Cover Reveal: Backyard Alchemy by J.D. Ho

To forage in winter is to occupy the mind of a creature very different from myself. It is to become as small as a rabbit or a mouse. To see like an ant or a bird or a bee. To put my face on the ground, right next to things that are able to grow in the cold: bitter cress, pennycress, dock, sheep sorrel, upland cress, and chickweed. Most so tiny that I might pick one hundred pennycresses and clip one hundred chickweed leaf rosettes to make a salad for dinner.

To forage in winter is to move slowly, slowly, harvesting many things from one square yard of earth. I look for what I want among the mosaic of grasses, leaves, rocks, and inedible weeds.

I think of the mouse nests in the tall grass bowing groundward.

…To forage in winter is to bend time.

“Backyard Alchemy is a poetic diary revealing the writer’s intimate relationship with the land they labor over, one handful of soil at a time. With a botanist’s passion, they forage, prune, seed, and unearth truths and histories with long and tangled roots, each with their own ghosts clinging to them. J. D. Ho is writer as alchemist—taking the things we love to hate: rusted nails, stink bugs and invasive plants, and transforming them into a bold tapestry that is illuminating, soulful and ultimately hopeful.”

“J.D. Ho is a true forager. Eyes sharp, they hunt for seeds and sprouts of information. They browse the environment for those miniscule details that can be used to nourish. The result is a collection that moves fluidly from microcosm to macro-, exploring the inextricable connections between natural world and societal forces.”

“Insects, metal, migration, longleaf pine, family, love. As I read J.D. Ho’s deeply wise and deeply curious, multitudinous essays, I kept a basket of favorite sentences, insights, and moments: those that broke my heart open and those that stitched it back together, stronger. The basket was soon overflowing.”

“With a storyteller’s cadence, a naturalist’s eye for detail, and a historian’s socio-cultural explication, J.D. Ho has compiled a remarkable set of poetic memories and sensory-rich observations. With writing that flows, seemingly effortlessly, between the grounded and the transcendent, they generously share their reflections in a volume to be lingered over and revisited.”