Several of you have said to me recently, via comment or email, something along these lines. You want to grow some food this year. You don’t know where to begin. You’re overwhelmed. You have a “black thumb.”
I know how you feel. Last year around this time I was determined to plant a vegetable garden, and [...]

It might take an outsider one morning of listening to my kids talk to figure out what interests my husband and I, and which of those interests have rubbed off onto our children. This morning when we sat down to breakfast Sam exclaimed, “Mommy, three of the irises are blooming!” I beamed with pride at [...]

“When I finished writing this, the thermometer outside my door read 18 below zero. I now know that spring will never come. I shall spend the rest of my life reading seed and plant catalogues, and books about gardens and the people involved with them.”
This is a quote from Jamaica Kincaid’s “My Garden (Book):” It [...]

Could be like yesterday, then 2010 will be a great year.
Ok, I just had a lot of trouble typing that number. How strange. How awkward. 2010. Almost mistyped it again.
We spent the day home for the most part, with the exception of a trip to the comic book store so the boys could spend their [...]

I returned from our Thanksgiving excursion to find many of these:

I can only assume these are vole holes, based on the narrow tunnel down to each bulb. It just looks like it must have been done by something small, mouse sized, and that mouse-sized beast took off with probably a third of the tulip [...]

Remember when you were a child growing up there was always some neighbor kid who liked to sprinkle slugs with salt and watch them shrivel up and die? This was probably the same kid who fried earthworms with a magnifying glass just for the fun of it. You and your parents would wonder what was [...]

When Robby and I visited the farm the other week they were using these to water the seeds they were planting. Totally cute and great, right? Especially because the holes disperse the heavy stream of water a kid typically dumps on plants, and they’re so light to begin with it makes them easier for the [...]