Voices from the Garden, WIOX 91.3 FM, Tues. Nov. 20

November brings the harvest feast of Thanksgiving,  and for this show, we break from literature to chat about edibles, including Heritage Turkeys, root vegetables and sage. My guests are Anthony Margiotta and his wife Marta Weisz who share a home  in Halcott Center, NY. We talk about one of their gardens, a mystical retreat shaded by hemlocks.

Moss Magic: After screening out  the county road in front of their house with hemlock trees, the space was too dark for most plants and too cold for the yoga platform they had constructed, so Tony made a menagerie of moss-clad creatures with wood forms crafted in his workshop, hinging the forms so that their poses could be adjusted. Two mossy creatures now play chess on the wood platform iwth other creatures lounging nearby. The discussion moves to his workshop, where Tony's latest opus, 14 large drawings, depict the story of an evil queen who inhabits the woods and conspires to devour the moon, putting an end to its luminescent light. We talk about the creative process, demons included.

View the website of artist Anthony Margiotta at  http://www.anthony-margiotta.com.

Marta shares her involvement with Writers in the Mountains and reads her poem “The Secrets of Your Grandpa’s Moon.”

"Littany of Thanksgiving for the Word Savory" Poem written and read by Lynn Domina. (prerecorded)

Other references mentioned on the show:

Moss Gardening by George Schenk (Timber Press). Everything you every wanted to know about mosses, including how to grow them, private and public moss gardens, and decorative uses of moss. Mosses are among the oldest living plants with fossil traces going back 400 million years. Today, we moss fans are cheering for the 15,000 varieties spread around the globe, 1200 in North America alone.  

The Sage Garden by Ann Lovejoy (Chronicle Books). The many uses for sage: culinary, medicinal, ceremonial, and ornamental. Sage dressing is popular with turkey. This ancient herb is pretty and easy to grow.

Voices from the Garden, WIOX Community Radio, 91.3 FM
October 16, 2012

Interview with Ken Greene, Hudson Valley Seed Library. http://www.seedlibrary.com

With election time near, I talk about the politics of food and  the battle over labeling genetically modified foods.  References appear below for further reading:

Mother Earth News, Oct.-Nov. issue, p. 13, How to Avoid GM Food.  

NY Times, Food & Drink Issue, Oct. 10, Vote for the Dinner Party, by Michael Pollan.
California's Proposition 37 calls for GM foods to carry a label. If it passes, Pollan expects the debate over GMOs to go national and a new political dynamic to be set in motion. I read an abbreviated version of the article.

Kale, the world's richest leafy green vegetable.

Voices from the Garden

I'm starting this blog to track Voices from the Garden, a radio show that I host on WIOX Community Radio, 91.3 FM. The station is located in Roxbury, NY.

The show is part of the Writers Voice series, which airs live every Tuesday at 1 PM. My show is featured on the third Tuesday of each month. Ann Epner, producer of the Writers Voice series, is also my trusty copilot in the studio.

The show's slogan is "All the bloomin' best in garden prose and poetry."

The first show airs Tuesday, September 21st, 2010.

The theme for each show is based largely on the season and planting cycles, and my selections represent a wide spectrum, from celebrated authors and classics to local writers, some published and some inspired scribblers. Special thanks to Writers in the Mountains for helping me to solicit original writing from the area.

Following is my lineup for the first show:
Morning Garden, a poem by Sally Fairbairn read by Wilma Mazo.

Passion Goes to School, an article about the famous garden designer Gertrude Jekyll written and read by Innes Kasanof. The article was published in Small Honesties, the Quarterly Journal of the North Amercan Cottage Garden Society & The North American Dianthus Society (available at Skene Memorial Library, Fleischmanns, NY).

Potatoes, an essay by Clare Leighton (1935) from The Virago Book of Women Gardeners, an anthology of garden writing published by Virago Press, London, 1995. Read by Annie Hersh.

Barefoot, a poem by Marleen Gagnon, read by Wilma Mazo.

A Veteran's Garden, an essay by James Glaser from Chicken Soup for the Gardener's Soul, Health Communications, Inc. Deerfield Beach, Florida. Read by John Savory.

To Autumn, a poem by John Keats. Critics and scholars consider this Ode to be a perfect poem. Read by John Exter.

Eat My Words! an article about apples by Karin Edmondson from The Guide, published by the Catskill Mountain Foundation, Hunter NY. Read by David Turan.

Apple Picking, an essay by Claudia Jacobson which will appear in the Andes Gazette, September 2010 issue. Read by Wilma Mazo.

The Garden Song, played at bottom of the hour, is by David Mallett. The song has been recorded by John Denver, Pete Seeger, even The Muppets. The version I play is by the artist himself.