Blog: Musings on the Earth, Mindful Living, and our Connections
A 2020 Vision: Green Up
One of the subjects In the Gardens has posted on from time to time involves the changes occurring in our climate and our natural world. This is a topic that is becoming more front and center for us as we hear more about rising temperatures, expanding …
Off the Beaten Path
My work for In the Gardens reaches out to many communities – schools, townships, businesses, nonprofits, and also to congregations, straddling needs in both the secular and spiritual community. As such, I was invited to join Kenissa, an organization that celebrates and creates connections for Jewish innovators. This past March I participated in...
Planning Your Garden Part 3: Saving Seeds
As spring has yielded to full summer, you might be seeing your garden overflow with produce. You might even see flowers or fruits that got away – that you didn’t see when they were ripe, and now..
Unexpected Interweavings
Life is filled with unexpected interweavings, cycles and circles. I experienced some of these this past week on my JMMTT – Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training – at Isabella Freedman retreat center and farm. Nestled in the woods of Falls Village, CT, about 90 minutes from the nearest airport, the center boasts trails and a pond, several greenhouses, a large network of yards and structures for goats and chickens, and extensive fields for produce and fruit orchards.
Winter Sprouts
This past Sunday, as with many Sundays, my volunteer, Abe, came to help me with winter gardening detail: removing dried mint and dill from the stems to jar for tea and spice, respectively. We removed and bagged seeds from collards and arugula, and separated beans and peas from their shells, some for cooking and some for planting next season. But this Sunday was different. The sun was shining and it was 65 degrees—time to work outside.
I love…
The Worm and the Beanstalk
I think I have a worm. Or maybe it is a canny, selective squirrel. The bush beans (beans can grow two ways – on a bushy plant that is low to the ground, or as runner beans or pole beans, on lengthy vines that need to be trellised) are ripe and ready to be picked. And eaten. Yum. This is one of my favorite times of the season. All that hard work of cultivating the soil with compost, organic fertilizer and other amendments, of planting the beans and laying and testing the water system, of keeping away critters and pests, of…