rises, and to play around with flavor combinations for the topping, and then to share it with family and friends. I rarely use tomato sauce (homemade or not) […]