Last July in Phoenix, I carried a bouquet of garden zinnias from the yard to the kitchen counter. It was 108°F outside. By the time I found a vase, the petals had already started to droop. Anyone who lives in Arizona, Texas, Florida, or the Southern California inland valleys knows the feeling: flowers that should…
Every July, I watch the same scene play out in neighborhoods across the American West and South. Lawns turn the color of toast, hydrangeas wilt by noon, and gardeners drag hoses around at dusk trying to keep everything alive. Meanwhile, a patch of lavender, a clump of gaura and a few silvery santolina plants nearby…
Ask ten people to picture the “lily of the field” from the Sermon on the Mount and most will describe a white Easter lily. Botanists who have walked the hillsides of Galilee tend to describe something else entirely. The flowers of the Bible are a good example of how translation, tradition and field botany can…
Walk a limestone terrace west of Jerusalem in late January and you might think nothing is happening. The ground is wet and gray, the pines are dark, and the stone walls look bare. Then you crouch down. A cyclamen leaf with silver marbling sits in a crack in the rock. A few steps on, a…