Planting in a Post-Wild World

...landscape out of the Grey Gardens situation we’ve got going now — and not making much progress. Then this book came to my rescue.* Look for posts in the near future charting the progress of our redesign using this system. October/November is the time for this work in Southern California. The idea is to get the plants in before the winter rains, so they can establish before the summer heat and drought hits. In temperate climates, folks are just be...

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Big List of Earth-Friendly (homemade, compostable, recyclable, no-plastic) Holiday Decorations

...ainder of their lives: ornaments for the fairies. This makes it easier to part with them at the end of the season. Finally, these ornaments are light–they don’t burden our earth with yet more plastic and toxins. They aren’t made in some far off factory by an underpaid laborer. They are not helping the bottom line of some soulless big box store. The List This is broken down into two parts: the first list includes ornaments that come straight from n...

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Return of the Caftan?

...actical. Others thought the idea is as ridiculous as, well, hosting a shoe making workshop and grinding your own flour. In Facebook, someone posted the picture above of Yves Saint Laurent rocking a caftan and “mandals”. The caftan is from the Middle East and is still part of the the day to day and clerical garb of Abrahamic cultures. It’s a garment that makes a lot of sense in a hot, dry Mediterranean or desert climate. It functions as a kind of n...

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Home cooking advice?

...eal might transfer to another, and save you effort. Say you’re going to be making soup stock for something (or something you’re making will yield soup stock) — what else can you make which will use the rest of that soup stock? Same for cooking up a pot of beans, or a chicken, or a loaf of bread. Same goes for opening a jar of olives or splurging on a hunk of good cheese. Multitask those ingredients. 5) Pick a cooking style and try to stick with it...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

..., it was nice at least to figure out I could use my windowsill as a kindergarten (I started a lot of these from seed in little peat pots) before sending them off to bigger pastures. And, since I visit every two weeks, I always come back home with an armload of this or that. I’ve had a strawberry plant that is doing pretty nicely these days at my place, but not bearing much fruit… so I’ll be shipping him off mom’s in a couple weeks. HE: What do you...

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