Organic lawn care: a matter of definitions, or a moral dilemma?

I’ve got a question for all of you: Can an organic garden service that farms out toxic weed control still call itself organic? Has it sacrificed its integrity, its very soul, or is such language uselessly hyperbolic in such a case?

Let me explain how the question arose. Given the paucity of garden-related businesses that had booths at Bozeman’s poorly-named home and garden show (subject of one of my more acerbic posts), I had time for conversations with the folks staffing all three. Indeed, I swooped down on the two booths for organic gardening services, partly out of sheer delight that they existed, but in part to ask a highly pertinent question: How did they handle bindweed on a residential property?

Bozeman home and garden show: not so much

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A lesson learned: be chary with your guilt

Last year I missed this show. I saw a sign or heard an add, and the next time I turned around, it was over. Immediately, I was stricken with guilt. After all, as a garden blogger, shouldn’t I be running around the country to see garden shows? If I’m not flying to England for the Chelsea show, at least I can attend the local one. But I didn’t. Hence the guilt.

This year, I actually got to the show (thanks to my friend Ellen), and I have to report that last year’s paroxysms were a complete waste of good guilt.

Return of the potato specialist: Abdoulaye of Mali

Clap your hands and cheer: Abdoulaye has returned! Yes, my favorite potato specialist from sub-Saharan Africa is back in town. I know I already posted one photo of him dancing with my mother-in-law, but it seems to me a topic worth revisiting.

In the summer of 2005 my husband told me he'd seen a poster on campus: housing was needed for visiting scientists from Mali; did I want to do it? Sure, I said, (thinking, Mali? Mali? Where the heck is Mali?) The kids concurred, so we signed up. I chose a moment when I was alone in the house to get out the atlas: there was Mali, one country inland from Senegal, in Africa's big bulge into the Atlantic, with the Congo--the Congo River!--curving through its southern half and Timbuktu--Timbuktu!!--up there in the north, just south of the Sahara.

Why I haven’t been posting recently:

That’s Lava Lake, an hour’s drive from my house, and a mere three-mile hike up. I had a campsite at the base of that spit. Wonderful water, fine rocks for warming up afterwards, but no internet access.

Here’s the view from the spit itself:

I have to apologize for the quality of these photos; neither I nor my computer program can match the quality of the subject. I intend to work on both.

These are Montana huckleberries. Such profusion is rare; two or three berries per bush is far more common, so the trick is finding a big patch of bearing bushes. I collected enough for one cobbler and one jar of jam.

It’s tempting to blame it all on husband Steve’s brothers, who visited for a week and who aren’t here to defend themselves, but that would be false, since they left over a week ago. However, since they got me out hiking for the first time this summer, and our hikes that week started me on a roll, I think I will blame them after all. Or thank them, because I really didn’t think my arthritic knees, which have been officially declared a cartilage-free zone, would put up with this sort of activity, but they’re better after each hike. The overnight—actual back-packing!—was a warm-up for a four-day trip up to another stunning lake, Pine Creek, which is a tougher five-mile hike up, including some traverses through high mountain meadows full of wild flowers. I’ll bring back some photos.