(Via washingtonpost.com - A Cook's Garden by Barbara Damrosch)

Posted by admin to A, Activity, Berry, Good, Kids, for on 2007-10-24, 20:00:00

An emerging tribe of hunter-gatherers colonized our farm this week. Look out the window and you'll see them creeping down the rows of crops, nibbling as they go, or reaching into low tree branches for apples. They are the grandchildren, and they know, with a primitive wisdom, how food should best be eaten. Send a grown-up out to pick raspberries for supper and he'll come back promptly with a quart. Send a young child forth with an empty yogurt container hanging from her neck by a string and she'll come back with a berry mustache, the container as empty as before.

(Via washingtonpost.com - A Cook's Garden by Barbara Damrosch)

Posted by admin to A, Few, Good, Ideas, Seed, Take on 2006-12-13, 21:00:00

It's raining seed catalogues, and the forecast is for the downpour to continue well into January. They arrive in the mail bursting with potential, like seeds themselves. I look forward to a peaceful, post-holiday weekend in which sifting though descriptions of peas, beans and cauliflower seems like the most important thing I could possibly do with my day.

(Via washingtonpost.com - A Cook's Garden by Barbara Damrosch)

Posted by admin to A, Friend, Frost,, Good, gardeners on 2006-11-22, 21:00:00

This time of year the Earth does the old possum trick of playing dead. Not easily fooled, we know the leafless trees are merely dormant (scratch a twig with your fingernail and you'll see the green layer just beneath) and the daffodil bulbs just biding their time. When snow falls, tracks reveal that multitudes of creatures are still out and about. Snow fleas, a type of hopping insect that feeds on pollen grains scattered on snow and ice, appear as sooty dustings within those footprints.