Hilary MacGregor and Alice Waters and some rose colored glasses...

My funny, smart, beautiful friend Hilary MacGregor wrote this Los Angeles Magazine article about the experience of helping to start Alice Water's "Edible School-Yard" program into her sons' school.   It wasn't easy to make it work (and still isn't), but the journey there is a great yarn.

http://www.lamag.com/article.aspx?id=24614

Enjoy.

Springtime for me....

 Not this sunflower

Today I wrestled to the ground a 15 foot sunflower with probably about 20 flowers on it.  Not this one.  It was the last of one of four or five volunteers that grew over the winter and, because it wasn't an heirloom, surprised me with the abundance of blooms.  Its ancestor had only one.  But, it was leaning and the blooms were dying.  These volunteers had been - at one point - the only thing that seemed to flourish over the Fall and Winter.  I wasn't sure if they were mocking me about summers of love gone by or offering me hope for summers of love someday to come.

 Not these carrots

And I picked some carrots.  Not these.  A few straggles that managed to grow over the winter.  Random seeds that took root wherever they were washed to or dropped by birds to...  There were less than this bounty from last year, but in fact they are sweeter.  Much, much sweeter.  They weren't grown in rows like these, they took root where they decided to take root,  but rewarded me for their stubborness and defiance with the sweetest carrots I've grown yet.  

I'm sorry these photographs are from last year.  I haven't taken my camera much with me to the garden.  Through the Fall and Winter I had such mixed feelings about the garden and didn't feel like documenting anything.  And this Spring has been filled with travel (Boston, Arizona, and soon Portland) and company (if you haven't come, do) and events (I got a pretty medal today for riding 31 miles for the Miller Children's Hospital) and dinner parties (the 45 year old wine had turned for anyone following along) and photo shoots (look for some cool pictures of my friend Adriana in VegNews Magazine soon) and zombies (just plain long story).  So, lately I always seem to need to GO there rather than just BE there.  I'm always behind on watering or planting....  The Summer, I hope, will be just for me, the Garden, my camera, and my adrenals to simply chill. 

In the meantime, today I stood back and realized that maybe my failures of the Fall and Winter are giving way to some successes this Spring.  Stay tuned.....