Fitting articles on seeds and homes

I am posting two NYT articles that happen to coincide with my major activities right now. This article is about a seed library in rural New York. The library conserves local and national crop varieties, and members can receive a seed pack in exchange for a fee and an agreement to return seeds at year's end. This is a wonderful, small-scale attempt to preserve the heritage of traditional varieties, and dovetails nicely with larger-scale efforts such as that of the Global Crop Diversity Trust or Crops for the Future. The article was very fitting for the moment I find myself in, because I am working with a local museum to write a grant to implement a Muisca garden. The idea is that we'll collect and conserve traditional Andean crops like achira, cubio, or aji, and display them in a garden, sort of a living museum. On top of this, we'll carry out modern agronomic trials with one of these species to establish good practices for higher yields.

The second article is about a guy who makes sculptures and buildings out of twigs, logs, and other natural materials. As I rehab an old house in my town, I'm working with adobe, wild cane, and mud, so this article also overlaps with what I'm working on right now.