It is the eve of December. The first frosts arrived on the valley floor only recently, but multiple hard frosts that will knock our tender plants down is in the forecast for the coming week. The air is crisp, the… Continue Reading
The beauty of the garden in winter is a unique pleasure: fragrant, fresh evergreens, bright berries, frosty mornings. Photo: Frosty Indian hawthorne on a cold North State morning. Seasonal greens, winter fruits, and sculptural cones have long been associated with… Continue Reading
Consider the lilies of the field – and those of the home garden. Heralds of summer and heat, they are trumpets of abundance, turk’s caps of beauty. Abundant in color, size and blooms. You can press your face into theirs… Continue Reading
PHOTO: Salvia ‘Phyllis’ Fancy’ catching late-fall morning light. Some months are all about the busyness of doing and getting things done – April and December, for instance; some months are all about just being and surviving – the overexposed heat… Continue Reading
Drive the roads of the Valley floor of Northern California this time of year and the world stretches out in front of you as though it goes on forever, as though you can see forever. Dun colored fields move in… Continue Reading
Fall reliably brings two things to Northern California – the Fall Membership Drive at our regional public radio stations and Mushrooms. On this last weekend of the Fall Membership Drive for Northstate Public Radio, I thought I would re-post an… Continue Reading
Photo : A stand of stately olive trees. I grew up surrounded by the pine forest of the Rocky Mountains. Very different than the Mediterranean climate of Northern California’s valley floor and foothills of lively oak woodlands Photo : Green… Continue Reading
My 14 year-old who is learning French for the first time and this last week she learned the colors and subsequently I re-learned French colors. Not dissimilarly, in the course of co-developing an exhibit on mushrooms and fungi of Northern… Continue Reading
PHOTO: A hummingbird hovers near hummingbird sage (Salvia spathacea). As I write, the first rain of the fall season (which coincidentally begins according to the calednar on Sunday the 22nd with the Autumnal Equinox) is cheering up the forecast. The… Continue Reading
I just got my fall stock of garlic seed while at the National Heirloom Festival in Santa Rosa from Sarah Shimizu of Gypsy Farm (707-502-9509, sara_mizu@yahoo.com) a garlic seed grower. I got three new-to-me hard neck varieties – a head… Continue Reading
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