Open View Gardens

A Note from Barbara:  I have learned more than I can say from Nancy White, one of the foremost thinkers on online communities (read her book), incredible graphic facilitator (see her work), lover of chocolate, and good friend.  Here I learn lessons gleaned from gardening in a sodden place. A Note from Nancy: My friend […]

I can go months without thinking of something or someone and then a smell, a glimpse, a sound, or a dream plunges me right back to a time, a place, an experience. We all experience the sensory triggers of memory. The smell of freshly ground curry always sends me back to two places and times: […]

The first time I made cassis and realized how simple it was to transform black currants into ambrosia (really, all you need is patience as it takes six months of maceration in a cool, dark place), I felt as though someone had been keeping a secret from me all these years–some of the most sublime […]

BG’s Note:  What a thrill it is to have daughters who share my passion for cooking and culture. How fabulous it is that one of them lives in New York and calls me whenever she happens upon a food shop she’s sure I will love and must visit next time I’m in the city.  How […]

For my next newspaper column (in a couple of weeks), I plan on writing about abundance–even in an early season northern garden–about how so much is ready for harvest, almost too much: plants bolting, plants trying to bolt, plants ready overnight, and how working within that abundance hour by hour opens up perspectives beyond mine […]

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, […]