Rusty Ring

Like a lot of old people, I've come to find myself adrift at Christmas. Family mostly gone. Friends busy with their own. I nev...

(A point I've made before .) Appearing also on My Corner of the World .

( Polypodium glycyrrhiza . Common fern of the North Pacific Coast, usually spotted as an epiphyte of broadleaf trees. When growing on a...

(When you housesit in the States, you sometimes have to exercise creativity.) Appearing also on My Corner of the World .

winter rain time to unseal the new tea Issa (Photo courtesy of Unsplash.com and a generous photographer .)

Here are a three easy tricks to spruce up your workaday winter tea for the season: Oranges are an ancient part of the holidays, o...

Last week I was down to the tea bog I've frequented for 50 years, and while there, under dark wet skies, I snapped a few (not very ...

Here's a seasonal blessing worth knowing. The recipe is as simple as they come: you pour boiling water over elderberries , which s...

This is Lobaria , either oregana or pulmonaria . (Probably the latter.) Common lichen of the North Coast, it completely sheaths ...

Inexplicably growing in a field A great blessing of summer is the bounty of wild mint that appears during this season in most parts o...

"First you get mad, then you go crazy, and when you combine the two, you've gone mad." Eddie Joe Cotton (Photograph ...

(A friend recently gave me this fine tea. To make it, the Chinese pack specially-fermented green leaves into a tangerine rind and let t...

Tea is an integral part of Zen practice, and, for those of us with old-school British or Japanese roots, life. It can also become an att...

(A sesshin schedule template is available in Part I . For general tips on sesshin planning, see Part II .) For an activity that...

Though delicious, Fucus (FYOO-kuss) has a marketing problem. The genus sounds like some kind of fungal disease; its common names – roc...

(Pot o' rice , fresh pat of hermit bread , a whistling tea kettle -- why envy the immortal gods?)

( Monarda [bee balm]; aside from being beautiful, it also makes good tea.)

(Because sometimes you just feel English.)

Last Christmas I shared my Perfect Chai , for the greater enlightenment of all sentient beings. But I left them hungry. So this year, I ...

Scalding days here on the North Coast put me in mind of a great simple delicacy, the sublime sunshine tea. Nothing beats this stuff on a ...