You might remember a certain trip we took to the beach last spring, when we brought home a wagon brimming with several varieties of kelp. That afternoon back in June, we combined approximately 10 pounds of rinsed seaweed with water inside a 10-gallon Rubbermaid tote and...
I’m always on the lookout for socks that speak to who I truly am. Socks that sing my heart song. Maybe it’s because Ryan and I live in a warm climate and we don’t get to wear them as much as we did back East...
With the fading of our last passionflower last month, things are muted, florally speaking, right now inside our garden. The exceptions would be our small hibiscus shrub and our jade plant, whose delicate white flowers are already beginning to emerge. We’re predicting that it will...
“When I moved onto the farm, it was me and my wife trying to find a change of life,” says David Solomon, manager of Stone Farms in Escondido. “I was in advertising. She was doing international sales. I couldn’t handle being in front of a...
Is there a fruit more loaded — with innuendo, with mythological baggage, with outrageously potent nectar — than the fig? Cleopatra fancied them, and Bacchus wore them on his head. Its flowers are actually inside its "fruit." They were the very first Olympic prize, given out...
As herb/fruit/ornamental folk, Ryan and I are prone to bouts of vegetable envy. It flares up at the peak of sweet corn season — oh Instagram, why must you tease us so? — and returns around this time of year, when cold frames are being compared and...
Welcome to Grow the Bouquet, our new series in which brides (and grooms!) tell us about the plants they carried on their wedding day. For our first edition, we're excited to present the beautiful bouquet of our beautiful (and witty and gregarious) friend, Melissa Kushnaryov. When...
Fall 2013 will forever be known as the season that we descended into sheer pumpk-insanity. This madness began with our haul from Bates’ Nut Farm. Remember the Ghostly Lumina white minis, the long-necked squash, and the obscenely large, incredibly orange Prizewinner? And the turban squash...
We live in our parks, and our parks live in us. Parks are where we make loose appointments with friends, where we smooth out our nerves before job interviews, where we introduce our babies to the outside world, and the only place we’ll ever take...
Plants bring us bushels of joy every single day, but around this time of year our thoughts turn to the flora that terrify us. That's right: spooky plants. And we’re not just talking about the sight of our aphid-ravaged milkweed or a fast-moving touch-me-not. In honor of the...
