Columns

Are you ready for some plain talk?               “The time will soon be here when my grandchild will long for the                 cry of a loon, the flash of a salmon, the whisper of spruce needles or                   the screech of an eagle. But he will not make friends with...

“We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink.” - Epicurus While reaching for the mundane bottle of vegetable oil in the market, my eye caught the label on the bottle of avocado oil. Now, I love avocados...

So many power outages these days. I’ve needed to set up a portable propane heater as well as start a fire in the fireplace to keep warm. I know even with ventilation there are lots of potential pollutants that have found their way into...

It was cold and raining (when hasn’t it been?) as I stepped from my warm car in front of Stagnaro’s Fish Market on the Santa Cruz wharf yesterday.  Usually, I love to spend an extra minute or two, perusing their showcases filled with seafood straight...

Growing up in the 1940s, every household in my family included a chicken coop in the backyard. And when families came together for holidays there was always talk about the price of “scratch,” which was their name for chicken feed and the price per...

At the end of last month’s column, I wrote that “2023 would no doubt bring new challenges and opportunities.” What none of us could have imagined was how quickly those challenges would present themselves in the new year. The series of atmospheric rivers that pounded...

What fun it must have been for the children raised in the 1900s at Filoli Estate. You can just imagine what a kid could do on 654 acres of orchards, fields and gardens creating a maze of places to hide and seek. As gardeners,...

There is a fine line between hope and expectations. In the latter, you are mostly depending on others to help you achieve an end to your desires, whereas hope is a positive feeling generated from within oneself—a desire that something might happen. Emily Dickinson’s metaphor...

I see some outstanding new rose varieties available for the 2023 season. It won’t come as a surprise that they are all very fragrant and have good disease resistance. So while you’re out in your garden pruning your existing roses, consider adding a new...

Always on the lookout for potential problems in my garden, I can use all the help I can get. Solutions are out there. One of my go-to websites that I use to diagnose those problems is UC Integrated Pest Management or http://ipm.ucanr.edu. You can...