Author: Cameron Brooks

White Calla Lily, Zantedeschia aethiopica

Mr. calla lily lives in the shadow of a cemetery in Valparaiso, Chile.  His name comes from an Italian botanist, Giovanni Zantedeschia.

A group of artists tend this garden on the southwestern  side of the cemetery.  Beyond the lily grows an avocado, or “palta” plant.  A sculpture dries in the sun.

Valparaiso, Chile

Mentor and Apprentice

Much of the work here involves restoration of marble headstones and statues.

After exploring the graves, we discovered a stairway leading under the cemetery.

A Friendly Host

The cavernous, open-air studio consists of subsections for a variety of creative trades, from sculpture restoration, to mosaics.

Random curiosities like this mummified cat greet visitors.

Mummified Cat Biting a Dwarf

Valparaiso’s labyrinthian escaleras are an endless canvas for local artists.

Dogs and Cat

Graffiti Porteño, Valparaiso

Rickety funiculars cut the time it takes to scale Valparaiso’s steep hills.

The old funiculars are loud and rickety, yet strangely comfortable and familiar.  Listen to audio within a Valparaiso funicular on its way down:

Sea Grape, Coccoloba uvifera

Vegan Sea Grape Jelly Recipe, by Cara Reynolds

2 to 3 quarts of sea grapes

8 cups fruit juice from sea grapes

8 1/2 cups sugar

1/3 cup lime juice

Select ripe and partly ripe sea grapes. Wash and place in large pot, add water to not quite cover the fruit. Bring to a boil and soak until tender. Squeeze juice out by hand or strain through jelly bag, then measure juice.

To each 8 cups of juice obtained, add 8 1/2 cups sugar and 1/3 cup lime juice.

Cook to 225 degrees, which will take about 27 minutes. When it reaches the jelly stage, skim and pour into sterile jars and seal. Makes eight 1/2 pound jars.

A year ago I met Señor Alvarado a few blocks from this plant. Continue reading →

Strawberry Bush, Euonymus americanus

This plant is known as “hearts-a-burstin'” down south.  Here’s a quote from “Good Houses,” by Athens singer-songwriter Madeline:

Good endless surprises.
Good reasons for waking.
Good friends are good family
with hearts over flowing
from kindness from strangers.
The will to survive. Continue reading →

American Beech, Fagus grandifolia

Two Yellow Leaves

by Erinn Batykefer

October has slicked the mirror-flat rivers with yellow

leaves.  We pull them from the current

and mark time: the color of my infant skin under a bili light;

a dozen July apples carried to the kitchen

in your shirt, their yellow sugar slick on a serrated knife.

I see the high sun snapping against sheets on the line,

my hipbones pressing out and opening late one summer,

the yellow outline of bone under skin.

I see here: the 16th Street Bridge flinging skeins of yellow iron

over the flood-ochered Allegheny, this morning’s diner-

on an edge of light as blinding autumn flutters

through the poplars’ paper-coin leaves.  My leaf-shaped heart

welling up through the river, yellow.