Spicy Watercress Salad by Brian Ricci When I was a child, my mother would bring home bags upon bags of watercress each spring. They were gifts from one of her colleagues who cultivated watercress in his garden at home. Mom would gently rinse it and then clip the long tendrils, discarding the thicker, more fibrous
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Refugees Take Root by Lan Dinh Growing up on the 4700 block of Sansom Street, an area where many Southeast Asian refugees were initially resettled, I still remember the food oasis in our 5-by-5 back porch. Beautiful, big, fuzzy leaves crawled up every vertical inch of available gate, pole or fencing. My parents were skilled
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Made in the Shade by Laura Everard “I can’t grow anything because my garden is too shady.” If I had a dollar for the number of times people told me this, I would have enough money to buy all of the plants they would need to revamp their shade garden! Just because you aren’t living
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Illustration by Jameela Wahlgren Stop Confusing Energy with Electricity by Jerry Silberman Question: Can we run our entire society on solar energy?The Right Question: Which kind of solar energy would you like? Right now, more than 90 percent of all of our energy needs are powered by the sun, so we can answer the first
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Tiny Farm to Tiny Table by Grid Staff School cafeterias of old are notorious for mushy veggies and fried mystery meats, but students at Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood hope to promote healthful lunch hours with a new year-round food-growing program. Students from nursery school through fifth grade are taught the significance of healthy eating
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Photos and illustrations by Marika Mirren How Does Your Garden Grow? by Brion Shreffler Turning the corner of South 10th and Christian streets in Philadelphia, heading north into the Bella Vista neighborhood, a newcomer out on a jog might be caught off guard by the fiercely squawking green parrot taking umbrage at their swift passage.
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Ice Storm by Heather Shayne Blakeslee In 1912, Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo made a gift of 3,000 cherry trees to Washington, D.C., as a sign of the close relationship between Japan and the United States. For centuries, the Japanese have revered the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms, which bloom in early spring and
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Illustration by Marika Mirren The Everyday Activist essay by Derek Dorsey I work in the music industry. I’ve booked thousands of shows and promoted scores of festivals—and have spent an untold number of late nights watching everything from folk to hip-hop. Outside my home in Kensington, the sound of children playing down the street has
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Illustration by Corey Brickley Goodbye to All That interview by Heather Shayne Blakeslee According to landscape planners Claudia West and Thomas Rainer, we should all be saying “goodbye to the real estate industry, good taste, designers’ egos, eco-evangelism and the horticulture industry.” Their book, “Planting in a Post-Wild World,” is a joyous ode to the
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Photos courtesy of Philadelphia Environmental Film Festival Reel to Real by Nancy Chen Last year was, again, the hottest year on record. And yet, at a moment when environmental concerns at home and around the world seem to be mounting, President Donald Trump is following up on his campaign promises to repeal environmental regulations and
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