For years I’ve relied on the professionals to start my plants from seed, buying them whenever they’d reached the fledgling stage. But this is very limiting. There are all these intriguing heirlooms out there, just waiting to be discovered by the adventurous gardener, but the problem is, you aren’t going to find them at most local nurseries. I mean, when was the last time you picked up a six-pack of “Aunt Ruby’s German Green” or “Radiator Charlie’s Mortgage Lifter” at Home Depot?

by Beth Goulart

I like to read cookbooks before bed. These days, The Taste of Country Cooking by the late guru of southern cooking, Edna Lewis, graces my bedside table – and I’m loving every sentence.

Lewis came of age during the Great Depression, growing up in a small agrarian community founded by freed slaves in Virginia. Her childhood, as she recalls it, was simple but joy-filled. Joy fills the pages of her book in even the most unexpected places, like this one, in the introduction to her chapter called "Spring":

Another pleasure was following the plough. I loved walking barefoot behind my father in the newly ploughed furrow, carefully putting one foot down before the other and pressing it into the warm, ploughed earth, so comforting to the soles of my feet.