Help Plant a Garden — and Help a Local Eagle Scout

...headerboard (9am) composting the planting areas (morning) planting trees, flowers, vegetables (afternoon) assembling benches (all day) It’s a fun chance to work with an (exuberant) team of young scouts and to help get another section of food gardens built. Start time is 9am, and we’ll continue all day until it’s done. Bring your own garden gloves. If you’d like to help with assembling benches, bring your own toolbox. Although much of the project...

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087 Foraging Controversy with Lisa Novick

...r of Outreach and K-12 Education of the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wild Flowers & Native Plants. We contacted her after seeing her blog in the Huffington Post, Forage in the Garden, Not in What’s Left of the Wild. In that post Lisa expresses her concern about foraging and suggests that people grow native plants in their yards and in public spaces. While our conversation is California-centric, I think, the principles we discuss apply to other re...

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Going to Seed

...en up all that anxiety, and I revel in this time. The insects feast on the flowers which bloom on our lettuce, our arugula, our radishes, our mustard, our fennel. Predatory wasps hunt alongside lady bugs and diligent bees of all types. We have more birds than ever in our yard, and they love our overgrown, browning beds, because of course they’re eating the seeds or the bugs on the ripening plants. They would not, however, allow me to take any pict...

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Truth and Beauty

...’s paintings almost seem like they’re about to be taken over by the vines, flowers and grasses that tangle around the central figures. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we can learn from the PRB and from the English and American Arts and Crafts movements. To be frank, I’m tired of my own and my generation’s cynicism and irony and I’m haunted by Adam Curtis’ critique of self-expression in contemporary art. I think it’s well past time to ge...

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Name This Weed and Win . . .

.... . . bragging rights. Extra points for telling us the scientific name. I think it’s some kind of geranium and it’s been sprouting up in the backyard for years every winter. If allowed to grow it puts off small, uninteresting flowers. I’m hoping it has rare pharmaceutical value. Then I could offer better prizes on Root Simple, like an all expenses paid trip to East Hollywood....

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