Festival del Rabano – Radish Festival Last year in December my husband, Brad, and I decided to take a weeklong trip to Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, to visit our Zapotec friend Doña Antonietta. We met Doña Antonietta and her husband Lucio in Ajijic, where they visited and sold their wonderful tapetes, or rugs. Together we […]
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Starting Again November is the month that symbolizes change. Our summer is at an end, the winds blow a bit cooler, the skies are more overcast and we start the month with Dia y Noche de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, one of my favorite Mexican holidays. The Mayans celebrate the Day of the
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Cempasúchil Cempasúchil or Marigolds are a versatile, radiant flower with deep roots in practice in ancient religions: Aztec, Christianity and Hinduism. Marigolds are known as the “Herb of the Sun.” The Welsh believed that if marigolds were not open early in the morning, then a storm was on the way. Marigolds were used in pre-Hispanic
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Rewilding Your Garden What Is Rewilding? Rewilding is the act of restoring an area of land to its natural uncultivated state with the reintroduction of native plants, trees, wild animal species that have been driven out or exterminated, then letting nature take over helping natural processes to occur freely. The intention is one of repairing damaged
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Can Photosynthesis Save The World? If you are looking for the smartest energy source on the planet, then look to plants. They have a cheap, clean and abundant way of creating energy: photosynthesis, which is perhaps the most efficient power supply we know. Plants have perfected the conversion of sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into
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Intuitive Gardening Now that the rains have started and our garden watering chores are lessening, perhaps we could all relax a bit by spending more time watching, listening to, and enjoying our gardens. Let’s start at the ground level with the soil. Soil has been around for hundreds of millions of years. It has figured
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June Is Bustin’Out All Over—Rogers & Hammerstein, Carousel, 1956 Like the title of the song, June is bustin’out all over. We eagerly anticipate our annual rains to start mid-June. We celebrate the Summer Solstice on June 21, 2023. Our gardens are all abuzz with new pollinators busily working, and the plants all seem to have
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May Is Hot And Beautiful I recently attended a friend’s 99th birthday celebration and it was a thing of beauty. Having witnessed almost a century of life on this planet, Lois is still thriving and present and, I believe, will be with us for some time to come. Aside from the fact that she is
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April – Renewal & Rebirth The etymology behind the word “April” comes from the verb “aperire,” which means “to open.” It’s commonly believed that the word refers to the season of trees and flowers beginning to open or bloom. Easter 2023 will be observed on Sunday, April 9. As a child I always felt that
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March 4th (Forth) My dear friend John Holley used to observe each March 4th with gusto. To him this day was a cry to continue moving forward, to never let himself get lackadaisical, to grab every bit of deliciousness from every day and strongly soldier on. John is one of my heroes. His bravura towards
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