Kate Tirion

The idea for the garden began in 1998 when I returned to the community of Patagonia, Arizona. For more than ten years I had been learning about our industrial agricultural system: its dependence on fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides, transport, packaging and more.

Vacant Land in the Heart of Town,Hard-Packed Earth Full of Broken Glass [...]

This morning’s air is fresh at 79 degrees and breezes stir the branches, indicating stronger than normal air movement. Where I write I am protected by a four foot arc-of-a- wall that is about thirty feet long. The wall is akin to an arm draped over shoulders by a sturdy friend, encircling and shielding [...]

It is early June and the weather here is unusual. Typically I would expect temperatures to be in the high range, high 90’s that is, perhaps even into the 100’s. May and June are the months of the hot dry summer and it is heat that brings the monsoon-like rains of our ‘second summer’.
 
Months [...]