Plant Blindness
“Attention,” wrote the late poet Mary Oliver, “is the beginning of devotion.”
She meant that – in these easily distractable modern times – it’s all too easy not to notice …
About Becky Rupp
Vermont’s Becky Rupp has been a valuable mainstay of the magazine for decades, contributing her insightful perspectives about gardening, science, and life. Becky’s work has appeared in over 100 GreenPrints issues!
Articles by Becky Rupp
Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening
A few weeks ago, in a burst of ambition and historical culture, Randy and I took the kids on a week-long vacation to Washington, D.C. We had a high old …
Forget Chocolate Think Celery
Valentine’s Day, it turns out, owes a lot to Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th-century author of The Canterbury Tales. It was Geoffrey who pointed out – in a 1375 poem titled …
Reading in the Garden
I read my first garden book surreptitiously, at the age of nine, at Girl Scout camp. Girl Scout camp, from my point of view, was not the happy and team-spirited …
A Long Winter’s Nap
It’s December, the month that features Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Pearl Harbor Day, as well as such lesser under-appreciated holidays as National Sock Day, National Llama Day, World Pear Day, …
Bomb-Sniffing Spinach, Nickel-Mining Cabbage, and Vegetable Lambs
While plants – the common garden variety, the stuff of everybody’s backyards – are universally loved, we’ve also got a soft spot for the outlandish. …
Tomatoes. Good for What Ails You?
There’s a long history of helpful medicinals from plants. Just for starters, we’ve got aspirin from willow bark, digitalis from foxgloves, quinine from the cinchona tree; and codeine from opium …
Not Bad Apples
Apples have a bad reputation dating back to the Book of Genesis. And we’re never going to let them forget about it, either, since we’ve immortalized their part in the …
