by Paula Panich
I’m afraid this post must be a shameless piece of self-promotion. Forgive me. This is my goddess, M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992) at work in her last kitchen, in Glen Ellen, California. I will be teaching what I hope will be a lively class on Mary Francis (she did write a book with this title, by the […]
Categories: Food
by Paula Panich
Not sentimental about Valentine’s Day. Not, not. But I seem to have accumulated all this pink. And when Bill Linsman saw it, he said: That looks like a blog post. So I thought about the great American landscape architect Fletcher Steele, about what he said about pretty. I read it years ago, but it popped […]
Categories: Place/Gardens
by Paula Panich
Is there no end to the glorious depth of Los Angeles? Apparently not, since last week I met face-to-face with the amazing Shelley Bonus. Writer, teacher, novelist, performer, lover of gardens and landscape, and . . . astronomer! We met for lunch in Santa Monica and I left two hours later a changed woman. Imagine […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking
by Paula Panich
My imagination is always sparked when visiting gardens by that most essential of cultural constructs: the boundaries of daily life — the ideas of inside and outside. Ideas of sides and doors and rooms and thresholds must have been conceptual and linguistic leaps for all peoples of the world. Yet leap we did, ending up […]
Categories: Place/Gardens
by Paula Panich
Reviews of Cultivating Words “The preface to Cultivating Words includes the statement: “Gardeners are among the most generous people on earth.” Paula is referring, of course, to the way gardeners share their plants and expertise with each other. It’s true. And this little book tells how to take that natural generosity and spread it even […]
Categories: Writing/Artmaking • Tags: Cultivating Words, Reviews
by Paula Panich
1. F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby2. Lewis Hyde: The Gift3. Robert Adams: Why People Photograph4. M.F.K. Fisher: The Art of Eating5. Gaston Bachelard: The Poetics of Space6. Aleksandr Afanas’ev: Russian Fairy Tales 7. Mary Austin: Land of Little Rain8. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki: In Praise of Shadows9. Anton Chekhov: About Love and Other Stories10.Alice Munro: Friend […]
Categories: Literary Essays/Book Reviews
by Paula Panich
This is a photo from June 2007 — before the garden’s last revision, in 2009, and before my friend Karen Kukil said, in late July of this year: This is a finished work of art. Thank you, Karen. The house is sold. The deal has closed. We’ve said our goodbyes, the salt from our tears […]
Categories: Place/Gardens
by Paula Panich
We are selling our beloved house in Northampton, Massachusetts. The one we said we would never sell. The one that has entered our hearts and will never leave. That one. I clipped from trees and shrubs this morning, gathered the bits and pieces into this pitcher, snapped the photo while standing on a chair. The […]
Categories: Place/Gardens