Holy Moley! With the recent rains here in SoCal, the garden is literally exploding with growth. Last year my wife, in an optimistic fit of seed-planting, sowed some kale in our garden. Now it’s coming up with a vengeance, sending…
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Pests, Invited and Not
Let’s start with the invited pests. We’ve always encouraged Child Harbat to get her hands dirty in the garden and be unafraid of insects and creepy crawlies. The potato bug has to be one of the most child-friendly insects, and…
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: aliens, child harbat, garden, insects, parenting, pests, potato bugs, rat
Tomato Sauce: It’s a Grind
Summer brings a bounty of food from the garden. Our first year we had so much zucchini I wanted to shoot myself in the face if I had to come up with one more novel way to camouflage it in…
Life
It died where it lived, among the blossoms and leaves of our garden. It’s a thrill to be so close to such a small delicate thing that normally speeds around the garden in a blur, faster than our human…
Food, Grown
Child Harbat still isn’t that big on vegetables. As a baby she downed terrific amounts of anything green, pureed and spoon-fed into her smiling mouth. Now she finds a microscopic fleck of basil on her pizza and picks it off,…
Tree Houses, Giant Pencils, and a Stream
The Hamilton Children’s Garden at the Quail Botanical Gardens is a magical place for young and old. In the spirit of those creepy 1980s ads for sugar cereal, the grown-up in me marveled at the design and engineering, the kid…
Grubby Monday
I’ve got a thing for grubs. Not a star-struck, make-my-heart-aflutter type of thing. More like a stomach aflutter thing. Something about their sickening plumpness, translucent skin, pathetic blindness, and desire to live in places most other animals would avoid with…
It’s Spring!
Here in Southern California, spring comes in October. Rain has arrived after a five-month hiatus and everything is turning from dusty taupe to rich emerald. I relish the sound of water patting and dripping on leaves, the mechanized whirr-whip of…
Passing the Torch
When I was little I got a grand Christmas present: a baking kit. It was a treasure chest of tools and ingredients ranging from a chef’s hat to mixing spoons. To me this was a chemistry set with edible results. …
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: baking, cake, daughter, garden, grandmother, kitchen, parenting
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