In Mill Valley, on our sunny side of town, September is tomato time. Those tiny seedlings we planted in the corners of our veggie beds back in May have transformed themselves into a tangled, tentacled jungle of photosynthesizing leaves and stalks. The greenery produced delicate yellow blossoms that grew, as if touched by a sprinkling of fairy dust, into a rainbow of marble-to-baseball-sized red, orange, and yellow fruit. Horticulturists near and far will blanch as I mention the magic behind […]

Do you believe if you put your wishes “out to the universe” you can somehow make them come true? Lately, I’ve been sending out a very specific wish: Bamboo. Let me explain. When we bought our Marin County house in 2008, I discovered a small pile of very old, very weathered bamboo poles strewn in a messy pile along the side of the house. The one- to two-foot-long poles, no doubt the remains of a dismantled decorative garden fence, were […]