How do you maintain your ecological witswhen Mother Nature turns on you? We returned home after a couple of weeks traveling and Félix reported everything was fine, except for a not-so-minor detail: Our ranch is under attack by an overnight blitzkrieg of thousands, hundreds of thousands—millions for I all know—of chapulines or grasshoppers.I went out this …
Tag: organic gardening
A lousy spring for impatient pessimists
If my first and middle names reflected my gardening instincts they would be Impatient—how long do these damn seeds take to pop out of the dirt?—and Pessimist—alright, so they germinated but probably a late frost, worms, rabbits or the Hand of an Angry God is going to take care of the tender shoots, so let's …
Vegetables in exile
Among the environmentally enlightened one of the newer sects is the "locavores," folks who vow to eat food that is not only grown organically but locally too, usually within 100 miles of the consumer. Proximity to the producers, they believe, reduces the environmental damage caused by diesel trucks and trains schlepping fruits and vegetables over …
Mr. Fungus, Meet Miss Bacteria
The miracle season has started in San Miguel. It's raining almost daily, sometimes in shy, intermittent drizzles or like last night, in hellacious rainstorms, frightening in their intensity and suddenness. Almost overnight, arroyos, culverts and even cracks in the ground that had lain silent for seven or eight months are whooshing and gurgling again, in …
El Rancho Santa Clara 