The past few days have provided the Northeast US with the kind of magically perfect weather rarely found elsewhere. Costa Rica has a similar climate from late January to early March, when the vegetation is lush from the previous months of torrential rain, but the air is bone dry and the sun shines hard from an extraordinary blue sky. However, the subtropical sun is fast and high. In the North… Continue reading

For over 100 years, a large oil painting with a medical theme hung in the front of the lobby of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Five generations of staff and students passed the painting without stopping, much less noticing its fine qualities. Year after year, the lobby doors swung open to the street. In the dry winter, people stomped the snow from their shoes on the rubber mat at the… Continue reading

The AABGA (the American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta) recently became the APGA, (the American Public Garden Association). On the surface, this change signifies a greater emphasis on the public role of botanic gardens, and a marginalization of the title “arboretum”. While most of the public will not notice, much less care about these developments, they will also not respond in the way the organization’s leadership hopes, in my… Continue reading

Before becoming glittery mall hang-outs, bookstores varied from city to city and included dusty holes that somehow fit vast collections of used books. As kids, we used to tunnel for hours through these marvelous places. I discovered Out Of The Night by Jan Valtin, Black Lamb, Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, and My Eskimo Friends by Robert Flaherty. The bug bit and, to this day, I browse the few remaining… Continue reading

The Atlantis shuttle astronauts, Jim Reilly and Danny Oliva, will fix the defective heat blanket by using steel thread and a needle, while floating weightlessly 100 miles above the earth. They will use a cross-stitch to patch a peel in the fabric, the same technique their grandmothers used to do embroidery. Astonishing and comforting.

Several old friends still practice “brakeless” driving. They picked it up in late hippiedom during the aftermath… Continue reading

I lived in an old converted turkey coop at boarding school in rural northern Arizona. For a teenager, it provided heavenly solitude. A small bathhouse—serving maybe 25 other boys—sat about two hundred yards away on the opposite bank of an arroyo. My “one man cabin” was the size of about two rows of 3 across coach seating on a 747, at the most. Large canvas awning-like flaps covered screened windows… Continue reading

As our relocation celebrates its first birthday, I’d like to clarify a few points, and celebrate others.

1. With respect to the Heronswood Gardens in Kingston, Washington, I never said to the media that we would “develop condos” on the property. I have said quite the opposite: That the gardens would be preserved.

However, while answering questions from newspaper reporters, I discussed the possibility of a small, innovative, plant care-oriented “botanical retirement… Continue reading