tall clover farm

If my garden was a theater, Pacific Coast Iris (Iris douglasiana) would be the overlooked understudy or supporting actor that unexpectedly steals the show. It’s presence is subtle if not negligible for most of the year, until a couple weeks in May when it pulls out all the stops and produces flowers that would make a watercolorist pant.  [...]

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  Proverb for May 23, 2009: He who hogs a sofa, will make no qualms about doing the same on a hammock.  Then again, he who can adjust the hammock’s height wields all the power. Truth be told, the view is too good not to share.

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Sometimes beauty reveals itself in unexpected ways, other times it’s a familiar friend on my daily path. For the madrona trees that have stood witness to the lives and loves of this house over the last century, it’s both. As I’ve said before, they are truly living sculptures.    Towering and twisted, they reach for the [...]

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Welcome this uncommon and fruitful tree into your garden. I first encountered the edible quince Cydonia oblonga at my friend Kurt’s farm, where it stood like a garden prop, perfectly shaped, petit and laden with fuzzy gold orbs the size of papayas. With fruits doing double time as well-placed ornaments, the tree was showy and productive. In [...]

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There’s broccoli and there’s sprouting broccoli, a cousin to the bulked-out broc we tend to knock. After some British friends of mine sang its praises, I planted it for the first time last summer. Surprisingly, it overwintered and I harvested it this spring. Two words: tender and delicious. The stalks are pencil thin with little broccoli mop [...]

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  Here’s to the fine woman who brightens our lives with love every day. To my Mom who always made me Chicken Kiev* and German Chocolate Cake on my birthday (I was smitten with international cuisine at an early age.) who managed to locate a bolo tie and vest for a second grader going through his [...]

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Tulips at the market: my favorite harbinger of spring I think the Dutch had it right in the seventeeth century; why not base your economy on the beauty of the tulip? It’s a most worthy form of currency. And no offense to other spring bloomers, but that’s a feat neither a daffodil nor a hyacinth could pull off. [...]

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They’d likely say “What took you so long?” My five-year anniversary of living in this fine old farmhouse is fast-approaching, a mere blink in its beautifully-framed 120-year-old life.  And as each homeowner makes his or her mark, some times enhancing, other times insinuating ‘improvements’ where none are needed, I try to spare this winsome Victorian a [...]

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