Winter is a dangerous time of year for a gardener. The catalogs feature rediscovered heirloom seeds with gorgeous sounding names: Dragon’s Tongue beans, Crimson Curtain and Banana Leg tomatoes, Painted Serpent cucumbers, King of the North peppers. They sound like legends and poetry. The herbs sound like characters from old fairy tales with names like […]
Our Green Heritage: Heirlooms & Hothouses Read More »
They know the price of everything, Hatchet to rake, handsaw to lantern, Pflueger reel to Peters shell. Prices go up through the years. They always keep track. So they know what it costs To chop, to burn a pile of leaves, To let the blade drift through a plank Welling yellow sawdust, To light a
“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.” (Hemingway 153) Hemingway’s Jake Barnes was quite
Shawn Green: the Zen Pragmatist at the Plate Read More »
Who says bigger is better? While most Americans seem to prefer the larger breeds—hunting dogs, guard dogs, herding dogs, and working dogs—I’m a cheerleader for companion breeds. And the smaller, the better. Why, I wonder, do they always come in last in the popularity contests? Is it a holdover from our rural history, when Timmy
Ten Reasons Why Small Dogs Are the Best Dogs Read More »
Under the nervous street light The cat crosses over stealthily Pausing at the edge Of the darker side. One eye flashes And it’s gone Into the margins. Black impregnates black The seed of a dream Behind the slumbering houses. I flutter through empty space A little man with little wings And a mouse’s tail. Suddenly
She lay on her back next to the fire, covered in a patchwork of animal hides. Her leathery flesh, now barren of fat and muscle, would soon mingle with the earth that once nurtured her. She coughed, and her rattling breath delivered a misty offering to the indifferent stars. Childhood memories flashed through her thoughts,