gardening 26

There is no law preventing us from being worthy pupils of the spring rains, the dead, and the plants. We can mind first principles; we can keep our hands off…

I am happy that the boys enjoy the garden too. But who knows how it will be in five years?

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.

Rational ideas create hell on earth. Just ask a kulak. Or just ask the lettuce plants in my garden.

Pruning is difficult because we are forced to make a conscious decision to remove something that has been part of a growing plant. But these cuts are necessary and even…

At all hours of the day and night in the Mannon house, you’ll find butter in its designated dish on the dinner table and cornmeal in the fridge. I hold…

A tended garden inevitably involves some choices, as well as planning which tree species will fruit better with more sunshine.

J. R. R. Tolkien imagined a society characterized by people who care for one another and their natural spaces, cultivating human and ecological flourishing in their communities.

I interrupted his weed-pulling to gently rebuke him for perceived carelessness regarding his health, but like the mother of Christ, I was the one needing correction—for Pastor was simply “about…

If only I had the patience of trees; if only I let time inch me, push me, stretch me ever upward, defying gravity’s pull. My demand for instant responses mocks…

Learning from Wallace Stegner, Doug Sikkema considers the timeless blessings of his childhood in a letter to his mother.

I doubt okra tops many people’s list of garden must-haves, which is a shame since it is such a determined grower. Gardens are only guaranteed to produce one thing year…

Our trees are unlikely to make a measurable difference in global carbon dioxide levels, and they will not do anything to hasten the end of the coronavirus pandemic, but according…

Gardening is wholly mundane, but in a way that complements our pursuit of holiness and spirituality because it keeps us properly focused and disposed.

The maypop shows, however, that localism need not mean confining oneself to an austere and moralistic diet. If I cannot grow bananas and mangoes in the Ozarks, I can nonetheless…

Better dumb guineas than no guineas at all.

I have no doubt this collection would delight Bailey, dandelions and all. Selecting and anthologizing the work of a writer-scholar as prolific as this is a labor of love as…

Gardeners are a modest and sober breed, not much given to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life. We are generally free…

I have just planted two apple trees from what my local nursery calls their “Posterity Collection,” heritage varieties grafted onto a slower-growing but durable and long-lived rootstock so that the trees…

I wonder if Mr. Big in the sky would be willing to give us a Do-Over.

“In the first place, thanks to those who work it, the land bears not only the means for people to live, but also bears the means for them to live…

The pleasures of a partial self-sufficiency.

I’ve just finished Andrea Wulf’s beguiling book entitled “ Founding Gardeners, The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation”. Published this year by Knopf, it delves into…

Is the meaning of a feast forfeited when the fast is no longer observed?