I am working on a piece about the current generation of gardeners (specifically for edibles: fruit and veg) and I would love to hear your stories. When did you begin to garden? Why did you start? Why do you do you continue to do it? Is this your first try? Please comment here and let me know whether you mind being contacted about your gardening stories for possible publication…
Thanks! Natalia
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It was another summer Friday in the neighborhood and that called for another festive cocktail. Riding high on the success of last session’s passionfruit mojitos, I decided to make mango mojitos. The drink itself followed much the same construction, but the mango was decidedly sweeter than the passionfruit, so I decided that it needed a […]
Summer evenings in the neighborhood can be wonderful. Occasionally on a Friday some of us neighbors bring out folding chairs and sit together in one front yard for a bit of happy hour while the kids go mental on someone else’s lawn. It’s pretty much BYO, but we do mix up a pitcher of experimental […]
We spent the better part of last summer in Puerto Rico, and among the tasty things that my little guy fell in love with was tembleque, a jiggly (temblar means to tremble) dessert that falls somewhere between pudding and flan. I promised him we’d make it back in New York, and this weekend, for a […]
When the heat gets tropical, so should the drinks. On a recent trip to the mountains of Puerto Rico, I was inspired by a wonderfully cooling and exotic sangría I had up around and about El Yumque (Caribbean National Forest, the only tropical rainforest in the U.S. Forest Service system) at Noelia’s, recommended to us […]
There are a number of land crab species skittering about Caribbean coastlines. Some are edible and the one we eat most here in Puerto Rico (although I am told they mostly are imported from Venezuela these days) is Cardisoma guanhumi which we call juey and — if you are English-speaking — you might call the […]
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I’m fairly new to gardening and still mostly have the basics in two raised beds in our backyard. This summer’s harvest will be our third year and each summer has had its successes and failures. The primary reason I started gardening was a move to a city in the Pacific Northwest where urban and community gardens are so popular! We bought a house with a decent backyard, and that first summer I planted at least 25 or 30 sunflowers. They were spectacular. The next summer, my thoughts turned to edible produce. Our son had just turned two years old, and when he realized he could pick his own cherry and grape tomatoes and sugar snap peas and eat them straight from the garden, he was hooked! It’s now easy for him to try nearly any veggie that we grow ourselves. He helps me plant, gets his hands dirty, and enjoys the results of his “hard work with Mama”.
I’ve never not gardened (I’m 33). My parents and grandparents just did it, so it’s second nature to me. I had at least some herbs on a windowsill even in college. I continue to do it because I love it – even weeding is cathartic to me. And it’s very important to me that my kids understand where their food comes from, because so many of them don’t.