Posts Tagged ‘deep rooted wisdom’
It’ll Be Fine By Fall
Gardening, painting, sculpting. Those things have something in common– they all start with imagination of something you’ll bring to fruition. A vision. Sometimes these really hot days make me have visions. Stifling hot. Swooningly hot. I chop some crinum down to the ground; it’ll be fine by fall, I think to myself. I weed, pulling…
Read MoreOpen Source vs. Proprietary Plants — Can People “Own” Plants?
Yes, they can, they do and they want to own even more. You can, but it’s complex and expensive. So mostly the people who own plants are huge agricultural companies. They control the plant– you’ve heard about this with genetic modification no doubt, but it sure happens in the flower world, too. It used to…
Read MoreMaking Soil Better with Mushrooms
When you dig up a plant, you get plant, roots and dirt. If you take that plant away, you leave a hole. In field nurseries or turf farms, we do that over and over and over and leave a big hole. Filling that hole can be a big problem. Buying top soil is expensive. It…
Read MoreThey’re Like Southerners but with Funny Accents
We’ve been on some pretty exciting trips this summer. A flight to do a reading at the famed Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia included staying in a house that was recently featured in the New York Times. The road trip to lecture at the U.S. Botanical Garden ended with a tour of some extraordinary private gardens…
Read MoreSouth Carolina Safari — Walterboro, SC
Here’s a great little road trip y’all can join in on– it includes romance, food, car culture, farming, blackwater swamps and book stores. Thursday evening, I’m doing a book reading (ok, sometimes it comes off as save-the-earth-preaching) at the Walterboro Farmer’s Market/Colleton County Museum. (click for time/directions). For Columbia, Beaufort, Charleston, Savannah friends, make an…
Read MoreFall Garden Visiting Slide Show
November has been a busy time with garden visiting and talking and trading plants and such. Here’s a little slide show of a few of the gardens we’ve visited. We’re still dividing plants, no it’s not too cold. But next week is sharing time again; on Monday, Bob Polomski & Jenks talk about Deep Rooted…
Read MoreField Notes Fall Garden Work (on the Lily Farm)
A friend sent this text the other day, “can I be honest u need to write more about gardening n less about strolling w old guys.” Just like that; he didn’t wait for me to answer the can i be honest part….. But here goes. What I do in the dirt is a friggin’ lot…
Read MorePeople Who Show Us The World
In 1938 Buzzy’s second grade teacher made his class listen to Wagner and walk through gardens of neighborhood ladies and gentlemen. Some of the boys sneered. Buzzy, always sensitive , pretty much shocked me when he said, “Once or twice, on the playground, I found the boys who laughed and interrupted and I, (he whispers…
Read MoreDeep Rooted in a Tiny New Orleans Garden
It’s probably true for something you do in your life, some hobby or task: little things, intricate things take more time to plan and are harder to get right than big things. In planning little gardens, every piece has to fit perfectly. Nature’s complexity is less forgiving and more visible in miniature. A plant that…
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