I’d never seen the word bioblitz until I got my first invitation to one. It had instant appeal: join a group of volunteers to survey a specific area, in an effort to catalog every species you find. Being on the ground taking photos of plants and bugs is one of my favorite things to do. […]
Blessed unrest: the bioblitz Read More »
As a landscape designer, I specialized in native plants. When I first started my business in the 1980s, the workers at a local wholesale nursery called me ‘the weed lady.’ I was always asking for plants that everyone else was pulling out. Even clients attracted by my natural landscaping approach would propose that first ‘we
Retaining paradise: gardening with native plants Read More »
A few years ago, I did something that I’d been putting off for a long time. I joined Joanna Macy and twenty-eight other people for a weekend of the Work that Reconnects. I knew of Joanna as a philosopher of both ecology and Buddhism, full of wisdom and deep practice on both fronts. Over the
The Work that Reconnects: a weekend with Joanna Macy Read More »
What can enclose this ample innerness? So soft is this touch, it could soothe any wound. From Ranier Maria Rilke’s Inside the Rose I may belong to one of the smallest groups in history — people who don’t love roses. It’s not that I don’t love the look of many roses, or their subtle variations
Passion and poison: the thorn in the rose Read More »
Laudato si — Praise be! — are the opening words of each of the verses in Saint Francis’s beautiful Canticle to the Sun. It is also the title of Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical defining the Catholic Church’s doctrines on the care of the earth. This year, September 1 is the annual World Day of Prayer
Laudato si: wonder and care Read More »
In the middle of the 19th century, the tallgrass prairie covered 170 million square miles. It stretched from Canada to Texas, and from the middle of Nebraska to an outpost in northern Ohio. The vast ocean of gigantic grasses was the first thing people coming west saw, as the mountains and forests of the east
Saved by stone: the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills Read More »
Smoky Valley Ranch was the place I didn’t go to see. I went to Oakley, Kansas to see Monument Rocks and Lake Scott State Park, both recommended by a man named Mike Haddock, who runs a wonderful Kansas wildflower website. Oakley is not a destination site, but there are some interesting things to see there,
Smoky Valley Ranch: preserving a prairie Read More »
The Pawnee National Grasslands were born out of grief. After years of drought, farmers of northeastern Colorado, already suffering through the Great Depression, watched as their soil literally blew away. Clouds of dirt rose 20,000 feet in the air and blew so far east that they eventually settled on boats crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Left
Parcels of prairie: the Pawnee National Grasslands Read More »
Celebrating my wild backyard in the last post got me thinking about the multiplicity of backyards I’ve had since heading out on our journey in 2011. Some of them have been spectacular: the Atlantic Ocean in Nova Scotia, the Pacific in Malibu, the Anza Borrego Desert in southern California, the red rock bluffs of Utah.
Ring Mountain and saving the world Read More »
Ten years ago this October, I traveled to New Jersey and found myself celebrating Samhain. I had no idea on the way there I’d be doing any such thing. But it’s the sort of place where that happens, so I might have guessed. Miriam McGillis has been a friend, mentor, and teacher to many, including
Samhain in New Jersey Read More »