Seven or eight years ago, I was thinking about my friends Manuel and Aida Terán, a wonderful couple from the indigenous Quichua region of Ecuador who travel to Nashville most winters to sell their handmade alpaca sweaters and scarves. They work very hard when they are here, standing outside for sometimes 10 to…
things that grow: generated by tagcrowd.com Most everything, for good or ill, grows, including the themes and ideas in this blog. Hal and I have been trying to change our thinking lately, to re-set our paths on a course that points somewhere. Maybe we’ll fail, but there’s great adventure in the trying. In…
A garden teaches many things: how to dig in and get dirt under your fingernails; the art of patience; and the constancy of impermanence. My friend and hero Anna Timofeyeva-Yegorova, the wonderful Soviet combat airwoman whose memoir I edited, taught me those lessons as well. For more than half a year I lived…
Ideas are like tender little plants: some grow and thrive, others get ground into the dirt. How do you tell which is which?
From August through the end of the growing season, the lazy gardener grows ever lazier. And seriously grumpy. In August, syrup-thick ninety-five-degree days broil hosta, lilac (Yes, there is one that’s hardy here-it’s called ‘Miss Kim.’), and heuchera leaves to a crispy, rippled brown. The echinacea are a wave of burned black seedheads, and the…
I wrote something vaguely resembling the following post, after consuming two daiquiris at a neighbor’s pool about two weeks ago. After relishing the rainstorm for a few minutes in the backyard a la naturale, I channeled this strange rant while still dripping with chilly raindrops. This is a warning to all those who think chemicals…
On rain, as an excellent excuse to stay in bed
The Greenery 