No Chickens, No Sheep, but

May I use your needlepoint farm on the cover of my new poultry cookbook? she asked. 

This was in 1985. The author, Mitzi Ayala, was a Harvard graduate and ricer grower from California, hostess of “Mitzi’s Country Magazine” TV program, speaker, columnist, and author of several Prairie Farmer cookbooks.

There’s not one chicken in my 1976 needlepoint farm, but her book was published by Wallace-Homestead Book Company, which had Iowa connections. I was credited for the “original needlepoint design.”

I don’t know how the author or publisher learned about the needlework farm back then, but the internet has enabled connections which would be impossible otherwise.

Lamb’s Ears Poem

I’d forgotten about this until recently being asked by a garden newsletter editor in Texas if she could include one of my poems. She’d planned to feature a plant she’d come across while visiting Mount Vernon, and ran into my poem while googling Lamb’s Ears and wanted to know the backstory.

Ivy Summerfield’s delightful Plant of the Month story about Lamb’s Ears is in October 2024 issue of The Root, the Denton County Master Gardener Association publication, pages 7 and 8. (Please click on the link to access the entire handsome issue.)

I also learned a lot about this humble plant. And unexpected connections the internet makes possible.