Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-12-19, 20:09:45

This just in from the Sawtooth Garden:

Here are two programs on the books and there will be the full year calendar available soon. The Garden Tour is July 12 this year.

Another idea for your website is a new organization in town, Idaho’s Bounty. I read your entry about local foods and that is what this organization is all about. You can find out more on www.idahosbounty.org

1/23/08: ‘A Winter Feast’ - Seasonal Cooking Class (6-8pm)

Come bring in the new year at the Garden and enhance your winter recipe collection. A resident professional chef will be demonstrating the best of the wintry seasons’ fare available locally for you to recreate in your own kitchen. Bring a friend and come enjoy an evening of delicious food and drinks guaranteed to delight your tastebuds and warm your hearts! Cost: $30 member, $35 non-member

(Call for reservations, space is limited!)

2/10/08: ‘Orchids for Black Thumbs’ - A Valentine Primer (3-5pm)

An enlightening workshop unveiling the mystique of the most varied member of the flowering plant family, the Orchid. Inspiring poetry and wonder since the time of Confucious, there are around 130,000 different specie of this uncommonly beautiful flower in report today. Participants will learn the basics of Orchid biology and how to care for common groups to ensure years of successful growth and blossoms. Take this opportunity to overcome any fears of Orchid collecting and become a knowledgeable enthusiast today! Cost: $10 members, $15 non-members

*Our friends at Webb Nursery will be on hand to host a plethora of materials such as pots, bark and fertilizer along with the latest Orchid varieties sure to delight the senses of those you love this Valentines Day.

CALL 208-726-9358 FOR MORE INFORMATION

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-12-11, 09:21:19

Just received a note from Jennifer Colson, Executive Director of the beloved Sawtooth Botanical Garden near Sun Valley, Idaho. I have failed to list them in the “Gardens to Visit” section of this blog. My apologies to all. No, I wasn’t keeping this fantastic place to myself, although, the thought did cross my mind. I have spent too much time fundraising for my local botanical gardens to keep them a secret.

Just so you know, I ADORE the Sawtooth Garden. For the last several years, I have attended their annual garden tour, and when offered, I went to the big shindig dinner and auction the night before. Along with a group of other wild ones, I did a week long landscape/garden design workshop at SBG in January. Day One we were treated to 2 feet of fresh snow. Talk about winter wonderland. Made it all the more fun to be snuggled up in their meeting rooms with colored pens and graph paper and garden wizards, drawing and creating and dreaming of gardens under the deep white blanket.

In 2005, the Dalai Lama visited the Sawtooth Botanical Garden to bless the Tibetan Prayer Wheel in Garden of Infinite Compassion. The garden was designed by Martin Mosko, a landscape architect from Colorado and is an incredible space to behold. With the backdrop of sagebrush steppe of the Wood River Valley, the garden is nestled between magnificent boulders, aspen and evergreens. The prayer wheel is filled with over one million prayers written on paper and is turned by the power of the moving water.

Take a minute, check out their website, or, better yet, plan a trip to Ketchum and Sun Valley and tie it in with a visit to the garden, take a class or take in the annual garden tour next July. And join, it is good to be a member. You get advance notice of great speakers like Topher Delaney, Brent Heath, and Lauren Springer. Maybe even the Dalai Lama.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-12-06, 20:05:08

Hey all.

When I was looking something up today, I came across this faboo website of Preferred Idaho vendors. Vendors of all kinds of great stuff: vegetables, eggs, herbs, dairy products, xeric plants, bakery items, trout, meats, wine, vodka (eureka!!!), berries, big fruits, jams, syrups, pancake batters, lentils, peas, barbecued food, honey, mustards and on and on and on. So, I am thinking about trying very hard to eat locally. More locally. Chocolate doesn’t grow on trees, not here anyway, and that can be a major obstacle. Coffee is an issue. Tea is an issue. I buy my exotic herbs, salt and pepper from the co-op.

Anyway, look the list over, check it twice, and think about buying locally for Christmas this year. Give a loaf of locally baked bread and a bottle of wine. Someone will love you for it.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-12-02, 14:44:13

Goldilocks (Margo Churchwell) sent this to me today. With this caption:

“Well I have a few minutes while I dry Rabbitbrush seed on the guest bed. I picked it earlier today and it was frosty. In order to avoid mold I’ll dry it today and then put it in the freezer for a week to kill the bugs that will eat the seed. Sorry bugs, but we need the seed you want to eat and I know I left plenty of your relatives on the shrubs to maintain a healthy balance.”

Margo (”Margo in the morning”) teamed up with Stew Churchwell and together the two of them have set out to rehabilitate and replant the state of Idaho. If you haven’t been to their site, clickety click on over to their website, NX Plants (Native and Xeric) . It’s a formidable operation they are running over in Emmett, and my hat is off to them for the incredibly hard work they have undertaken and their commitment to the land we call home. My hats off to them.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-12-01, 00:00:54

I heard this on Idaho Public Television the other night, at the end of Idaho Edens. It took my breath away. First, because I have loved e e cummings since high school. Second, because it fits so beautifully into my world view.

Love is a place

love is a place

& through this place of

love move

(with brightness of peace)

all places

yes is a world

& in this world of

yes live

(skilfully curled)

all worlds

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-11-30, 10:59:11

The personal phone call hasn’t come just yet. But it will. When they realize they need my help. Idaho Gardener. Yes, I can garden the entire state if someone would just ask me. No job too small. We need 2 MILLION pounds of sagebrush seeds. They are “smaller than cracked pepper.”

According to the Idaho Statesman, “over 4000 square miles of the Great Basin went up in flames last year, 1000 square miles of that in the Murphy Complex fires, the biggest fires in Idaho in 97 years.”

My beloved botanist Ann DeBolt, tells me my hillside is a place to start. I have artemisia tridentata tridentata (big basin sage) growing right across the lawn and a gazillion acres of it across the street. And one particular plant (”unofficially and federally protected” [ read: MA has a shotgun]) is growing in a crevice in the middle of my sandstone patio.

OK, that is not my lawn. But I wish it was. Credit goes to Gary Monroe, who copyrighted this photo for the USDA Plants Database.

And for those of you not in love with the sagebrush steppes and desert of the Great Basin……we planned it that way. Stay where you are.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-11-29, 14:25:50

Ahhhhh, the elusive upstate NY CF. Computer Fairy. What patience! What virtue! What kindness! Her wizardry helped me get these snazzy new headers up and running. And I learned to re-size photos, too. Shazammmmmmmm. Thanks KP. Sweetness.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-11-29, 14:21:47

Today’s effort.

My BFF of TF said, “roll over, Renior.”

A big fat papaver somniferum seedhead, from my painting class this morning. It’s little on the shiny side. It’s all that glazing medium. Not gazing. Although, come to think of it, oil painting is right up there with navel gazing for me. True meditation.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-11-28, 16:15:12

Wow. Just love Wednesdays! At 3 pm I hustle on over to my farmer’s place, and scurry up her driveway to see what delish-us-nuss awaits me. This week: Idaho Potato Chowder made with organic red Idaho spuds, organic onions, magic garlic and other good stuff. (A lot of these items were grown at my CSA garden this summer.) Then, I peek in the cooler, and there, in a big brown bag with my name on it, is the bread of the week. Today’s treasure trove: whole wheat rolls with herbs. Man, it doesn’t get any better than this. The rolls are glazed on top and soft and chewy inside. Last time, the bread had the smallest amount of salt on the crust making for the most savory little surprise. Every week something new and different. I start ripping and eating pieces of the fragrant bread loaves or rolls before I have the car in gear.

Wednesday’s: homemade soup and bread every week for 12 weeks. I wish the baker would try her hand at cinnamon rolls. I would just have to sit in their driveway til I ate every one.

Posted by admin to Journal entries on 2007-11-25, 09:44:54

From the Charlotte paper via the Seattle Times and Cornell University

or round and round we go: for those of you potting up paperwhites, here is the skinny on adding booze to your bulbs so click on Seattle Times. The “be all end all” reference is from Cornell so I would be inclined to try this technique…….if I grew paperwhites, which i don’t, because I can’t stand the cloying, overwhelming, headache-inducing, room-filling fragrance which everyone else on the planet ADORES. And I don’t keep gin around, because in my personal history book, it makes people meaner than cat piss. However mean that is.

I will be content to lean over my amaryllis and whisper, “Grow, dammit.” The vodka stays in my glass.