of sharing friendship, books, and lentil soup: adventures with katrina kenison and me

Most people can benefit from drinking more water. Here’s how to make it more exciting!

THE PATH TO FULLTIME LIFE IN THE GARDEN–to a little more peace than my former city corporate life included–keeps offering up unexpected extras, especially in the form of new friends. This week’s book giveaway–the biggest yet, with chances to win four copies of my upcoming book and four of “The Gift of an Ordinary Day” author Katrina Kenison’s, too–is a collaborative cross-blog effort with a kindred spirit that you won’t want to miss.

Like all of Ken’s 18 books (!!!), “Making More Plants: The Science, Art and Joy of Propagation” is rich in instruction, but also visually arresting, since he’s an award-winning photographer, too.  It covers the botany of propagation—the why’s behind how you can make more plants of a particular species sexually or asexually or both—because as Ken says:“It is not essential to learn about botany to garden well; it’s inevitable.”Then in words and intimate pictures he covers virtually every tactic for doing so, from seed-sowing to leaf and root cuttings, to layering, grafting, division and more.  The photos are so beautiful, and Ken’s obvious enthusiasm so evident on every page, that I want to try everything. (Just what I nee

WI TOLD ANDRE ABOUT the male Eastern Bluebird’s annual rite of spring, the so-called Nest Demonstration Display, I didn’t think he believed me. It’s a little bait and switch in which the boy bird (in Andre Jordan‘s depiction, Darius) carries a twig or two around in his beak and makes a big show near the entrance to his proposed nest box or tree cavity. In and out he goes with those twigs as props, as if to say, “Look, gorgeous, I’m decorating a house for us. I’m your man.” But you know how it goes with men, don’t you? (Aren’t I just awful?) The thing is, the male bluebird never lifts a beak to really build the nest. He’s a faker, but a handsome one (in real life, his back and head are a brilliant royal blue and only his breast is reddish). No matter the hijinks; the female falls for it, happily giving up the goods. Then she has to build herself and the kids a nest and tackle all the other housekeeping chores, too. A woman’s work, as it has been said, is never done.

If you said Heuchera, you’re right. Perhaps you’re going to reshuffle some shady beds this spring, and know that Heuchera, with their great foliage, can help make garden pictures work–but wonder which ones, and how best to use them. I invited George Coombs, trial garden manager at the must-visit Mt. Cuba Center in Delaware, with 50 acres of native-plant display gardens and 500 acres of natural land, back to the radio show to help make the best choices and grow them to perfection.George knows from Heuchera, having trialed 83 varieties side by side (the exhaustive results are in this pdf). “I say to people, ‘I’m doing Consumer Reports for plants,'” he explains. Though there are countless varieties on the market, many are duplicative in appearance or just not distinctive. “I can honestly say that when it

IN SOME THINGS lonerism backfires, like when the ladder needs steadying to get at the top of an errantly sprouting espalier, or a truckload of eight cubic yards of mulch is dumped by the far gate. Though ordering seeds is not heavy work, it is best not done alone, either; I have always had a companion for the task. My latest one, of considerable years’ duration, got it in his head to move to Oregon recently, for greener garden pastures, taking with him not just the in-person dimension of our friendship, but also access to the nearby greenhouse that was, of course, a perfect complement to the shopping we did together all that time.“I’ll buy the tomato seeds if you’ll grow them,” the conversation with Andrew would always begin, as if he needed my ten- or fifteen-dollar annual enticement, when of course we never really paid careful mind to who bought what or really kept a running tab of our years-long botanical barter. It hardly mattered; what counted was the chance to look together, to compare notes, to react collaboratively to the possibilities—ooh! aah! ugh!—and eventually to relish the harvest (or to commiserate when something was a flop and there was no harvest, or

Peter is one of the world’s master bread-makers, and the author of six books on bread baking, including multiple James Beard Award winners such as “Whole Grain Breads,” “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice,” and “Crust and Crumb.” He is a baking instructor on the faculty of Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and has even delivered a popular TED talk on the subject.So when was the last time you baked bread—which to my taste competes with homemade soup as the ultimate comfort this time of year, when we gardeners head mostly indoors for the long wait? I interviewed Peter Reinhart on my public-radio show for inspiration on the best-tasting, healthiest ingredients—including some that are gluten free. The transcript of our chat follows:‘bread

If I hadn’t signed with the same publisher, I doubt I’d have met Katrina–our lives and stories appear so different, and she lives a few states away (though, as if by magic, one of her sons is just minutes down the road from me at school). Hers is “a mother’s memoir,” as the cover subhead reveals, co-starring a husband and teen-age boys; mine the tale of a single woman setting off to a rural life of solitude. But when we both participated in a booksellers trade show in October, we learned the meaning of that old saying, “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” Or a life.“I was reading your book on the way here,” she told me excitedly as I shook her hand at the show, bumping into her words with my, “I just finished your book last night.”I had known about Katrina—many authors do, because her book video (above) became a YouTube sensation, the second-most-watched book “trailer” out there, apparently, at more than 1.5 million views. But even after viewing it, I wasn’t prepared for the strong identification I’d feel with “Gift of an Ordinary Day,” or Katrina herself. I had to read the book.Turns out ours are both

My longtime friend Ken, an award-winning garden photographer and author of many books, including “The New Shade Garden” and “Making More Plants,” produced his own “Real Dirt” podcast for 10 years, all available on KenDruse dot com.Read along as you listen to the May 15, 2017 edition of the program using the player below (or at this link). The May show is a doubleheader, and includes a whole “overtime” segment (starting at about 24 minutes into the audio file), which I’ve separated into its own transcript and is at this link (and includes questions and answers on what to do next, after you pull or dig invasives like garlic m

(The polenta can be made and formed well ahead, then finished in the sauté pan at mealtime.)ingredients:6 cups water 1 teaspoon salt 2 cups cornmeal 1 large carrot (or more), grated bleu cheese crumbles, about ½ cup (more or less to taste) pepper grated garlic to taste (start with 2 cloves) 2 tablespoons olive oil (plus additional amount to sauté the onions) onions, cut into slender rings, for topping flour, enough to toss and coat the raw onion rings steps:Bring the salted water to a boi

I confess, I’d become somewhat herb-complacent, always stocked up year-round on garden-grown parsley and garlic and sage and chives, but not very herb-adventurous any longer otherwise.  I have various other herbs in the garden, but mostly ornamental varieties—like gold-leaf creeping oregano (also called marjoram, and a great groundcover), or garlic chives (which I rarely eat, but whose late-summer white flowers the pollinators and I both enjoy very much).After saying goodbye much too soon that Sunday to Gayla, her husband, Davin Risk, and their dog, Molly, all I wanted to do was pulse aromatic things in my food-processor, and I made basil pesto to freeze in cubes, froze whose rosemary twigs, made a parsley log and more of my usual fare–the ways I always freeze herbs. But every time I looked over at the goodies I’d made in class the day before, I thought: more, more, more!Gayla re-awakened the herbalist in me, with “recipes” like these:homemade herb-infused vinegarsWE WARMED a stainless

I have Lee Reich to thank for making the “green” mower investment; I first saw one in his garage, in 2013, and purchased mine in April 2014. And though my Stihl RMA 370, my first battery mower adventure, wasn’t perfect–no battery mower would be, as the technology is evolving–it quickly became a trusted mowing-season companion, for a couple of years in a row. In 2016, I added a slight bigger battery model; more on that below.First, to be clear: My yard is 2.3 hilly acres, not something that could be tackled by one person behind a push mower of any kind alone. I do have a diesel Kubota tractor (above) for the bigger areas, which I use every other week or so.I mow closer to the house by hand, though, for about an hour or an hour and a half each session, often twice weekly when temperature and moisture combine to warrant it.Until 2014, that was always with a conventional g