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Garden

Tomatoes, Cabbages, and More

We are in full harvest mode. There are some cucumbers on a table in the verandah, along with the last of the fennel. Because our dear dog, who is terminally ill, now lives in the verandah, we cannot lay out the harvest on floor trays there as we usually do. Thus our living room is […]

Harvest and Homeschooling Thoughts

Once again we are blessed with an abundance from the garden—everything from broccoli, tomatoes, and cabbage to melons, raspberries, and pears. Earlier we ate lettuce and cherries. Soon we will start picking squashes, kale, and leeks. We are so grateful for all this organic food and also for the strength and ability to tend our […]

A Surprising Lesson from Stinging Nettles

Recently my husband came in asking, “Do you want some nettles?” After all, we do eat them once in a while, especially in chicken soup, because they are so healthy. So he showed me the enormous patch he was about to pull up, I showed him the difference between wild raspberry and nettles, and a […]

Fighting Quack Grass—and Sin

Every spring I come face to face with weeds in our garden. There are the little ones, easy to uproot and get rid of. And then there’s quack grass. In the early spring it looks beautifully lush, soft, and green. It is possible to pull isolated clumps out, the ones that started from last year’s […]

1480 Crocuses, Revisited

A year and a half ago, our children bought hundreds of crocus bulbs and helped me plant them. A crocus-filled lawn is something I had dreamed about for years and I could hardly believe it was actually going to happen. In fact, the next spring I was so excited that I actually turned my chair […]