Land Girls

...voluntary emergency relief teams, helping short-handed farmers at harvest time and the like. The images, both photos and graphics from the period are fantastic: U.K. women in working the plow, and workin’ some fine style, too. Women volunteering in an Oregon hops field. They look so happy (and stripey)! Were they paid in beer? We’d never heard about the WLA prior to today–which is astonishing and a little sad–and stranger still, of all sources, w...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

...oil of garden making, placing is its pleasure. I think I’ve spent too much time in the installing and not enough time contemplating the placing. In so doing gardening has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees. I take this to mean that a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of plants or a collection of objects set amidst plants. Finlay’...

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Our new front yard, part 2: theory

...s, and it does not always end up being such a great strategy. However, sometimes good enough really is good enough–which is why we continue to try to get away with it. So I don’t know about this one. Time will tell. For now, I’m praying we’ll get the new plants’ root systems established before the heavy rains hit. The primal landscape? Elephants on the Serengeti (Image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons) The concept of legibility One term used by R...

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Is Facebook Useful?

...stead, focusing on comment threads on Facebook. It may be futile, but it’s time to fight back. What I’ve resolved to do I’m not going to give up on Facebook just yet. I can’t really. As authors we have to use it to promote our work and events. And I like keeping up with friends and family. But I’ve resolved to: Post only post positive things on Facebook. I do this already, but occasionally feel the pull of negativity. My favorite Facebook posts ar...

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My Big Fat Greek Squash

...cy winter squash galette recipe is here on MSNBC along with a video of him making it. I’ll note that the online recipe is different from the one in the book which calls for a longer baking time. My galette was in the oven for over an hour, but I did not cook the squash as long in the frying pan as Bittman does in the video. I’m sure either way will work, and this has to be, seriously, one of the best things I’ve ever cooked. It would make a great...

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