I've been thinking about my dad a lot this past few weeks.  His 101st birthday falls on Thanksgiving Day. One week after that is the anniversary of his death last year. He lived long. I hope he felt that it was a mostly good life. The first two decades, though, were difficult. The  Great Depression colored his life as an adolescent and teenager.  He didn't say much about those years, except to comment that he didn't much like beans. His family consumed a lot of those during the Depression. Then again, I never asked him about life during the 1930s, the Dust Bowl years. I ..read more

 Honoring the Ancestors at this season. Lighting a candle to show them that I am thinking of them and that they are welcome guests at my feast in their honor. This is the time of the last harvest (not really, but it's all root vegetables and leafy greens), but I celebrate the late harvest and pray for sufficient food to get me through the Winter. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. This also marks the traditional Celtic New Year. May your year be full of blessings, love, and appropriate abundance. Share your wealth ..read more

Spent flower heads of Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum).  Autumn is a time of gathering in... Gathering in the final crops of the season... sweet potatoes, winter squash, winter radishes, cabbages (if you were fortunate enough to have a fall crop of cabbages... mine failed), and seeds.  The spent flower heads above have dried, bearing mature seeds. Today I collected the last of them, which I will share with a couple of native plant enthusiasts. The compass plant that bore the seeds is somewhat precious to me. Several years ago I found compass plant, which typically grow ..read more

  Pruning shears for size reference. I dug one hill of sweet potatoes yesterday to see if it is harvest time. And look at this!  All of this from just one plant, and 24 more plants in this one bed. Of the six beds of sweet potatoes -- approximately 250 plants all totaled -- this one bed might be the highest producer. It was one of the first beds planted and the orange sweet potatoes -- Beauregard -- tend to be larger with more sweet potatoes per plant than either of the whited-fleshed or all purple ones. The Beauregards planted a couple of weeks after these also might produ ..read more

 The asters are beginning to bloom among the goldenrod. Here, the purple flowers of a lone New England Aster pops out in the yellow field of goldenrod. A beautiful symbiosis of color, as the goldenrod seems to allow a spotlight on the aster. Why do asters and goldenrod look so beautiful together? That was the question Robin Wall Kimmerer (author of the much loved and acclaimed book "Braiding Sweetgrass") said she wanted to answer, when asked why she wanted to become a botanist during her freshman entrance interview for college.  Of course, the "real" scientist interviewing her scof ..read more

  It's paw paw season here in Northeast Kansas, and some people are out hunting for this precious treat, trying to beat the local wildlife to the ripening fruit. Maybe 15 years or so ago I discovered a couple of paw paw trees growing just beyond the edge of the woods around our house. I noticed the first one because of its deeply colored, bell-shaped flowers that are large enough to be seen from a moderate distance. Even though paw paws are native to the eastern third of Kansas, I had never seen a paw paw tree before. I was delighted to discover the tree's identity. The paw paw is the l ..read more

August brings tomato abundance in my garden.  It starts slowly in July, when each tomato is precious. In August, however, tomatoes pile up on the kitchen counter and must be processed. These little tomatoes are called "Black Plum." I love to roast these little paste tomatoes and puree them into a sauce for immediate use or for canning. I simply slice them in two and place them in a glass baking dish, sort of single layer but crowded, then cook them into a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for one to two hours. When they are deflated and much of the juice has evaporated, then they are done. Th ..read more

  It's August. The slow slide into Autumn has begun. In the woods and prairies the blues and purples have given way to yellow and gold. The light at sunset becomes slightly more golden each day. A week or so ago, this same spot along my daily walk was filled with the blue of the native American Bell Flower. Now it lights up with the gold of one of the many yellow flowers that run rampant through the countryside. I'm guessing this is a species of Rudbeckia, black-eyed or brown-eyed Susan. Goldenrod scatters yellow flowers throughout the prairie, and soon sunflowers of all kinds will shine ..read more

  My daily morning walk takes me past this stunning scene of woodland flowers. The color in this photo, of course, does not bring out the brilliance of the flowers' blue/purple color. Plus, this section is maybe a quarter of the area with these beautiful native wildflowers. The size of the patch and the bright color of the flowers are what make it truly stunning. American bellflower (Campanula americanum) grows along the edges of Kansas woodlands. Many, many different species exist in the Campanula genus, including non-native and cultivated species. A number of other flowers that you ca ..read more

  The high point of the year, the Summer Solstice is upon us. The sun reaches it's highest mark in the sky and begins its descent toward the south, where it will rest on the Winter Solstice. One might say that the seed of Winter is planted today. However, we are a long way from winter. We are about to experience the hottest part of summer. Next week the highs will near 100 degrees F (37.8 C). Fortunately, today we received nearly 3 inches (7.6 cm) of rain. Elderberry flowers The season passes and the garden progresses through its summer cycle. The wild rose (above, not in the ..read more