Plant Patents: Potted Gold
A variegated redbud won’t make Allen Bush a mint, but if you enjoy growing ‘Alley Cat,’ please buy him a beer. My friend Mike Hayman phoned the day after “The Decision” —the LeBron James’s televised public relations disaster. LeBron and his handlers had spent the…
Read More
Afghan Poppies: Poison, Plow, or Look the Other Way
While national and international leaders haggle over how to handle the opium poppy, Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world’s heroin. 2007 is shaping up as Afghanistan’s biggest year ever for opium poppies. The United Nations has reported that last year production rose almost 50%, and…
Read More
Los Silleteros
Medellin’s flower festival culminates in a parade of flower vendors, the silleteros who once walked in from the mountains. For centuries the cool, bright climate of the Colombian Andes has been flower country. The province of Antioquia prides itself on some of the most robust…
Read More
Avez Vous Vos Muguets
Muguets for May Day France celebrates May Day with anarchy and fragrance from a better world. Baisers to our French readers and to Francophiles everywhere. (Incroyable, there are even some of us in Texas.) Along with protests of globalization and worker holiday parades, May 1st…
Read More