“We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks.”
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton (From Lucille, 1860)
Seeds are incredible things. They can lay dormant for eons in the most inhospitable soil, waiting for environmental equilibrium and then for no rhyme or reason (perceptible to us big, lumbering bipedal mammals) it will hit that perfect balance of this or that and go Boom! And a living thing will spurt up out of the scrub and welcome the new day. It’s crazy stuff.
The same thing happens once the seed grows into a big, strong, adult, taxpaying plant. The sun and soil send those mysterious vibrations through the ether and the plant goes nuts. Shazam! It sloughs off it’s fruit and abandons any plans to expand it’s meticulously constructed root system and instead builds up and up, higher and higher until it towers above the garden. There, swaying crazily in the breeze it covers itself in flowers and (with a bit of luck) will score some pollination and grow tiny triffid-like capsules meant for the future.
It’s the plant equivalent of leaving a steady job and family and just trucking out to burning man. It’s plants gone wild! And, I’m sorry to report… It’s what most of my garden looks like right now. Read More
Summer. Beer.
No two words have ever been so flawlessly in simpatico. One is the perfect complement to the other, it’s twin and companion. Without one, the other is incomplete. There is nothing like sun, surf and a beer that has been freshly plucked from a slightly sand-crusted cooler’s cold, slushy recesses. Big sunglasses and good tunes naturally accompany such moments and bikini parties are sure to spontaneously occur. It’s science. Read More
Despite some pretty neglectful behaviour on my part, this summer has been productive for our little garden. The combination of heat and poorly composted soil has started to make everything bolt, but no worries, I was able to save a couple crops and now everything is back on track… I think. Read More
We’re rounding a bend on the Pacific Rim Highway doing sixty, the windows are half down and the sun is a full-blown supernova. No slow tourists getting in the way and no logging trucks are threatening to dust us off the highway’s notoriously thin ’n bendy lanes. All of this primal beauty is ours! Massive old-growth trees, sedimentary rock cliffs carved full of faces by ancient tectonic stress and erosion, ice-cold lakes. The ipod migrating back and forth on the dash just keyed-up Bran Van 3000’s Drinking In LA and my wife and I nod in unison. This is the life. Read More