Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • In God’s Own Country

    Last winter, I visited ‘God’s Own Country’, as the state of Kerala in India proudly and rightfully proclaims itself. A chili-shaped state on the west coast of peninsular India, it is blessed with salubrious tropical climate and an abundance of natural beauty – hills, beaches, forests, backwaters. All this bounty has led to a region…

  • Welcome 2014!

    The first weekend of 2014 has been a productive one. I pruned half of my more than forty rose bushes, and got badly scratched up and bloody in the process, prepared and planted one of my four 4 ft X 4 ft raised vegetable beds, weeded my flower beds and thinned out self-sown seedlings, and along…

  • Week Three: Frost and the Guava Tree

    Weather.com predicts frost tonight for all of the San Francisco Bay Area. When I checked on the garden this morning, some of my less hardy plants were showing signs of distress already from the cold: the leaves of the magnificent Charles Grimaldi brugmansia were droopy; its pendulous, trumpet-shaped flowers collapsing inwards, as if huddling for…

  • A Lot of Rot

    With Thanksgiving sales offered by nearly every one of the online gardening retailers I shop from, it was simply too hard not to give in to the siren song of “Discount”. Of course, I know now (having tested it successfully on myself countless times) that a “discount” is only something to lure you into purchasing considerably more…

  • Week Two, Woo Hoo!

Got any book recommendations?