Eating for the Cost of Food Stamps

March 27, 2009 North Palm Springs, California Lately I’ve been amazed that so many news programs think it is difficult to eat for the cost of food stamps. Reporters make a big project of it and say they run out of food and have to eat packaged noodles that cost nine cents on sale for [...]

Growing Potatoes in a Garbage Bag

March 24, 2009, North Palm Springs, California About three weeks ago a brochure came in the mail about a book from Rodale Press about Lasagna Gardening. We already knew the methods. They are virtally the same as permaculture, forest gardening, no-work gardening, etc., with some modifications always necessary for where the garden is and other [...]

St. Patrick’s Day has to be a Happy Day!

I went to a dinner in Aqua Caliente Hotel in Desert Hot Springs last night. The dinner was a fund raiser for the groups that have organized themselves to provide input into the debate about how to route The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Green Power Grid so as to minimize its unsettling [...]

Homelessness? Let It Be – 2009 version

Listening to an expose of the philosophy underlying “The Rapture” recently on the Rachel Maddow show I am once more amazed at how we use stories to avoid talking about what is really going on! It reminds me of how, when I was in school in Ireland, the “Great Hunger” was explained in religious terms [...]

If You’re Irish, Come Into the Garden!

Although I don’t want to throw a damper on anyone’s enjoying a Green Beer on the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day, it is sobering to realize that many countries in the world today are still battling against circumstances identical to those which caused the famine in Ireland in 1845. Reliance by the poor on a single [...]

Golf! Not in My Back Yard!

After I quit playing golf, I was amazed to find that neatly trimmed grass fairways still featured in my happier dreams. In them I am usually hitting a brilliant approach shot, and sometimes holing out a long putt on a perfect green to become the champ! I thought that moving to the low desert of [...]

There’s No Way to Blow It

While reading David Wann’s The Zen of Gardening in the High and Arid West I was inspired by its directions to use every opportunity to gather cold weather shelter for seeds from wherever you find them, even when that includes what others have thrown away. While doing that a few months ago we found a [...]