April in Sacramento heralds the end of a cold, rainy winter. I clear away weeds, mow the lawn, and get ready for hot,sweaty summer days. In April, I also get to enjoy the first rosebuds of the season – which makes me happy every year, because I love roses and also because these roses mean something special. I transplanted them from my father’s garden. At one point, my father had…
My parents always had a strawberry patch in their garden. For several weeks a year, we had more strawberries then we knew what to do with. I would go out in my nightgown before breakfast to fill up my cereal bowl with fresh fruit. Red and flavorful, they taste nothing like the ones you get in the store in January. They’re incredibly juicy and stain your hands pink. My birthday…
I’ve never been one of those committed hobbyists. What I mean is that, aside from writing (which once was a lifelong hobby and now is a job), I don’t tend to have much stick-to-it-ness when it comes to hobbies. Which may actually be a good thing because looking back at my hobby history, one might notice that my hobbies tend to get out of hand. And so while I may…
When we had our place in the woods, we had an amazing garden. We took the ugliest part of our land – a flat area covered in logging slash, the clay lifeless and hopelessly compacted by heavy machinery, and turned it into paradise. We planted cover crops, built raised beds full of rich compost. We grew vegetables mostly: tomatoes, salad greens, sweet and hot peppers, garlic, basil, beans, peas, even…
