Create Your Own Beautiful Edible Planter
Spring and early summer weather just makes me want to get in my garden and plant new stuff. I like to think I have a green thumb—I don’t — but it certainly is in my gene pool. My dad is…
Category Gardening
The Dark Side of Squirrels, and Other Thoughts from the Backyard Garden
For the first time in my life, I rent an apartment with a backyard. This May, I received a wonderful gift of young plants a friend grew on her porch: two kinds of tomatoes—Omar’s Lebanese and Wapsipicon Peach—and a horn-shaped…
Lessons from the Garden & Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cake
A friend of mine says that if you visit Vermont in July, you have to lock your car, not because people will steal things but because they will fill your car with zucchini. She promises she isn’t joking. When I…
Free Garden Advice from the Experts
Theories about the best ways to grow gardens abound. Do you have to start seedlings indoors? Does it matter whether the moon is waxing or waning when you plant? Will watering plants during the heat of the day burn them? Will playing music,…
A Second First: Free Cooking and Gardening Classses
Now and then I’ve been inspired to take cooking classes. Sometimes, walking past a bustling kitchen store, I’d hear laughter rise on a night it hosted cooking classes, or I’d sample fresh homemade cheese crafted by a friend who attended…
Knowing Your Vegetables
After college, I lived in Chicago for five years. The winter would fitfully jolt into summer, skipping spring entirely, and sometimes on sunny April days I would stand on our apartment’s back balcony and wish for a tiny yard where…