Three Good Books on Low-Maintenance Gardening

Not, I hasten to clarify, the kind of low-maintenance gardening that consists of blanketing everything in a layer of black plastic and piling grey stones on top. That kind of garden is low maintenance because there’s nothing living in it, no growth, and no change. (At least until the weeds arrive. Which they will.)

Rather, these books look at how to create a garden that doesn’t need a lot of intensive and continuing effort on your part, because the plants in it are functioning together the way plants function together in nature, and therefore they can, for the most part, manage just fine without you. Working with nature rather than against it.

A lush permaculture garden backed by a line of row houses.
Continue & Comment

Cheese and the Cerements of Death

“The blackest shadow, of course, is cast by processed ‘cheese’…

two slices of plastic-wrapped processed cheese


“In preparation of this solidified floor wax – often the product of emulsification with sodium citrate, sodium phosphate, or rochelle salts; of steaming and frequently blending odd lots of cheese, of paralysing whatever germs might result either in loss of profit or gain of flavour – every problem but one is solved: that of making cheese.

Continue & Comment