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    Socrates' Friend Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    Much as I love to grow rosy-cheeked apples and long stripes of pale green butter lettuce, I equally welcome the presence of poisonous weeds and flowers in the garden. No paradise is complete without the murmur of these dark sorcerers from beyond the fringe: snakeroot and henbane, monkshood and deadly nightshade. Chief among the poisonous plants I respect is Conium maculatum, or poison hemlock, also known as the executioner of kings and philosophers, or “Socrates’ friend,” for the swift and fatal hemlock dose the Greek philosopher was condemned to drink by his political enemies around 400 B.C.E. More »
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    Seeds of Plenty Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    Almost fifteen years ago, at our annual gathering of ecological farmers, I received a bulging handful of Rainbow Inca flint corn from my gardening sister, Dru Rivers of Full Belly Farm. “Plant this corn,” she urged me, “and save some seed to share with new farmers next year.” The beauty of this heritage corn captured me from the first with its dense rows of russet gold, steel blue, and burnt orange kernels wrapped under dark burgundy and pale dun husks. When we ground the corn at harvest time, it yielded a soft mound of lavender-hued meal that we added to our Thanksgiving bread. Best of all, Rainbow Inca corn was generous; even after the first growing season we returned to the Eco-Farm gathering with plenty of seed to share. More »
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    Pea Pod Practice Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    At Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, I worked in the garden with a woman about ten years older than me and a very serious Zen student. Marga was an ordained priest who wasn’t thrilled about being assigned to work in the garden with a brand-new Zen student as her supervisor, and I was always a little tentative around her. She was formidable and ruthlessly methodical. Whenever she questioned my stammered directions, she would raise both eyebrows at me, slowly, like a heavy velvet curtain rising on a performance of Waiting for Godot. But Marga believed in the dignity of real work, so she followed my directions efficiently and energetically. More »
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    Roots Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    Whatever you have to say, leavethe roots on, let themdangleAnd the dirtjust to make clearWhere they come from. —Charles Olsen Winter rain, falling for ten thousand years. I celebrate Groundhog Day on my hands and knees in the muddy sludge of the February garden, grubbing out the tangled roots of Michaelmas asters in the rain. Although it is best not to dig in heavy rain, I have no choice. The asters must be lifted and divided before they leaf out so that they have time to become established in the summer garden. Already spring has begun to slit open the primeval eyelid leaves of the flowers; they reveal their first pale green retinas of light, winking against the dark soil of the garden. More »
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    Agaja's Spade Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    I have a new spade this winter, heavy, a little stiff, and very sharp. As I work digging a fresh bed for Bleu de Solaize leeks, I think of my friend Agaja’s twenty-year-old spade. Agaja is a friend and a great gardener. Over the years we have dug in tandem, shoulder to shoulder, many a lofty bed of Zen vegetables. Agaja’s spade was fashioned by the Bulldog Tool Company in England, with a solid steel shank and a gleaming digging blade a foot long. Agaja sanded the ash-wood handle clean and painted it morning-glory purple. After more than two decades of digging, the foot-long blade of Agaja’s spade is now seven and a half inches in length and reduced daily by every new bed she digs. It leaves a trail of glorious, well-lifted soil in its wake, soil pulsing with life and laced throughout with fine metal filings from Agaja’s diminishing spade. More »
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    No Trace Paid Member

    By Wendy Johnson
    A few miles north of Green Gulch Farm is Muir Woods National Monument, a pristine stand of old-growth redwoods. Lately, I’m there a lot helping to pickax open the seized soil in Bohemian Grove so that broad-rooted native grasses can reclaim the tight ground. For the last five years, it’s been my civic duty to volunteer in the woods and work on the compacted ground where a giant Buddha was once constructed. More »