December Field Notes — What the Garden Is Doing While You're Not Looking
December is the right month to think about the garden as a whole — not the individual plant decisions, which are best made in the season, but the larger structural questions.
Protecting Your Peace Through the Holidays
It requires saying no to things that are nice but not essential, and saying no early enough that it's a decision rather than a cancellation.
Decorating for the Holidays with Botanicals — No Plastic, Nothing from a Box
What we reach for in December, unconsciously, is green and living, because everything else has gone brown and dormant and the living green is the proof that something endures.
A Traditional Eggnog Made Diary Free
This version starts with a coconut cream and cashew base that produces a genuinely luxurious result, spiced with nutmeg that has been freshly grated.
Cardamom Brown Butter Shortbread with Flaky Salt
The cardamom here is not a subtle presence — it is the point, warm and floral and slightly citrusy, the spice that makes this shortbread taste specifically like December.
On Gratitude Without the Performance
The actual practice of gratitude — the quiet, private act of noticing what is good and letting yourself feel it, without reporting it or optimizing it or turning it into a habit to be tracked.
How to Set a Thanksgiving Table That Looks Nothing Like Pinterest
The aspiration, if there is one for the Thanksgiving table, is not a table that looks like anywhere else.
November Field Notes — The Beauty of the Bare Garden
A garden with beautiful bones looks extraordinary in November in the way that a garden without them never quite does, regardless of how spectacular its June border may be.
Mulled Wine Worth Making
Proper mulled wine is a specific thing: a red wine with enough body to carry warm spices, heated gently to just below a simmer, sweetened with restraint, and served in a thick-walled glass while still steaming.
Braised White Beans with Tuscan kale, Rosemary, and Olive Oil
The kind of dish that requires almost nothing and produces something that tastes like it required everything. Fully plant-based as written.
The Autumn Wardrobe — On Coats, Boots, Color, and the Art of Layering
Layering is the technique that autumn requires and that most people do imprecisely. The principle is simple: each layer should do a specific job and be visible in a way that contributes to the composition.
The Case for Going to Bed Earlier
What actually happens when you begin going to bed earlier in autumn — meaningfully earlier, nine or nine-thirty rather than eleven — is not what most people expect.
How to Decorate for Fall Without a Single Pumpkin
Branches cut from trees in turning color, placed in tall vessels with water, last for a week and are more beautiful than any bought arrangement.
October Field Notes — Putting the Garden to Rest
There is a practice in October: the practice of deliberate incompletion. Of leaving things standing that could be cut down.
The Smoke and Honey — A Mezcal Old Fashioned for October
The Old Fashioned is the most honest cocktail there is — spirit, sweetener, bitters, nothing to hide behind. With mezcal instead of bourbon, it becomes something altogether more autumnal.
Persimmon Brown Butter Upside-Down Cake
Persimmons are one of autumn's most underused gifts — brilliant orange, honey-sweet, with a flavor that sits somewhere between apricot, vanilla, and something entirely its own.