Of all the potential insect visitors gardeners may encounter, perhaps none has more charisma than the praying mantis. “The ultimate insect assassin” is how famed British filmmaker David Attenborough describes it. You can forgive Sir David a bit of hyperbole when you realize that this is the only insect in the world with a martial […]
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A couple of years ago I read about the seed packages at Hudson Valley See Library designed by a number of local artists. I visited the site at once, and it was there that I first saw Sheryl Humphrey’s work, on an Art Pack design for Rainbow Chard. I was wowed. I remember happily whiling away a
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←Part Two Country Life with Fred The Stock Market Crash of 1929 hit everyone hard, including the newlyweds. In early 1930, they moved to the outskirts of Redding, Connecticut, to a 55-acre farm for their retirement. They, like many during that time, felt they could live cheaply off the land. That spring, Ruth Stout
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←Part One New York City Soon after May’s death, the family made the move to New York City. Their new home would be a four-story brownstone on West 118th St., less than a block from Morningside Park (designed by the famous American landscaper Frederick Law Olmsted). Ruth would live in New York City
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We bought a farm a few years ago. It’s a small old farm with only about four acres in southeastern Colorado, but it was big enough that it brought with it all the old farm needs, such as replanting fields, repairing outbuildings, learning how to irrigate with siphon tubes, and spending fabulous amounts of money.
It’s 1975 and Ruth Stout, in her early 90s, is being filmed at her home. She’s explaining her daily schedule, how many hours a day she works to maintain, harvest, and freeze food from a 45 x 50 foot vegetable garden which grows enough food for two people. (She hasn’t been in a grocery store
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