October 2023

Alright, I have to admit that one of my favorite things about the “new” GreenPrints—besides being monthly—is the audio content in every issue. Last month, I found myself listening over and over to GreenPrints founder Pat Stone and his wife Becky not just reading stories but delivering them with such pizzazz and heart.  READ MORE

Sally Gosen Case: Oregon-based Sally gardens and writes, specializing in poetry and nonfiction. She also writes a regular travel blog. Dan Halterman: From Columbus, Ohio, Dan is a life-long composter and appreciates concentrating soil wealth from several continents in his garden's soil. His work appeared in GreenPrints Issue 113.  READ MORE

A wrist-thick branch drops and smacks my face just below the eye. “Dammit,” I shout in unladylike fashion, disrupting the peaceful afternoon. Blinking, I continue to cut rose branches. A 15-foot section comes loose and wraps around my waist and both legs.  READ MORE

The family recently discovered kombucha, the “immortal health elixir” of the ancient Chinese (and a pleasing financial elixir for commercial producers today). Kombucha is a fermented tea, rife with probiotic growing things (“raw, unadulterated & crafted by nature,” according to one label) that are supposed to be good for you.  READ MORE

Wham! Blam! Pow! It’s over, ref! Stop the fight! I’ve seen enough! It’s been going on all Fall. Nature has been pounding my garden, hammering away, trying to knock it down for the count. It hasn’t been a pretty sight. Or an easy fight, for that matter. Oh, sure, some plants practically turned yellow and passed out on their own.  READ MORE

"Hey!” I slid our screen door open, stepped onto the sunny deck, and yelled, “Get out of there!” The beagle from the farm down the road whimpered at my feet. He’d scampered on the deck for his daily investigation of what my husband, Spence, and I were up to.  READ MORE

The problem with a community garden is the community part,” Tanya sneered, crossing her arms over her generously exposed cleavage, “and if I know my residents—and I do—you won’t get anything outta them.” The weed-choked dirt patch sat fallow next to an office building where Tanya held court with the 150 or so residents of the public-housing project known as the “The Sheffield Estates,” a name which lent it an air of expansive sophistication that it did not possess in any form.  READ MORE

Feral pigs I could understand. Feral cats or dogs even. But feral marigolds? You just don’t expect to see feral marigolds. Yet there they were. A few small golden flowers just peeping from under the clumps of wild, windswept, tall grass. The flowers had gradually lost their bright, domesticated brashness and reverted to their tiny wild size, but they were still yellow, still clearly marigolds.  READ MORE

How long is “for a while?” In hindsight, perhaps I should have asked that question at the outset of this adventure. With hindsight, I will say that “for a while” can prove to be highly variable; sometimes much too long, but in our case, much too short.  READ MORE

Linguistic purists—of which practically every language has at least a few—are people who want to restore language to its original roots, with no messy input from foreign tongues or made-up modern babble like bling, geek, and google.  READ MORE