The edges of a farm are the most vibrant, the most full of life, often the most fertile. It’s between the farmland and the forest or the river or whatever that the flora and fauna of the two biomes meet, where they bring new minerals or nutrients or creatures to each other. The space between two mini ecosystems is full of a glorious diversity, much more than the centers of each, and it’s necessary for the healthy functioning of each. I read about this long ago in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and have found it to be true much more broadly. It’s not at the center of our lives, where everything is stable, that change and growth happen, it’s at the edges. The moments and places where we bump up against someone whose story is different and we get to learn from them, something about their life rubs off on us, and we are the better for it.

Those edges can feel threatening at times—the unknown, the uncertain, the clear difference—but being curious and trying something new much more often create possibility and connection. You feel it when you do something as simple as trying a new board game or as complex as making a new friend across a boundary that seemed fixed.

I refer to these weekly paragraphs as my “painfully earnest blog post.” I’m sorry about that—come play some games and have a pretzel! Bring your family and put a green flag on your table so you can bump up against someone else’s story!

Alice C., board game librarian

Play a garden game!

Have you planted your home garden yet? Mine’s all flowers, I’m afraid, since my yard is all shade, but I make up for it with these charming garden-themed games:

Insectarium has players gathering insect specimens and pinning them to their museum displays, gaining points for certain kinds of insects in each row or column. It’s a game of efficiency, but on the lighter side.
In Trellis, players take turns placing tiles with beautiful vines of different colors into a central tangle, placing their flower tokens on the vines that they’ve extended and they’ve previously claimed, as well as letting other players place tokens if their vines have also been extended. In being so kind, players who help each other out get to place an additional flower token. The first player to run out of tokens wins!
Point Salad is a card drafting game where players try to make sets of different vegetables and score the points noted on the plate cards. It’s fast-paced, a little mean in a good way, and easy to play over and over.
If you like both the gardening theme and filling in the little bubbles on ScanTron tests when you were in school, you’ll love Three Sisters. It’s an excellent, think-y roll-and-write where players are growing corn, beans, and pumpkins (the three sisters of the title and Native American wisdom), as well as various fruits and perennials, and expanding their shed, market goods, apiary, and compost pile. All of these areas of the farm work together to make it more productive—meaning giving you more actions and more points.
Grove is one of our growing collection of single-player games, this one inviting the player to lay a series of cards into a tableau and growing ever more fruit, in the form of citrus-colored dice. It’s a good little puzzle while you’re waiting for friends or as a date with yourself.

Try our Caesar Salad!

Crisp romaine lettuce, house-made croutons, sharp Parmesan cheese, and the complex deliciousness of Caesar dressing—it’s a classic for a reason. And you can add grilled chicken for a slight upcharge to get your protein and make it a bit more filling. An excellent, summery accompaniment to one of our garden-themed games!