My how times have changed. That’s what I keep thinking looking around my own garden in recent years, and I’ve been struck by the same thought over and over as I read “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year,” the latest book by Margaret Renkl that takes us through a year in her garden, 1,000 miles to the south of mine, in Nashville.
The “what happens when” of nature is all shifting in the face of environmental change, and how we each garden has shifted, too—for Margaret Renkl and for me and maybe for you, too, toward more native plants and messier fall cleanup and other contributions we can make to our beloved birds and the rest of natural world that’s increasingly under pressure.
Like many readers, I got to know Margaret Renkl in 2019, upon the publication of her book “Late Migrations.” Since 2017, she has been contributing a popular weekly "Opinion" column to "The New York Times" each Monday, which the newspaper describes as covering “flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South.”
Margaret Renkl and I will be doing a webinar together about her new book and about our gardens on the evening of Nov. 7; I’ll give more information about signing up for that over on awaytogarden.com with the transcript of this show – where you can also enter to win a copy of “A Comfort of Crows,” her latest.
Promises of less work with more garden productivity often raise my suspicions, perhaps sounding too good to be true—except when the subject is no-dig...
Some of the most beautiful and intricate creatures in the garden are not plants at all. A diversity of lichens are showing off right...
