Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Empowering Self-Reliance and Sustainable Living & Microbiomes
Articles about herbs, medicinal plants, traditional plant uses, preparations and the ways plants can support the body and terrain. Many of these plants are grown, harvested or studied directly at Living Ground in Ecuador.
My patio outdoor office and the Project Site is currently a landscape of preparation, drying herbs, working the gardens, jars in their early stages, and piles of herbs and foods (as medicine) being sorted. We are deep in preparation for the Plant & Kitchen Alchemy workshop, November 8–14, and I …
September 23, 2026 | Living Ground Project, Ecuador Whew! What a marathon. My Plant & Kitchen Alchemy book is finally finished, uploaded to Amazon and waiting to be published. After months of writing, experimenting, editing, illustrating and wrestling with page numbers, indexes, formatting and Amazon’s publishing requirements, I can hardly …
(this is an excerpt from my new upcoming book “Plant & Kitchen Alchemy“) There is alchemy when a green tomato turns red. It may look as though the fruit is simply ripening, yet inside it an entire chemistry is rearranging. The green chlorophyll is disappearing, and the sugars and acids …
This November, from November 8–13, 2026, I will be teaching a new six-day workshop here at Living Ground Project in southern Ecuador called Plant & Kitchen Alchemy: Food, Medicine & Microbes. It brings together many of the threads that have been part of my work for years: soil, compost, plants, …
Aloe vera, celebrated as the “plant of immortality,” is a remarkable succulent renowned for its extraordinary healing properties and its robust ability to survive in tough conditions. Thriving in arid, nutrient-deficient soils, Aloe vera has captured the fascination of many cultures throughout history with its rejuvenating and therapeutic potential. The …
What We Notice, and What the Soil Is Actually Doing There is a moment on land that comes before explanation, before theory, before formal science, when something shifts and you feel it. If you watch how your gardens grow, you begin to see things and how plants seem to respond …
There is a plant I was recently introduced too, Laritaco. In botanical language it is known as Vernonanthura patens. It is a shrub with narrow leaves and clusters of soft purple flowers, often growing along roadsides, abandoned fields, and the edges of regenerating forest. When I first heard about Laritaco, …
I have been working on a small book about flower essences. It feels natural for me to say that because so much of what I do already circles around plants and medicine. I love making natural remedies. I love watching how plants work with the body. I have always had …
I had never even heard of the curry tree before coming to Ecuador. Now I cannot imagine this place without her. She is one of the most beautiful small trees in the garden, graceful and decorative, with glossy green leaves that seem to shimmer in the light. Birds adore her. …
When I started to really understand microbiology, I quietly moved many of the strong germ-fighting herbs and foods out of my apothecary. I had become uncomfortable with the idea that health meant constantly trying to destroy microorganisms. Those tools began to feel like blunt instruments that did not particularly care …