Chinese cuisine has many kinds of vegetables, but the one I’m most familiar with is bok choy. Like other Chinese families, bok choy is the most common green eaten during meals in my home, and not a day went by without bok choy. Although we […]

Native serviceberry trees (Amelanchier) abound throughout North America. During their trek across the continent in the early 1800s, Meriweather Lewis, William Clark and other members of their expedition feasted on serviceberry and other native berries, often as guests of indigenous peoples, and recorded these encounters […]

When I lived in Austin I had a friend with somewhere around 80 acres of land in the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio. We’d stay in a crude cabin on the property, generally in the fall when the weather was cooler. We’d wander […]

My wife, when she fell ill, was advised by the physicians to chew on gooseberries in order to gain some vital energies.  She kept salted gooseberries in a bottle and chewed on them occasionally. There is something very special about this fruit; may be it […]

My father, Michele, was born in a small town in Italy called Bitetto, about 20 miles from Bari. He eventually bought a house in Canarsie, Brooklyn, that had a plot of land where he could do some gardening. He loved gardening and planted a lot […]

Summers in California are marked by hands with deep purple liquid running along palm lines and in between the fingers, dripping off the sides and trailing down the wrists, tiny brown hairs stuck to fingers and palms. Every time I look at a pair of […]

[English Translation below] Mon grand-père Paul vivait à Haute-Rivoire, un petit village dans les monts du Lyonnais. A chaque fois que j’allais les voir, lui et ma grand-mère ces dernières années, je repartais avec un sac plein de légumes de son potager : des choux […]

I spent my elementary school vacations at my best friend’s home in Los Angeles, California. We grew up in Historic Filipinotown, an enclave home to the city’s first wave of immigrants from the Philippines. Her home had avocado and orange trees, abundant kudzu, and plenty […]

  SOCIAL BOTANY   politics is the authoritative allocation of values in society David Easton   Our nasturtiums, jalapeños, radishes would morph more savory were politics master gardening. Patient curious egos know temperate watering, care with weeds and pests, fertilizers, how best to harvest our […]

  Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American transcendentalist, nature writer, ecologist, and mystic encountered pines daily in the woods of Massachusetts. In these excerpts, Thoreau describes some of thoughts and observations on pines. Thoreau uses the white pines he finds in the Walden woods in the […]