We Grew a Cocktail Avocado!

December 15, 2017

This morning Kelly alerted me to the latest avocado news making its way around the internet tubes. Apparently a chain of grocery stores in Great Britain, worried about the lack of knife skills in our young folks (ugh), is marketing a seedless “cocktail” avocado. What is a cocktail avocado? Some deep Googling revealed that they aren’t some new variety, just un- or under pollinated Fuerte avocado. Since we have a Fuerte tree in our backyard, I deci...

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Restoring the Original Black Box: Our Western Electric 534A Subset

Mr. Homegrown

June 14, 2016

Appropriate Technology, Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...posted a video of the interior of our ringer box in action. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it sounded like when the phone rang in 1920s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2VHhmKTFsQ And, yes, I will be making this available as a ringtone in about a week. Though, I’ll note, you probably won’t be able to fix your iPhone 96 years in the future. Does your old house still have a ringer box?...

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Our new front yard, part 3: design

Mrs. Homegrown

November 17, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening

3 Comments

...showiest plants, and also the ones that persist no matter what the season, making them the bones of the garden. This includes trees and bushes, as well as large perennials. In a grassland landscape where there are no trees or bushes, this category would include tall grasses as well as plants with dramatic seed heads which persist long after the bloom. Filler plants: These are the transitory, often self-seeding plants which pop up opportunistically...

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Salted Spruce Tips and Pine Infused Garlic Salt

Mrs. Homegrown

July 1, 2016

Food, Foraging, How-to, Recipes

5 Comments

...and see how it goes, because you can always add more. Feline assistance in making the pine garlic salt. A Tale of Two Salts To give you some concrete examples, I made two small batches of salt today. I often make herbed salt in tiny batches that get used up quickly, because I like to experiment. The first one I made was with spruce tips. These are the fresh spring growth of a fir tree, the tender chartreuse tips which stand out in such brilliant c...

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Heirloom Expo in Photos

Mr. Homegrown

September 14, 2015

Food, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

6 Comments

I highly recommend making the trip next year to Santa Rosa to see the National Heirloom Exposition put on by the folks at Baker Creek Seeds. The centerpiece of the expo is the massive display of hundreds of different varieties of squash, melons, tomatoes and other edibles. It’s inspiring and frustrating all at once since, unless you have your own garden, you’ll never see such diversity at the supermarket. I came back with the will to improve our...

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