Travel Makes Kale Interesting and Other Gardening Topics
Season 5, Episode 47, October 4, 2023
On this week’s episode, we talk about late-flowering bulbs, kale, an Italian cookbook, and more. But, first, let’s play favorites and take a look at Carol’s wheelbarrow full of Premium Sun Coral Coleus, an All-America Selection. Mine is unfortunately buried under a giant ‘Maui Gold’ elephant ear.
My favorite this week was my Armenian cucumbers I grew from seed from Botanical Interests. So easy and rewarding to grow and eat.
Because Carol almost pulled the lever for orange lycoris, we decided to talk about them for our flower topic. We’d never heard of that color. Neither of us bought orange ones, but will you?
Our vegetable this week was inspired by my watching Stanley Tucci’s series, Searching for Italy. That made me think about black kale, also called Tuscan kale and dinosaur kale. All this kale talk made me order 'Black Magic' kale seeds from Eden Bros. Carol also did a bit of research on kale in our favorite vegetable tome, The Chef's Garden by Farmer Lee Jones (Amazon.) If you like to eat vegetables or grow them, it’s worth owning. We both bought it by the way.
On the bookshelf this week is The Tucci Table, by Stanley Tucci and Felicity Blunt (Amazon link) Do you see a theme here? If that’s not enough Tucci for you, here’s his famous Instagram reel where he made a very sexy Negroni for his wife.
Keeping with our Italy theme, our dirt is Infiorate di Spello in Spello, Italy, which are beautiful flower carpets made by the city’s inhabitants for the feast of Corpus Christi.
Our rabbit holes were quite varied. Mine was kale. See above! Carol read The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man by David von Drehle (Amazon) which reminded her of The Happiest Man on Earth: The Beautiful Life of an Auschwitz Survivor by Eddie Jaku (Amazon.) That reminded me of the Netflix series on "Blue Zones," Watch Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones that I really enjoyed. Guess what? Purposeful movement, ahem gardening, is good for you, but you knew that! We then discussed the documentary about Iris Apfel on Amazon Prime. I need to watch it.
A special tip of the trowel to Claire Splan who recommended our podcast in her latest Substack newsletter, Lost in the Weeds. Thank you, Claire. We are happy you enjoy our podcast!
And now for the business-y stuff
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