My slow work tool for teaching patient focus and engaging with cycles, rhythms, smells, and textures. I have two mortar and pestles in my kitchen and one in my apothecary. Alchemical uses: grinding whole spices, pulping herbs, mixing, extracting essences for oil blends, and grinding natural pigments for dyes and painting.

When taking a trip, I am not seeking a vacation. For me, traveling has never been guided by leisure, rather an opportunity for discovery. Inevitably, I will find myself in the process of forgetting, remembering, transforming. That's reason enough to get up and go off. And, the same reason to come home again.

City living challenges me to seek out slices of nature whenever I can and one of the ways I do is to nurture a small urban garden of my own. It took a few years of experiments in my Greenpoint, Brooklyn apartment to understand the intense conditions of heat and wind in an open roof patio environment. I climb out of the window to care for my containers and have focused on setting up a perennial garden for bees, pollinators, wildflowers, birds, and privacy. Other than two roses and a hydrangea I inherited from a former neighbor, all plants are natives and drought-resistant Mediterranean varieties. Each summer I grow as much basil as I can so I can give some to friends, make iced tea, and freeze some for pesto during the colder months. This summer I gave myself the challenge to grow new plants only from seed and had great success with tulsi, bergamot, and milkweed. Each year, a few new plants “land” in my garden thanks to resident squirrels and birds. I discovered a Chinese crabapple and a tiny oak sapling looking for a home and hope they’ll make it through winter.