pressing plants for craft, or science; herb-roasted tomatoes to freeze |
Hello ,
I saw news of a new book called “Pressed Plants” recently, and it got me thinking about my grandmother and one of the many crafts she enjoyed way back when. Grandma made what she called “pressed-flower pictures,” bits of her garden that she carefully dried, arranged on fabric and framed under glass, some of which still hang
on my walls. It also got me thinking of the 500-year-old tradition of pressing plants for science and the herbarium world.
Whatever the intention, pressed plants were the topic with Linda Lipsen, author of the book “Pressed Plants: Making a
Herbarium.” Linda presses specimens in the name of science as a curator at the University of British Columbia Herbarium in Vancouver (like the Lilium leichtlinii, above). She’s carrying on a method of recording the botanical world this way as humans have for centuries. We talked about what information those centuries of pressings hold for us in today’s world, and how and why we gardeners might want to give pressing plants a try, whether for art or for
science. Plus: Enter for a chance to win a copy of “Pressed Plants.” herb-roasted tomatoes to freeze (for sauce, soup...) How do you stash tomatoes for offseason use? Roast them with herbs, then freeze the resulting goodness, says cookbook author Alana Chernila, for a wildly flavorful, versatile staple of year-round cuisine. In 2008, when I was shifting my life from city-dwelling corporate executive to rural dweller, I met
Alana. We aren’t close in age—she was at that time a mother to two young girls—but I recognized in her right away some common essential elements. Including figuring out the best ways to preserve the garden harvest. Her herb-roasted tomatoes are one outstanding example, from her book “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making.” recap: why 'more plants is always better,' with claudia west Maybe seven or eight years ago, in a
conversation with Landscape Designer Claudia West, she said a sentence that has really stuck with me as she explained her approach to selecting and combining plants. “Plants are the mulch,” Claudia said then about making immersive
landscapes that engage humans as much as they do pollinators and other beneficial wildlife. So it’s tempting to choose the plants we buy for our gardens based on their looks alone. Claudia and her colleague, Thomas Rainer, of Phyto Studio, who are co-authors of the groundbreaking 2015 book “Planting in a Post-Wild World," have tougher criteria for which plants earn a spot in their designs. Claudia and I talked about how the Phyto Studio team figures out
what makes the cut, and more. Plus: Comment for a chance to win a copy of “Planting in a Post-Wild World.” fast, skins-on tomato sauce to freeze It used to spend rainy days in harvest season
writing, and reading, and streaming a bounty of BBC and other British television series such as “Broadchurch” and “Silk”–oh, what would I do without public TV from both sides of the Atlantic? All the while I’d set consecutive small batches of tomato sauce to bubbling on the
stove…destined for the freezer. Even if it doesn’t rain much, or in years when my TV viewing leans to the Australian, the cooking process is the same. Keeping things really simple, my basic freezer red sauce goes like this: |
|
|
