This year I grew cucumbers in my backyard garden. I put in three slicing cucumber plants and three pickling cucumbers. I found that it can be easy to miss seeing the lighter-colored pickling cukes sometimes so a few of them got quite fat! Picking was my solution for the abundant crop (including the fat ones). […]
Brooklyn, New York, 1948. My immigrant father, Francesco Pietanza, a merchant steward and cook from Mola di Bari, Italy arrived at Ellis Island on the S.S. Coronado in search of his younger brother. Despite the racketeering longshore waterfront and the underlying discrimination that peppered the streets of his chance destination of South Brooklyn, he was […]
Our family began gardening in 2008 and in 2016 we took it to Facebook to help other amateur gardeners. It is our passion, growing heirloom tomatoes, herbs, squash, and other vegetables. Blackberries and blueberries grow alongside the house and our front bed is a melange of perennial flowers, which gets added to each year.
Woodend Sanctuary is a 40 acre property in Chevy Chase, Maryland, bequeathed to and now headquarters of the Audubon Naturalist Society of the Mid-Atlantic States. The mission of the Audubon Naturalist Society is to inspire residents of the greater Washington, DC, region to appreciate, understand, and protect their natural environment through outdoor experiences, education, and […]
In 1843, Luke Gannon and his family, immigrants from Ireland, built a log cabin in what is now Crystal Lake, Illinois. The restored cabin was moved to Union, Illinois in 1966 on the grounds of the McHenry County Historical Society. Two years ago, in 2015, the Historical Society asked the University of Illinois Extension Master […]
I would like to share with you a walk through my pollinator garden here in Shawneetown, Illinois. Nature is awesome, it is always fascinating at the things you see if you slow down to look. As we step out the door of the sunroom onto the bricked patio to the left, we have blue salvia […]
In March when the COVID-19 pandemic began to grow around the world I realized that I would not be able to carry on my art practice in the ways that I have traditionally worked. Most planned projects were either canceled or postponed and some turned into electronic gatherings. I pretty much committed to staying close […]
Villa Africána Colobó manifests the links between North Philadelphia, the African Diaspora, and Puerto Rican culture. But the garden’s story of heritage began long before it was completed in 2006. During the 1990s, garden founder Iris Brown maintained a space in the neighboring Las Parcelas garden using “the shape of a hut” in plywood together […]