Country Life: Rooting Section

TWO hours from my apartment is my house, which is surrounded by stones, hunters, ATVs, artists, herbalists, owls, and plants. To learn about the plants I took a course from an herbalist.

She lives on a hillside on the Kripplebush-Krumville-Samsonville road. There were ten other people in the class, including my wife. We were the only weekenders; I was the only man, and the only gray head. We took off our shoes before entering the meditation room (our parents would have called it the living room; our grandparents, the parlor) and sat cross-legged on pillows. The herbalist passed around a Neolithic pestle, for a speaking stone: about the size of a softball, but oblong, with an indentation for the thumb. Everyone said what she-with that ratio, the pronoun seems appropriate-wanted to learn. He (me) said his life as a homeowner had changed when he started putting dandelions into salads instead of trying vainly to dig them up; I wanted to know what else was out there. Since we had six hours of learning ahead of us, the herbalist asked us not to flush the toilet unnecessarily. Pissing on the lawn was encouraged, since nitrogen is good for the soil. Someone said her kids had a pee spot on their lawn where the grass has died; why was that? Too much of a good thing, in this case fertilizer, is too much. We adjourned to the garden.

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

Featured Tags

TWO hours from my apartment is my house, which is surrounded by stones, hunters, ATVs, artists, herbalists, owls, and plants. To learn about the plants I took a course from an herbalist.

She lives on a hillside on the Kripplebush-Krumville-Samsonville road. There were ten other people in the class, including my wife. We were the only weekenders; I was the only man, and the only gray head. We took off our shoes before entering the meditation room (our parents would have called it the living room; our grandparents, the parlor) and sat cross-legged on pillows. The herbalist passed around a Neolithic pestle, for a speaking stone: about the size of a softball, but oblong, with an indentation for the thumb. Everyone said what she-with that ratio, the pronoun seems appropriate-wanted to learn. He (me) said his life as a homeowner had changed when he started putting dandelions into salads instead of trying vainly to dig them up; I wanted to know what else was out there. Since we had six hours of learning ahead of us, the herbalist asked us not to flush the toilet unnecessarily. Pissing on the lawn was encouraged, since nitrogen is good for the soil. Someone said her kids had a pee spot on their lawn where the grass has died; why was that? Too much of a good thing, in this case fertilizer, is too much. We adjourned to the garden.