by Dawn W. Todd If you have the time you can make a little piece of heaven anywhere in your yard. If you are short on time or yard, you can still have that heaven. All you need is a container and a few plants. A container (or a group of them) can separate spaces, [...]
My husband Howard was puttering around the backyard last weekend. He wrapped his hand around an errant clump of recently mown grass and lifted. The hot sharp jab left a stinger in his middle finger, which he carefully removed, trying not to squeeze more venom into his flesh. He never saw the insect who, no [...]
by Dawn W. Todd I learn more about God From weeds than from roses; Resilience springing Through the smallest chink of hope In the absolute of concrete…. ~Phillip Pulfrey, “Weeds,” Perspectives I am reading a book called My Weeds; A Gardener’s Botany, by Sara Stein. She doesn’t live around here, so it doesn’t have [...]
by Dawn W Todd The heady, hollied rush toward Christmas is over. One by one you took down the ornaments, and packed them away. Why is it so much more fun to put them on the tree than to take them off? The tree is in the compost bin, the leaves of the poinsettia fall [...]
by Dawn W Todd The Kruckeberg Botanic Garden is gearing up for its yearly Solstice Stroll. For members, it will be December 18th from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., and for the general public it will be December 19th through the 21st, from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. You all know what solstice means. According to [...]
by Dawn W. Todd, Nursery Volunteer I am shocked and appalled at the number of people who don’t know how to make lasagna. It’s simple, it’s easy—far easier than the alternatives—and it’s so good for you! I don’t mean the kind of lasagna you eat, of course. I mean the kind of lasagna that saves [...]
by Dawn W Todd There is a poem on a sign under a tree in the gardens of Castelo de São Jorge. I haven’t been there, armchair traveler that I am, but I read about it on line. Before I tell you the poem I want to ask you a question. Why plant trees? That’s [...]
by Dawn W Todd I'm in Oregon this week with my family. The day begins and ends with a walk on the path next to a tiny branch of the Deschutes River. My favorite part is where it reaches a little bridge and then takes a sharp right; at that point looking straight across the [...]
by Dawn W Todd It tends to be dry around here in August. I nurture a few carefully chosen potted plants (just to give a bit of color to the graying, neglected wood of the deck) and without an irrigation system, I become a slave to watering during a normal Pacific Northwest summer. During my [...]
by Dawn W Todd, Nursery Volunteer On the first leg of my journey to Connecticut to see my son graduate from his medical residency (I had to put that in), the fellow sitting next to me was from Walla Walla. As so often happens to me, we got to talking about plants. He showed me [...]