Since the spring flooding in the Missouri/Mississippi watershed, I have been haunted by an image I saw as a televised news flash: a farmer, a clean-cut white man in work clothes, standing on sorely cracked red clay ground. The news story was about flooding, from the picture we were to see that the farmer lost…READ MORE >
Sustainability
The Rule of Law
Environmental Lawyers are at work in 2018 to exercise and strengthen the laws that protect earth. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. –Benjamin Franklin I’ve heard a lot of lawyer jokes. I’ve read some history and enjoyed conversation with friends and family who practice law, and I know…READ MORE >
Water is Life
Living in Toronto for a lovely stretch, my feet missed my home ground and my tears, had they flowed, would have gone to the sea in a foreign watershed. Just a seed of homesickness, mind you; my Canadian experience did not generate tears. But the seed grew, in a creative impulse, to the beginning of…READ MORE >
Saving Seed of the New Zealand Pear – an organic gardener’s journey to the twilight zone
An acquaintance, a gardener, sent tomato seeds one year. Sharing seeds among gardeners fulfills part of the historical imperative that keeps plant varieties vital – the multiplication of seeds through dispersion. I took the important first step of planting some of the seeds she sent, and then I saved seed from the fruit of my…READ MORE >
Teaching Moments in a Desert Garden
When I arrive at Las Milpitas de Cottonwood community gardens, Josh Banno and a group of students are already working. They had taken the city bus from their downtown high school as they do every Friday afternoon as an after school option activity to work on their small piece of ground in the larger community…READ MORE >
Celebrating Local Food, Celebrating the Mission Garden
Being a food explorer in the southwest can be a demanding job, and on Saturday, November 9, there was more than one community festival calling us. Leaving Las Milpitas de Cottonwood, we headed north, traveling a couple miles to reach the party at the Mission Garden to celebrate the November issue of Edible Baja. Published…READ MORE >