Category Archives: Sites to See

Podcast #21- Seeds for the Season

      

Hover mouse over photograph for name and photo credit. Many more photos below!

Four guests, representatives and owners of one organization and three companies that sell heirloom and organic seeds, tell us about a few of their many seeds: new ones, undervalued ones, and personal favorites. But first, I hold forth at greater length than usual about some of the terms that you’ll encounter when perusing catalogs or websites in search of organic and sustainable seeds.

The Show

Okay, I have a confession: I am not a seed catalog addict. I do not pour over new arrivals, cultivars, and varieties, or old favorites, tried and true heirlooms, prolific producers, dependable bearers of heavy yields, whatever. Truth to tell, I didn’t really care.

After doing this week’s show, I do.

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Favorite Blogs #1: The Great Garden Monkey

Humpback

Here’s to The Garden Monkey, who alone converted me to the blogosphere, a hitherto unknown and threatening world, by giving me a sense that it could actually be fun, and maybe I could be myself there.  His ongoing installments –hijacked interviews of garden personalities, internet moments of the week, not to mention the coveted Fork ‘n’ Monkey awards—add much to our lives, gardening and otherwise. Put it all together, and it’s practically a reason to live.

Moby Dick opens with Ishmael’s explaining that whenever “it takes a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off,” he goes to sea. “With a philosophical flourish,” he says, “Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.”

Me, I think, Really, I mustn’t off myself today, because I’d miss the Garden Monkey’s next installment about British gardening personalities creeping about in each other’s gardens and scheming to steal each other’s garden gnomes, and if I missed that, life really wouldn’t be worth living, now would it. Which makes as much sense as most reasons for living.

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That's a humpback whale at the top of the post, one we saw while on O'Brien's Boat Tours in Bay Bulls, Newfoundland. We also saw a finback and a minke, but you can tell this is a humpback because the fins, even underwater, are white. One of the boat men sang shanties, too.