Backyard Garden Quotes

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

She was knitting a sweater and enjoying the calm atmosphere of her living room when her chubby, beer-drinking, sports-watching husband woke from a nap on the couch screaming, “Touchdown!” At the moment her serenity had been broken, she unconsciously reacted by swinging around and plunging a knitting needle into her husband’s throat. While blood squirted from his throat and his shocked face produced gurgling sounds, she lifted from her chair and drove the other knitting needle into his beer-ballooned stomach over and over again. Blood and beer gushed out of his belly like a punctured fish tank. As her husband gurgled and deflated, she stared down at him with a beaming smile. She had found her new hobby—annihilating assholes. She had cut up her husband into nice little pieces and used him as fertilizer for her backyard garden. Never again did her cozy house get raped by blaring sounds of sports emanating from a television set. The TV went into the garbage and the living room was converted into a tea room.

The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.

Walter Issacson biographer of Steve Jobs: I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden, one day, and he started talking about God. He [Jobs] said, “ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50/50, maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more, and I find myself believing a bit more, maybe it’s because I want to believe in an afterlife, that when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated, somehow it lives on.” Then he paused for a second and said, “Yea, but sometimes, I think it’s just like an On-Off switch. Click. And you’re gone.” And then he paused again and said, “ And that’s why I don’t like putting On-Off switches on Apple devices.” Joy to the WORLD! There IS an after-life!

In his rearview mirror, I saw something flash in his eyes. "You want to know?" he sneered. "Let me imagine, Agha sahib. You probably lived in a big two- or three-story house with a nice backyard that your gardener filled with flowers and fruit trees. All gated, of course. Your father drove an American car. You had servants, probably Hazaras. Your parents hired workers to decorate the house for the fancy mehmanis they threw, so their friends would come over to drink and boast about their travels to Europe or America. And I would bet my first son's eyes that this is the first time you've ever worn a pakol." He grinned at me, revealing a mouthful of prematurely rotting teeth. "Am I close?" Why are you saying these things?" I said. Because you wanted to know," he spat. He pointed to an old man dressed in ragged clothes trudging down a dirt path, a large burlap pack filled with scrub grass tied to his back. "That's the real Afghanistan, Agha sahib. That's the Afghanistan I know. You? You've always been a tourist here, you just didn't know it.

The majesty of nature is not restricted to canyons and mountains. It can be found in the wilds of perception--the sensory spaces that lie outside our Umwelt and within those of other animals. To perceive the world through other senses is to find splendor in familiarity and the sacred in the mundane. Wonders exist in a backyard garden, where bees take the measure of a flower’s electric fields, leafhoppers send vibrational melodies through the stems of plants, and birds behold the hidden palates of rurples and grurples...Wilderness is not distant. We are continually immersed in it. It is there for us to imagine, to savor and to protect.

There are many gods . . . gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards, but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones--. . . . The god of the church is a jealous god; he cannot live in peace with other gods.

When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

That evening after dinner, I picked lemons from the tree in the backyard, the fruits golden bulbs under the rising moon.

The most she knew about gardens was the Bakers’ own backyard, which contained one large mulberry tree and a rosebush, plus the window boxes where her mother grew runner beans. She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered.

Pull up a weed from the wet soil of the drenched garden and smell the rich life the earthworm has left behind. Just a whiff of it will flood you with a feeling of well-being. The microbes in freshly turned soil stimulate serotonin production, working on the human brain the same way antidepressants do.

I can’t change Americans’ love affair with poison, and I can’t solve the problems of climate change, but I can plant a garden.

Modern US consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales--if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely.

My earliest recollection is of coming upon some rabbit tracks in the backyard snow. I must have been three or so, but I had never seen a rabbit and can still recall the feeling of being completely captivated by the tracks: Someone had been here. And he left these prints. And he was alive. And he lived somewhere nearby, maybe even watching me at this very moment. Four decades later, I do not need to be reminded that rabbits are often a nuisance to farmers and gardeners. My point is that when you look at a rabbit and can see only a pest, or vermin, or a meal, or a commodity, or a laboratory subject, you aren't seeing the rabbit anymore. You are seeing only yourself and the schemes and appetites we bring to the world--seeing, come to think of it, like an animal instead of as a moral being with moral vision.

seek forgiveness in yourself before searching for it in others,​ people will pick and choose the parts of you they love ​ before discarding the rest. but darling,​ you are not a backyard full of weeds ​ needing to be pulled,​ you are a garden of roses aching with thorns. you deserve to be loved​ only by someone​ who knows how to hold all of you.

She repainted the house to resonate year round with a summertime oasis in floral colors from the backyard garden—her ceremonial grounds—keeping her in her roots of greenness.

My grandmother, a dim, stern figure, named her children Lily and Violet, which I guess from seeing a picture of my mother's paved, ugly backyard, was the nearest she came to a garden.

You can’t go to the bank and deposit likes, views, retweets, viral explosions, social media conversations, or brand recognition. Bankers are extremely narrow-minded. They won’t even accept vegetables grown in your backyard garden or bitcoin. They want real money.

If you work with or around children, you often hear a lot about how resilient they are. It's true; I've met children who've been through things that would drive most adults to the brink. They look and act, most of the time, like any other children. In this sense – that they don't succumb to despair, that they don't demand a space for their pain – it's very true that children are resilient. But resiliency only means that a thing retains its shape. That it doesn't break, or lose its ability to function. It doesn't mean a child forgets the time she shared in the backyard with her mother gardening, or the fun they had together watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the Astro. It just means she learns to bear it. The mechanism that allowed Lisa Sample to keep her head above water in the wak of her mother's departure has not been described or cataloged by scientists. It's efficient, and flexible, and probably transferable from one person to another should they catch the scent on each other. But the rest of the details about it aren't observable from the outside. You have to be closer than you really want to get to see how it works.

...the reality of late summer and early autumn when Adelaide, more than any place on earth, and as simply as pouring tea from a pot, pours fourth from a lavish cornucopia into gardens and parks and markets and arcade stalls a cascade of carnations and grapes and melons, guavas and Michaelmas daisies and tomatoes, zinnias and belladonna lilies and tuberoses, lavender and quinces and cumquats and pomegranates, roses and roses and roses.

As I said in my last book, birds are mean. They're the only pet that, when they escape, the owners are relieved. You can tell a species is evil by doing this simple math. If my blond lab Molly was the size of T-Rex, that would just mean more kibble, more work for the gardener in the backyard, and a harder time moving her to my wife's side of the bed at night. If birds were the size of a T-Rex, the streets would be littered with human remains.

All this attempt to control... We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old... The basic idea of science - that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational - that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging... But now... science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting to not fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it can not tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways - air, and water, and land - because of ungovernable science... At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science has vanished. Ever since Newton and Descartes, science has explicitly offered us the vision of total control. Science has claimed the power to eventually control everything, through its understanding of natural laws. But in the twentieth century, that claim has been shattered beyond repair. First, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle set limits on what we could know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn't make any practical difference as we go through our lives. Then Godel's theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know what we call 'reason' is just an arbitrary game. It's not special, in the way we thought it was. And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. It is as mundane as the rain storms we cannot predict. And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old - the dream of total control - has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly... We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now... it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question - What should I do with my power? - which is the very question science says it cannot answer.

And so I think about land. But more and more I also think about how other black and brown folks think about land. I wonder how our lives would change for the better if the ties to place weren't broken by bad memories, misinformation, and ignorance. I think about schoolchildren playing in safe, clean, green spaces, where the water and air flow clear and the birdsong sounds sweet. More and more I think of land not just in remote, desolate wilderness but in inner-city parks and suburban backyards and community gardens.

He’d helped us build a garden in our backyard and I’d forced him to watch a season of The Bachelor with me. (“ Why does he not just buy more roses?”)

For me, nearly all of our problems are solved with a recipe composed mostly of homesteading and permaculture.

There was a small spiky garden at their feet, and Charlie studied it. 'Doesn't hold a candle to your mother's,' he's said. 'How would you know?...You never go in the backyard.' He gave a small smile. 'I presume her greatness.

Several months ago, when Israel “annexed” the Golan Heights, a Jewish friend of mine visited that country. Upon his return he explained that Israel needed that land to protect itself from the possibility of enemy shells, apparently lobbed off its cliffs, into Israel. “But doesn’t that land belong to people?” I asked. “They’re not doing anything with it,” he replied. I thought: I have a backyard I’m not ‘doing anything with.’ Does that give you the right to take it?

What if we could learn to see the world from the perspective of other species, both plant and animal, and understand that they, too, deserve the chance to make a life here? ---- The Humane Gardener: Nurturing A Backyard Habitat For Wildlife

Jane snorted out in disgust. "Okay, the good news is spotting the saurus just got a hell of a lot easier. Plus we've got a ton of free bait." "The bad news?" Taggart asked. "Smart boy. Cookie for knowing that there's bad news." Jane eased her SUV across the worn divided line to drive along the berm. "Bad news, Pittsburgh beef cows are the meanest son-of-abitches." "So, we have to dodge several tons of pissed off sirloin while filming one hungry dinosaur?" "Welcome to Pittsburgh.

When her parents had company over, it wasn’t uncommon to see guests stopping to check out the koi ponds, exotic flowers and rare species of trees that offered plenty of cool shade. This backyard could easily rival the best botanical garden in town.

Corn is at the core of modern agribusiness, the most important food crop in North America. In no other crop are the values of modern commercial agribusiness as thoroughly embedded. There is nothing we can do that is ultimately subversive - there is no act of gardening that is so profound a rebellion, there is no act of eating that is so potent a blow for food quality and food system sanity - as to take back the corn crop in our own backyards, and grow, breed, eat, and save seed of corn based upon an entirely different set of values.

But resiliency only means that a thing retains its shape. That it doesn’t break, or lose its ability to function. It doesn’t mean a child forgets the time she shared in the backyard with her mother gardening, or the fun they had together watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks at the Astro. It just means she learns to bear it. The mechanism that allowed Lisa Sample to keep her head above water in the wake of her mother’s departure has not been described or cataloged by scientists. It’s efficient, and flexible, and probably transferable from one person to another should they catch the scent on each other. But the rest of the details about it aren’t observable from the outside. You have to be closer than you really want to get to see how it works.

We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent than atomic power. And it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question--What should I do with my power?--which is the very question science says it cannot answer.

Walk down any sidewalk in any city and eventually you’ll find a flower growing out of a crack in the concrete, tenaciously grasping for life, barely enough earth for it to clench hold of. This little flower has seeded, sprouted, and blossomed, despite thousands of feet walking over and around it every day. This flower is a survivor, thriving better than if it were in my Aunt Tilda’s fucking backyard garden with her fussing over it day and night and giving it all the goddamned care she thought it needed. Yeah, eventually, some careless asshole’s gonna trample and kill that flower, but another one’s gonna replace it. [...] I’ll always believe in you, Raeburn. You just have to find another crack in the sidewalk and blossom. Don’t be another Kurt Cobain. Don’t give up. People need you.

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among missy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

I should have felt something—a pang of sadness, a twinge of nostalgia. I did feel a peculiar sensation, like oceanic despair that—if I were in a movie—would be depicted superficially as me shaking my head slowly and shedding a tear. Zoom in on my sad, pretty, orphan face. Smash cut to a montage of my life's most meaningful moments: my first steps; Dad pushing me on a swing at sunset; Mom bathing me in the tub; grainy, swirling home video of my sixth birthday in the backyard garden, me blindfolded and twirling to pin the tail on the donkey. But the nostalgia didn't hit. These weren't my memories. I just felt a tingling in my hands, an eerie tingle, like when you nearly drop something precious off a balcony, but don't. My heart bumped up a little. I could drop it, I told myself—the house, this feeling. I had nothing left to lose.

As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metal work as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

The grand tour of our tiny flat," Henry amends. "It's ours, though, so we're not complaining. Not everyone can live in posh brick houses with park-like gardens." Ben frowns. "My house isn't that posh." "It really is," Steve says. Traitor. "A pool doesn't make a house posh." Henry tilts his head, chin raised in challenge. "Five cars and a football pitch in the backyard do, though." "It's a small practice pitch." "It's a practice pitch in the backyard.

You choose to work». «For us!» «No, Tatiana, for you». «Well, who do you work for? Don’t you work for you?» «No,» said Alexander. «I work for you. I work so that I can build you a house that will please you. I work very hard so you don’t have to, because your life has been hard enough. I work so you can get pregnant; so you can cook and putter and pick Anthony up from school and drive him to baseball and chess club and guitar lessons and let him have a rock band in our new garage with Serge and Mary, and grow desert flowers in our backyard. I work so you can buy yourself whatever you want, all your stiletto heels and clingy clothes and pastry mixers. So you can have Tupperware parties and bake cakes and wear white gloves to lunch with your friends. So you can make bread every day for your family. So you will have nothing to do but cook and make love to your husband. I work so you can have an ice cream life.

BACKYARD GARDEN SALAD In wartime, patriotic families cultivated “Victory Gardens” to promote self-sufficiency and help the war effort. 4 cups mixed greens 1/4 cup fresh sprigs of dill 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves 4 large basil leaves, rolled up and thinly sliced crosswise 1 large lemon, halved 1/4 cup fruity olive oil pinch of salt fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 cup toasted walnuts 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese 1 cup fresh edible flowers; choose from bachelor’s buttons, borage, calendulas, carnations, herb flowers (basil, chives, rosemary, thyme), nasturtiums, violas, including pansies and Johnny-jump-ups, stock Toss salad greens and herbs in a large bowl. Squeeze lemon juice (without the seeds) over the greens and season with olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss again. Add walnuts and feta and toss well. Divide salad and pansies among four serving plates and serve. (Source: Adapted from California Bountiful)

All the books and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But, if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of "a deep, friable loam full of nitrogen." This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination to contain nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I do not deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing. But I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don't know what loam is.

Beyond her, along the edge of the patio, a rainbow of color danced in the evening breeze. Olive's backyard efforts had gone well beyond the leafy herb garden. Arranged in sweet clusters, with a backdrop of desert sage and tall grasses, sat well-tended terracotta pots brimming with yellow snapdragons, deep-violet lobelia, and powder-blue pansies. Even in the dimming evening light, Julia noticed a couple of butterflies flitting near the bright arrangement of petals. It was such a charming sight, and her niece had been responsible for the entire thing. There was no doubt this girl had a serious green thumb.

By the time we got to the store on our pre-Independence Day shopping trip, I had counted no less than twenty-four deer actively engaged in demolishing people’s gardens. Twenty-four deer aligned along a walk of one mile! I pointed out to Gabriel that this was a rather ridiculous situation on our way to lay down hard-earned dollars for deer meat. However, we hadn’t even gotten to the punchline yet. When we went inside the store and found the venison, the back of the package was labeled PRODUCT OF NEW ZEALAND. Apparently modern Americans find it more palatable for their meat to have a seven-thousand-mile carbon footprint than to come from their own backyards.

Taggart finally broke the pattern. "Can you at least explain why?" Jane growled. God, she hated being outnumbered. This was like riding herd on her little brothers, only worse because "I'll beat you if you do" wasn't an acceptable answer. "First rule of shooting a show on Elfhome." She grabbed Hal and made him face each of the two newbies so there was no way they could miss the mask of dark purple bruises across Hal's face. "Avoid getting 'The Face' damaged. Viewers don't like raccoon boys. Hal is out of production until the bruising can be covered with makeup. We've got fifty days and a grocery list of face-chewing monsters to film. We have to think about damage control." "Second rule!" She let Hal go and held up two fingers. "Get as much footage as possible of the monster before you kill it. People don't like looking at dead monsters if you don't give them lots of time seeing it alive. Right now we have got something dark moving at night in water. No one has ever seen this before, so we can't use stock footage to pad. We blow the whistle and it will come out of the water and try to rip your face off – violating rule one – and then we'll have to kill it and thus break rule two." "Sounds reasonable," Taggart said. "Would we really have to kill it?" Nigel's tone suggested he equated it to torturing kittens. "If it's trying its damnest to eat you? Yes!" Jane cried.

CUTTING THROUGH by Kendra Kopelke It takes five seconds to cut across someone’s property. I did it a lot. I led my dog onto the grass between two houses, checked first to see if anyone appeared to be home. We wanted to catch a break from monotony. Like thieves we wanted what we wanted. We wanted to thread through the dull canvas that was our neighborhood, to make up for the people who let us down. We loved empty backyards, dead, twisted gardens, the rush and fear of being exposed and unseen in broad daylight. We were foxes, deer. We were out there, where nowhere is. Maybe the neighbors would look out their windows and see us for what we were. We walked quickly heads down, imagined rifles pointed at our backs, fists shaking behind glass, voices putting us in our place. We told ourselves each time this is the last time.

It was like having two children in the car with her. Okay, one child and a young adult that kept backsliding. Hal, of course, was attempting to prove he was really only eight years old. Taggart could resist the taunting part of the time. Nigel was the senile grandmother who never noticed that the children were fighting. He sat in the backseat, smiling serenely at the passing landscape. What made things worse was that Taggart called shotgun so he could film through the front window. That made it so she couldn't reach Hal to swat him into silence. She found herself tempted to hit Taggart just because he was beside her. And because he'd changed into a dark blue silk shirt and cologne that smelled so good she just wanted to roll in it. "I can kill us all," Jane growled, gripping the wheel tightly, and resisted the urge to drive the production truck into the ditch to prove her point. Somehow they reached downtown without her killing anyone.

There's a psychologist called Mary & Diamond who at Brooklyn in California, in the 80s studied rats. And they took rats at different ages. Newborns, some of whom they deliberately brain damaged, adult, middle-aged, elderly rats. And they exposed these rats to different levels of environmental stimulation, better food, more playmates, toys to play with and so on. They found out a couple of months later that the rats, at any age, including the brain-damaged rats, who had the better stimulation, they were smarter. But in the autopsy then they also found that in the front part of their brain they had larger nerve-cells with more connections with other nerve-cells and richer blood supply. In other words that environmental stimulation actually caused a change in the state of the brain, even in the older rats. And that's called neuroplasticity. The capacity of the brain to develop new circuits. So whether it comes to ADHD, addiction, depression or other childhood disorders or any other issue with adults as well, if we recognize them not as ingrained, genetically-determined diseases, but as problems of development, then the question becomes very different. Then the question becomes not just "how do we treat the symptoms?" (and addiction itself is a symptom, depression is a symptom), but "how do we help people develop out of these conditions?" In other words, it is not a medical question, purely, but a developmental question. And development always requires the right environment. Now, if you're a gardener you know that. If you are growing plants in your backyard and you want them to grow into healthy, functioning beings, botanical beings, you want to provide them with the right nurturing, the right nutrition, minerals, water, sunlight and so on. So the real question is how do we provide the conditions for further development for people whose development was impaired in the first place? Now we know how to do that. We are just not doing it.

But you're stuck filming crap now." Hal snorted. "Chased by monsters? Better be damn good at running." "And exactly how do you get hurt filming a landscaping show?" Taggart retorted. "If it can't kill us, we don't film it," Jane said, to stop the fighting before it could start. "There's a lot of dangerous flora and fauna in Pittsburgh and it doesn't stay beyond the Rim. It comes into people's backyards and sets up shop. We teach our viewers how to deal with it, but it means we have to actually get close enough to get hurt." "Deal with, as in kill?" Nigel seemed flabbergasted. "This isn't Earth. These aren't endangered species. This morning we were dealing with a very large strangler vine in a neighborhood with lots of children. There's no way to 'move' it to someplace where it isn’t a danger, especially while it's actively trying to kill anything that stumbles into its path. Pets. Children. Automated lawnmowers." "That one is always amusing to watch but it always ends badly for the lawnmower," Hal said.

The sorrow I feel has not disappeared, but it has been integrated into my life as a painful part of a healthy whole. Initially, my loss was so overwhelming to me that it was the dominant emotion—sometimes the only emotion—I had. I felt like I was staring at the stump of a huge tree that had just been cut down in my backyard. That stump, which sat all alone, kept reminding me of the beloved tree that I had lost. I could think of nothing but that tree. Every time I looked out the window, all I could see was that stump. Eventually, however, I decided to do something about it. I landscaped my backyard, reclaiming it once again as my own. I decided to keep the stump there, since it was both too big and too precious to remove. Instead of getting rid of it, I worked around it. I planted shrubs, trees, flowers, and grass. I laid out a brick pathway and built two benches. Then I watched everything grow. Now, three years later, the stump remains, still reminding me of the beloved tree I lost. But the stump is surrounded by a beautiful garden of blooming flowers and growing trees and lush grass. Likewise, the sorrow I feel remains, but I have tried to create a landscape around the loss so that what was once ugly is now an integral part of a larger, lovely whole.

It was my father who called the city the Mansion on the River. He was talking about Charleston, South Carolina, and he was a native son, peacock proud of a town so pretty it makes your eyes ache with pleasure just to walk down its spellbinding, narrow streets. Charleston was my father’s ministry, his hobbyhorse, his quiet obsession, and the great love of his life. His bloodstream lit up my own with a passion for the city that I’ve never lost nor ever will. I’m Charleston-born, and bred. The city’s two rivers, the Ashley and the Cooper, have flooded and shaped all the days of my life on this storied peninsula. I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones, I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory. As a boy, in my own backyard I could catch a basket of blue crabs, a string of flounder, a dozen redfish, or a net full of white shrimp. All this I could do in a city enchanting enough to charm cobras out of baskets, one so corniced and filigreed and elaborate that it leaves strangers awed and natives self-satisfied. In its shadows you can find metalwork as delicate as lace and spiral staircases as elaborate as yachts. In the secrecy of its gardens you can discover jasmine and camellias and hundreds of other plants that look embroidered and stolen from the Garden of Eden for the sheer love of richness and the joy of stealing from the gods. In its kitchens, the stoves are lit up in happiness as the lamb is marinating in red wine sauce, vinaigrette is prepared for the salad, crabmeat is anointed with sherry, custards are baked in the oven, and buttermilk biscuits cool on the counter.

AS SHE HEALED, the women changed tactics and stopped their berating. Now they brought their embroidery and crocheting, and finally they used Ethel Fordham’s house as their quilting center. Ignoring those who preferred new, soft blankets, they practiced what they had been taught by their mothers during the period that rich people called the Depression and they called life. Surrounded by their comings and goings, listening to their talk, their songs, following their instructions, Cee had nothing to do but pay them the attention she had never given them before. They were nothing like Lenore, who’d driven Salem hard, and now, suffering a minor stroke, did nothing at all. Although each of her nurses was markedly different from the others in looks, dress, manner of speech, food and medical preferences, their similarities were glaring. There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. Conversation was accompanied by tasks: ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing, or nursing. You couldn’t learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: “What have you done?” (122-123)

For while asceticism is certainly an important strand in the frugal tradition, so, too, is the celebration of simple pleasures. Indeed, one argument that is made repeatedly in favor of simple living is that it helps one to appreciate more fully elementary and easily obtained pleasures such as the enjoyment of companionship and natural beauty. This is another example of something we have already noted: the advocates of simple living do not share a unified and consistent notion of what it involves. Different thinkers emphasize different aspects of the idea, and some of these conflict. Truth, unlike pleasure, has rarely been viewed as morally suspect. Its value is taken for granted by virtually all philosophers. Before Nietzsche, hardly anyone seriously considered as a general proposition the idea that truth may not necessarily be beneficial.26 There is a difference, though, between the sort of truth the older philosophers had in mind and the way truth is typically conceived of today. Socrates, the Epicureans, the Cynics, the Stoics, and most of the other sages assume that truth is readily available to anyone with a good mind who is willing to think hard. This is because their paradigm of truth—certainly the truth that matters most—is the sort of philosophical truth and enlightenment that can be attained through a conversation with like-minded friends in the agora or the garden. Searching for and finding such truth is entirely compatible with simple living. But today things are different. We still enjoy refined conversation about philosophy, science, religion, the arts, politics, human nature, and many other areas of theoretical interest. And these conversations do aim at truth, in a sense. As Jürgen Habermas argues, building on Paul Grice’s analysis of conversational conventions, regardless of how we actually behave and our actual motivations, our discussions usually proceed on the shared assumption that we are all committed to establishing the truth about the topic under discussion.27 But a different paradigm of truth now dominates: the paradigm of truth established by science. For the most part this is not something that ordinary people can pursue by themselves through reflection, conversation, or even backyard observation and experiment. Does dark matter exist? Does eating blueberries decrease one’s chances of developing cancer? Is global warming producing more hurricanes? Does early involvement with music and dance make one smarter or morally better? Are generous people happier than misers? People may discuss such questions around the table. But in most cases when we talk about such things, we are ultimately prepared to defer to the authority of the experts whose views and findings are continually reported in the media.

lived in the house. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and friends. A grill was set up on the patio, and delicious smells wafted from platters of burgers on picnic tables in the yard. It was the perfect sort of day for Munchy to get her fill of people blood. Who would have thought that giving a person one tiny bite could result in such a delightful snack? Munchy was aware that most people thought she was a pest. They tried to swat her whenever she got near, but Munchy was fast and an expert at dodging humans’ flailing fingers. I don’t want to hurt anyone, Munchy thought. But a mosquito bite just takes a second, and then I fly off to find the next person. Satisfied at last, Munchy buzzed back to the garden where she lived with her best friends Wiggly Worm, Rattles Snake, and Snarky Snail. “I’m full!” she announced. “I don’t think I’ll eat for a week!” “There’s some kind of celebration going on over there,” remarked Wiggly, who was playing in the dirt. “I know!” smiled Munchy. “The family has so many guests over—so many guests with delicious blood.” Snarky made a face. “I think it’s the Fourth of July or something—but, Munchy, do you really have to do that to people? Mosquito bites make them awfully uncomfortable.” “Only for a second,” Munchy replied. “It’s just an itty-bitty sting.” “No, it isn’t,” protested Snarky, who ventured into the backyard more than any of his friends. “Mosquito bites are itchy and uncomfortable for a long time—sometimes several days. I’ve seen those two little kids scratching and complaining about bites you’ve given them.” “I think that’s true,” agreed Rattles, who also went into the yard more often, now that the humans knew he was a friendly rattlesnake. “Oh, no,” murmured Munchy. Mosquito bites hadn’t seemed like a big deal before—but they did now. She didn’t want to be responsible for making people feel itchy all the time! With a sigh, Munchy said, “I guess I’ve got to quit. From now on, I’ll stick to sugar-water shakes at the Garden Town soda fountain—but it isn’t going to be easy!” With some help from her friends, Munchy was able to stop biting people once and for all. And, when the other mosquitoes that lived in the garden heard about her new lifestyle, they decided to give it a shot, as well. In no time, the backyard was practically a mosquito-safe zone! The kids and their friends could now play in the yard for hours with no worries about being bitten. They had no more itchy skin and no more discomfort. Munchy felt like she had done a wonderful thing. And no one ever tried to swat her away again! Just for Fun Activity Make itty-bitty bugs using circles of Fun Foam for bodies, tissue paper cut-outs for wings, googly eyes (you can find them at craft stores), and shortened pipe cleaners for long, skinny noses and legs. Have fun!

She keeps walking, so I keep following, making our way down a stone path that leads to a set of tiered gardens. It is magical back here, garden after garden, the first filled with herbs like Mama grows, rosemary and lavender and mint and sage. Beyond that is a rose garden. There must be fifty rosebushes in it, all with different-colored blooms. We keep walking, down to the third tier, where there are tended beds like Daddy's vegetable patch in our backyard. "Look at this," Keisha says. She stands beside row upon row of little green plants with thick green leaves. She kneels beside one of them and pulls back a leaf. There are small red strawberries growing underneath. She picks one and hands it to me. I've never eaten a strawberry that tastes like this before. It's so rich, with juice like honey. It's nothing like the ones Mama buys at Kroger.

to boost plant health during this critical period with the following measures: ● Make absolutely certain that plants are well watered and that there is never any water stress. Overwatering at this point is better than underwatering. ● Make sure that there are zero signs of nutrient deficiencies. If you spot any, make sure to thoroughly fertilize. I give detailed instructions on how to fertilize in a later chapter. ● Do a very careful walk-through of the garden in mid and late July. Look closely for the presence of any pests. If any are present, spray all plants with the appropriate organic pesticides. Spray as directed. From this point on pay close attention to the presence of pests. Address problems immediately and aggressively. I will discuss pest management in more detail in a later chapter. ● Look closely for male and/or hermed plants and immediately remove any and all of these from your garden.

There is a ground spray that can be applied to the area around your colonies that will kill the larvae when they cross it. It also is effective against fire ants, but it must be reapplied after it rains. If you routinely move colonies it doesn’t do much good either.

We plan to exceed your expectations and put the fun in FUN TIMES for your event! We offer first class commercial inflatables, concessions, table & chairs and tents! All of our equipment is cleaned and disinfected after EVERY use! We service for any event; backyard parties, church events, babyshowers, corporate events, school events, festivals and any other occasion that involves entertaining kids! We proudly serve Winter Garden, Clermont, Davenport, Windermere, Kissimmee and surrounding areas!

Mingling frames from the broodnest with frames from honey supers also causes problems. The material in the cells and the bees walking on this darkened wax will darken the honey stored in the combs and add bits and flavors of what was there before, reducing the pristine quality of the honey you want to harvest. The bottom line: Don’t mix frames used for honey with frames used for brood.

Sugar syrup may develop a black mold in the pail when the bees don’t eat it for a several days, or it may actually ferment if the weather is warm. A good rule of thumb is, if the look or the smell of the syrup is such that you wouldn’t drink it, don’t give it to your bees.

Above the queen excluder—only honey. Below—honey, pollen, and brood.

(Screened bottom boards were used by beekeepers more than 150 years ago for improved ventilation. Beekeepers replaced them with solid bottom boards in the winter, and over time the expense of having two pieces of equipment fell into disfavor, and the screens went away.)

Emma fussed with the cinnamon-rose starts she had planted all over the backyard. She was as tender with the roses as if they were her children, and every hour or two she watered them.

But the whole group, especially David, was playing the stage as if it was Madison Square Garden. And that’s the sign of greatness. You’ve got to be good in the first place, but when you treat a small, intimate gathering as if it’s a spectacle, you have the makings of a star.

There was something about the garden that reminded her of Nell's backyard in Brisbane. Not the plants so much as the mood. As long as Cassandra could remember, Nell's yard had been a jumble of cottage plants, herbs and brightly colored annuals. Little concrete paths winding their way through the growth. So different from the other suburban backyards, with their stretches of sunburned grass and the occasional thirsty rosebushes inside white-painted car tires.

When I was ten, my mother got me a subscription to a website called Seeds Anonymous,” I said. “Every month I would get an unmarked package of seeds in the mail with instructions on how to plant them and care for them. I wouldn’t know what I was growing until it came up out of the ground. Every day after school I’d run straight to the backyard to see the progress. It gave me something to look forward to. Growing things felt like a reward.” I could feel Atlas staring at me when he asked, “A reward for what?” I shrugged. “For loving my plants the right way. Plants reward you based on the amount of love you show them. If you’re cruel to them or neglect them, they give you nothing. But if you care for them and love them the right way, they reward you with gifts in the form of vegetables or fruits or flowers.” I looked down at the weed I was tearing apart in my hands and there was barely an inch left of it. I wadded it up between my fingers and flicked it. I didn’t want to look over at Atlas because I could still feel him staring, so instead, I just stared out over my mulch-covered garden. “We’re just alike,” he said. My eyes flicked to his. “Me and you?” He shook his head. “No. Plants and humans. Plants need to be loved the right way in order to survive. So do humans. We rely on our parents from birth to love us enough to keep us alive. And if our parents show us the right kind of love, we turn out as better humans overall. But if we’re neglected . . .” His voice grew quiet. Almost sad. He wiped his hands on his knees, trying to get some of the dirt off. “If we’re neglected, we end up homeless and incapable of anything meaningful.

Although each of her nurses was markedly different from the others in looks, dress, manner of speech, food and medical preferences, their similarities were glaring. There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. Conversation was accompanied by tasks; ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing, or nursing. You couldn't learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: "What have you done?

My husband and I have lived in Oregon for 55 years in Eugene, Portland, Neskowin and Hood River. We have explored much of Oregon and are avid readers of travel and history. We are familiar with Oregon’s bigoted history and Oregon’s positive and negative politics. From Bettie Denny’s fiction book I could picture places, people and events. The book begins and ends in the Lone Fir Cemetery founded in 1866 in southeast Portland. Murphy Gardener, a new Oregonian reporter, is assigned to cover the Halloween cemetery tales at the cemetery, meeting a black cat, and a new friend, Anji. Murphy and Anji soon meet for breakfast at the Zell Café and embark on a historical quest. Untangling a chain of events and people through maps, letters, photos and directories they sort though the detritus of lives. A photo and a dubious translation, ending at the Lone Fir Cemetery, give some probable answers to their quest. I love mysteries and Denny does an exquisite job of linking the present to the past. She visits The Oregon State Hospital Museum, Oregon Historical Society, Chinatown, Phil Knight Library, Columbia Gorge Discovery Center and Edgefield. She reads about suffrage, about the “incorrigible’” Abigail Scott Dunaway and her infamous brother Harvey Scott, publisher of the Oregonian. She uncovers past issues of sex slaves and current issues sex trafficking. She also showplaces current establishments such as the Bipartisan Café in Montavilla, The Sunshine Mills in The Dalles where she gathers with those who are aiding her in her historical quest. For those of you Oregonians who want a good mystery taking place in your own backyard, I recommend this book highly.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved this backyard,” she said, sighing in a girlish way, as if younger than yesterday. “It doesn’t change, and yet it grows beyond measure.

My first ten years were spent in a suburb of Melbourne so quiet that I believed no people could have survived on the far side of their trimmed privet hedges unless their wardrobes and cupboards were stuffed with rubber or clay or painted tokens of another world altogether, a world that poked up into Melbourne in the dark corners of bedrooms and the shadowy spaces under fruit-trees and behind fowl sheds in backyards wholly hidden from the street. On many a Sunday afternoon when my mother took me on long trips by tram to visit some aunt or great-aunt and I had to sit for the first half-hour in the front room, I looked around me for some detail of a painted landscape on the wall or some gesture made by a porcelain figure in the crystal-cabinet or some pattern in the threads of an anti-macassar that seemed the nearest sign of the other world. Then, when I was allowed to go outside , I would always find a certain kind of place - the patch of rotting leaves under the treefern on the blind side of the house; the clump of arum lilies between the garden shed and the back fence; the corner of lawn just beyond the last flagstone in a path that had seemed likely to lead to something much more definite. I would stand in that place and stare, and wonder what word I had to learn the meaning of or what other person I had to turn myself into before I could recognise the doorway that must have been somewhere just in front of me.

Wiggly Worm lived in a backyard garden with his best friends, Snarky Snail, Rattles Snake, and Munchy Mosquito. As much as he loved wiggling around in the mud, Wiggly often wondered what it would be like to live in a town. Wiggly and his friends knew all about towns because

they liked to listen to the kids who played in the backyard. The kids were always talking about how they had done this or that, or gone here or there, downtown. Wiggly knew that towns had parks and stores and restaurants and bakeries and places to get sweet treats. That sounded wonderful to him! “All we have here is plants,” he said to his friends. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had all kinds of special places to go, like the kids always talk about?” “I’d like that,” said Rattles. “Imagine a five-star restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy. Munchy laughed. “I’d like a soda fountain where we garden creatures could order sugar-water shakes and other yummy treats!” she chimed. “I’d like a park,” said Wiggly. “A beautiful park with a maze of fun tunnels to wiggle through.” Munchy’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that would be so much fun! What would you like, Snarky?

Theo: What if I stayed here as my home base? Winter: In Chestnut Springs? Theo: Yeah. Winter: In your house? Theo: I could pitch a tent in your backyard if you prefer. Invite you over for a campfire and tequila. ;) Winter: Not ideal. Someone shitty could move in next door. I could end up with an even worse neighbor than you. Theo: And who knows if he’d mow your lawn for you the way I do. Pretending to garden would be boring and pointless without me to watch. Winter: I do not watch you. Theo: You only ever garden when I’m mowing the lawn. Winter: How do you know? Theo: Because I’m watching you back.

I continuously see signs related to my dream home on a daily basis. My favorite book growing up as a child was the Secret Garden. I always wished I had a home that was filled with all the beautiful plants described in that book. And guess what? My new house is engulfed in pink, red, orange, white, and yellow roses. I also have fuchsia camellias everywhere. Birds of paradise line my backyard along with an entire wall covered in green vine. There are also palm trees. I never asked for a pool, but it also has this nine-foot-deep, blue, 40,000-gallon pool, which is a bonus that this house has that the black kitchen house didn’t. But the kicker is that one day I was walking around the landscape and noticed that I have a lemon tree in my backyard. This home is everything that I asked for and more.

On train trips, Ernie always wanted the window seat. He knew the names of the trees we passed, and the clouds—nacreous, cumulus, nimbus. He was ever vigilant for animal life and appreciative of the tiny patches of humanity along the tracks that exposed the lives of the rail-side dwellers in such intimate detail. “I love sad houses,” he’d say, pointing to a chorus line of discoloured laundry waving at us, to an upturned self-propelled lawnmower, straggly gardens, leaky drainpipes, a rain-weathered pram that had been turned into a wheelbarrow. “The porch lights are on to keep the rats in their dens,” he’d said. To be a voyeur of decay at such close range was as much of an enthrallment as it was a validation of the scarcities in his own backyard. I knew exactly which days Ernie’s mum had had to choose between heating the house and putting food on the table. My mother had been there too. Before the Zipper had given her a leg up.

The Earth is what we all have in common.” ― Wendell Berry

Trent pumped his arm as if he'd just hit the jackpot. "Thank God. If I had to hear about one more incident with that squirrel-shifter, I was going to shoot myself." "Squirrel-shifter? Are you fucking kidding me?" Jace raised an eyebrow in a look that said, Do I even want to know? "Some half squirrel, half man has been showing up naked in people's backyards out in the suburbs. Soccer moms tend to be a little alarmed when a nude man nibbling on acorns is perched near their child's window. I'm not sure whether he's a shifter who's unable to hold his animal form for long or just a garden variety nut.

While the list of easiest crops varies from region to region, there are a few super-simple standouts. Radishes and green beans top most gardeners’ “no-fail” lists. Other easy crops include cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, garlic, leaf lettuce, snap peas, Swiss chard, and kale. Tomatoes are a bit more difficult but not by much. The newer compact hybrid tomatoes developed for patio culture are especially easy. Start small

A Sun-Blocker Rotation Trellised tomatoes, beans, peas, and cucumbers, along with corn, can grow 8 to 10 feet tall. To avoid these taller plantings casting shade on other crops, keep these in one rotation on the northeastern side of the garden.

Garden Planning Chart

Stagger Plantings for Better Control Even in the smallest garden, an important technique for keeping the work manageable is to plant in dribs and drabs: Plant a little lettuce seed now and a little more two weeks later. Though you’ll want to plant some crops all at one time — like peppers or tomatoes — planting small batches of many crops is a good garden habit to cultivate. Whatever size garden you tend, you’ll find that staggering the planting spreads out the harvest, and much of the attention that plants need in between, too. Instead of having a 20-foot-long row of lettuce or beets to thin on a given day, you’ll have only a foot or two of seedlings to thin. Cover with plastic soil that’s not yet planted to help it warm up, or cover it with grass clippings to keep it moist and suppress weeds. Or let the weeds germinate as a short-term cover crop and then slice them off before you plant your seeds.

The plate looked like five-star quality. Mushroom sauce trailed artfully over a thick, juicy steak. The baked potato should have been on the cover of a magazine. The crisp, golden skin split to allow a perfect square of rich yellow butter to melt into the fluffy mash with a sprinkling of fresh chives over top. The herbs had been clipped just this morning from the garden Paul maintained in his backyard. The salad balanced in such a perfect tower that Alex wasn’t sure she’d get it to the table without having it topple over. A crystal wine glass filled with jewel-toned red wine completed the meal.

move your container easily.

Maybe I could pick a few rosebuds to put on the tables in my restaurant, Rattles thought. He was just puzzling over how to do that, when he heard a small child scream, “Mom, Dad, there’s a rattlesnake in the garden!” The little boy’s parents, who owned the house and the backyard, came running. Rattles dove for cover, but not soon enough. “I can’t believe it!” cried the boy’s father. “We’ve lived here five years, and I never knew there was a rattlesnake in the garden!

Wiggly Worm lived in a backyard garden with his best friends, Snarky Snail, Rattles Snake, and Munchy Mosquito. As much as he loved wiggling around in the mud, Wiggly often wondered what it would be like to live in a town. Wiggly and his friends knew all about towns because they liked to listen to the kids who played in the backyard. The kids were always talking about how they had done this or that, or gone here or there, downtown. Wiggly knew that towns had parks and stores and restaurants and bakeries and places to get sweet treats. That sounded wonderful to him! “All we have here is plants,” he said to his friends. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had all kinds of special places to go, like the kids always talk about?” “I’d like that,” said Rattles. “Imagine a five-star restaurant where we could eat tasty little insects all day long. Except for mosquitoes, of course!” he added, glancing quickly at Munchy.

America was a segregated workforce, and in many cases, that segregation contained a cultural element. A great many of our instructors were first-generation immigrants. These were the people who knew how to take care of themselves, how to survive on very little and work with what they had. These were the people who tended small gardens in their backyards, who repaired their own homes, who kept their appliances running for as long as mechanically possible. It was crucial that these people teach the rest of us to break from our comfortable, disposable consumer lifestyle even though their labor had allowed us to maintain that lifestyle in the first place. Yes, there was racism, but there was also classism. You’re a high-powered corporate attorney. You’ve spent most of your life reviewing contracts, brokering deals, talking on the phone. That’s what you’re good at, that’s what made you rich and what allowed you to hire a plumber to fix your toilet, which allowed you to keep talking on the phone. The more work you do, the more money you make, the more peons you hire to free you up to make more money. That’s the way the world works. But one day it doesn’t.

There was no excess in their gardens because they shared everything. There was no trash or garbage in their homes because they had a use for everything. They took responsibility for their lives and for whatever, whoever else needed them. The absence of common sense irritated but did not surprise them. Laziness was more than intolerable to them; it was inhuman. Whether you were in the field, the house, your own backyard, you had to be busy. Sleep was not for dreaming; it was for gathering strength for the coming day. Conversation was accompanied by tasks: ironing, peeling, shucking, sorting, sewing, mending, washing, or nursing. You couldn’t learn age, but adulthood was there for all. Mourning was helpful but God was better and they did not want to meet their Maker and have to explain a wasteful life. They knew He would ask each of them one question: “What have you done?

Dodge Caravan three weeks ago, out in Pittsfield.’ Pittsfield, she thought, right across the state border from Albany. Where a woman vanished just last month. She stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, her pulse starting to hammer. ‘Where’s that van now?’ ‘Our team sat tight and didn’t follow it. By the time they heard back about the plates, it was gone. It hasn’t come back.’ ‘Let’s change out that car and move it to a parallel street. Bring in a second team to watch the house. If the van comes by again, we can do a leapfrog tail. Two cars, taking turns.’ ‘Right, I’m headed over there now.’ She hung up. Turned to look into the interview room where Charles Cassell was still sitting at the table, his head bowed. Is that love or obsession I’m looking at? she wondered. Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference. Twenty-eight DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Rizzoli cruised up Dedham Parkway. She spotted Frost’s car and pulled up behind him. Climbed out of her car and slid into his passenger seat. ‘And?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Not a damn thing.’ ‘Shit. It’s been over an hour. Did we scare him off?’ ‘There’s still a chance it wasn’t Lank.’ ‘White van, stolen plates from Pittsfield?’ ‘Well, it didn’t hang around. And it hasn’t been back.’ ‘When’s the last time Van Gates left the house?’ ‘He and the wife went grocery shopping around noon. They’ve been home ever since.’ ‘Let’s cruise by. I want to take a look.’ Frost drove past the house, moving slowly enough for her to get a good long gander at Tara-on-Sprague-Street. They passed the surveillance team, parked at the other end of the block, then turned the corner and pulled over. Rizzoli said: ‘Are you sure they’re home?’ ‘Team hasn’t seen either one of them leave since noon.’ ‘That house looked awfully dark to me.’ They sat there for a few minutes, as dusk deepened. As Rizzoli’s uneasiness grew. She’d seen no lights on. Were both husband and wife asleep? Had they slipped out without the surveillance team seeing them? What was that van doing in this neighborhood? She looked at Frost. ‘That’s it. I’m not going to wait any longer. Let’s pay a visit.’ Frost circled back to the house and parked. They rang the bell, knocked on the door. No one answered. Rizzoli stepped off the porch, backed up the walkway, and gazed up at the southern plantation facade with its priapic white columns. No lights were on upstairs, either. The van, she thought. It was here for a reason. Frost said, ‘What do you think?’ Rizzoli could feel her heart starting to punch, could feel prickles of unease. She cocked her head, and Frost got the message: We’re going around back. She circled to the side yard and swung open a gate. Saw just a narrow brick walkway, abutted by a fence. No room for a garden, and barely room for the two trash cans sitting there. She stepped through the gate. They had no warrant, but something was wrong here, something that was making her hands tingle, the same hands that had been scarred by Warren Hoyt’s blade. A monster leaves his mark on your flesh, on your instincts. Forever after, you can feel it when another one passes by. With Frost right behind her, she moved past dark windows and a central air-conditioning unit that blew warm air against her chilled flesh. Quiet, quiet. They were trespassing now, but all she wanted was a peek in the windows, a look in the back door. She rounded the corner and found a small backyard, enclosed by a fence. The rear gate was open. She crossed the yard to that gate and looked into the alley beyond it. No one there. She started toward the house and was almost at the back door when she noticed it was ajar. She and Frost exchanged a look. Both their weapons came out. It had happened so quickly, so automatically, that she did not even remember having drawn hers. Frost gave the back door a push, and it swung

Block has been writing unofficial Minecraft-inspired fanfiction since 2015 and is the author of over 100 books and collections. His most popular books are the Diary of a Surfer Villager (where Jimmy and his friends go on adventures), the Ballad of Winston the Wandering Trader, and Baby Zeke: Diary of a Chicken Jockey. When he’s not writing books or playing video games, Dr. Block likes to spend his time surfing near his house, gardening in his backyard, and spending time with his wife and two teenage children. Although Dr. Block is not

What if I had made different choices from the start? What if I had stuck around to watch another year of seasons spin here in Oxford, staying to see the daffodils bloom or to wander beneath the privet tunnel hand in hand with Fisher? What if we had kept right on kissing until the naked ladies emerged near the Osage orange? What if I had lingered long enough to see cape jasmine arrive, her voluptuous white bundles an aromatic call for summer love? Or even longer, when the spider lilies burst open in the fall and the yellow autumn light fell low among mossy roots? What if I had stayed through winter, forming snow angels with my lover beneath the icy cedar boughs? What if I had not let fear defeat me after Fisher knelt before me in my mother's backyard garden, ring in his hand and happy-ever-after in his heart?

NOTHING HAPPENED. And everything did. Your whole life you can be told something is wrong and so you believe it. Why should you question it? But then slowly seeds are planted inside of you, one by one, by a touch or a look or a day skateboarding in a park, and they start to unfurl uncurl little green shoots and they start to burst out of old hulls shells and they start to sprout. And pretty soon there are so many of them. They are named Love and Trust and Kindness and Joy and Desire and Wonder and Spirit and Soulmate. They grow into a garden so dense and thick that it starts to invade your brain where the old things you were once told are dying. By the time this garden reaches your brain the old things are dead. They make no sense. The logic of the seeds sprouted inside of you is the only real thing. That was what happened to us, wasn’t it? It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn’t it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn’t playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules.

his simple life living in a backyard garden with his best friends Wiggly Worm, Munchy Mosquito, and Snarky Snail. For as

At the house in Montclair, Daisy's mother had a quarter-acre patch in the backyard where she grew vegetables and flowers. From spring through summer and into the early fall, that was where she spent most of her free time, tilling the soil, planting and weeding and watering, hand-pollinating eggplants with a tiny paintbrush, or sprinkling ground-up bone meal on her roses and zinnias, to keep the ants away. Daisy would help her to put up the vegetables she'd harvested, turning cucumbers into pickles and tomatoes into marinara sauce.

even if you seem like the only one in all of North America who uses more natives than aliens, wildlife will be better off for your efforts.

In the United States, the story of DST is rather ridiculous, influenced by that especially American blend of wartime morality and blatant commercial interest. In the surprisingly hilarious book Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, Michael Downing writes that soon after the United States adopted DST in March 1918, “the lofty humanitarian goals of Daylight Saving—to get working girls safely home before dark, to reunite dads and moms with the kids before shadows fell on the backyard garden, to safeguard the physical and mental health of industrial workers by increasing their daily opportunity for sports and recreation—also resembled an innovative strategy for boosting retail sales.

This is crazy!” I went on. “Think about what you’re doing! What about your rose garden? What about the gate you and Beverly put in between our backyards? What about the dent in Tommy’s door from when I threw that shoe at him? What about the growth-chart lines on the kitchen doorway? What about the crepe myrtle you planted in the spot where we buried Bailey?” my voice had ratcheted up a bit. The tears started to spill over. “Mom!” I was pleading now. “You can’t do this! You will always regret it.

Having plowed through all three channel's news crews, it was no surprise that Dmitri called moments later. Jane winced at her phone's screen and glanced toward Mark's cameraman to verify that Dmitri was probably watching her as well. "Hm?" Jane tried for innocent sounding. "What are you doing?" Dmitri asked totally deadpan. "Omniscient," Hal sang quietly. Jane snorted. Nothing supernatural about Dmitri's ability when half the time they were beaming straight to the studio, just in case Hal managed to blow up the entire neighborhood.

Mother Superior of the Sisters of Mercy herself was lying in wait for Jane at the foyer. "You have to keep in mind we only can restock our supplies once a month. Frankly, it always stresses our supplies of medications when Mr. Rogers is having a streak of bad luck. With fighting breaking out right and left..." "Mother Superior, this is Nigel Reid. Nigel, Mother Superior is head of the nuns that oversee this hospital. Anyone attacked by a monster is brought here to be treated." Which of course was all that took. TV hosts were kind of like napalm. You threw them at any major infestation and they cleaned out the area of all hostiles. Nigel lit up as if introduced to Santa Claus. "Oh, how simply wonderful to meet you!" Taggart caught what she had done and his eyes glittered with his smile. "That was pure evil." "Judicial use of resources is always appropriate.

You’re the group my agent told me about. Let’s talk out back.” She leads them through the house, the two women swarmed upon by seven dogs and ten cats. They exit to the backyard garden and pool where Lana’s daughter,

He finally managed to pull his foot out of his boot, fell free, and opened his parachute a few thousand feet from the ground. He landed in the backyard of a suburban cottage, in the middle of the owner’s prized rose garden. Rushing out of the house, the owner proceeded to give the dazed young Pole a mild lecture about the importance of not trespassing on private property. But the English passion for privacy soon gave way to English cordiality: the man took Pisarek into his house and brewed him a pot of tea.

The strangle vine is a dangerous plant to deal with as it’s a master of disguise. It can produce up to five different types of foliage, depending on the type of anchor it attaches itself to. It makes safely identifying this plant very tricky. Thus, it's best to investigate any possible outbreak with weapon in hand. Some people like a machete. Others: an axe. Personally, I like a flamethrower." He whipped up the wand and gave his signature evil laugh. The cackle inspired the rumors that he had accidentally killed someone on his previous show and thus his backslide to obscurity. She'd seen the videos. The only thing he'd killed was the ratings; he'd been bored silly doing curbside appeal remodels and it showed.