June is National Pollinator Month and hopefully Flagstaff has made it through the last frost of the season so we can start to enjoy the benefit of pollinators in our gardens, both for joy and for higher vegetable yields. At Wild Heart Farm where I live and grow specialty cut flowers we are delighting in the daily drama of our pollinator garden. About a...
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I turned 50 years old this year on April 9. There was nothing I wanted more on this day than to wake up alone in the wilderness. It’s not easy to extract oneself from a life caring for plants, especially as temperatures reach the 80s. Fortunately Beaver Creek Wilderness is just a few miles upstream of the farm. By late afternoon I had finished my...
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In early January I was planting the last of the daffodil bulbs, digging into the cold, not quite frozen earth, when my spade nearly sliced into a hibernating Woodhouse toad. I held the toad’s cold, stony body in my hands to try to detect a heartbeat. He looked vulnerable and yet peaceful. I immediately tucked him in to rest beneath the daffodils until...
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Wintertime, with its lack of light, turns me inward. While my farm sleeps (its more like napping) I can reconnect with my writing practice. The first week of 2021 I retreated with my dearest friend, Karla, who I met while working on Grand Canyon trail crew in 1997. Since then, we have been seeking the truth of our lives through writing, wilderness...
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Last week I called my mom to wish her a happy birthday. In many ways her life is a miracle. The day she was born her mother, Lorena, died in childbirth. They were only able to save her. “I thought about my mother all day,” she tells me over the phone. When I hang up, a wave of grief flows out of me in great sobs. I still feel the loss of...
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