On the Back Porch of America

April 18, 2014

...ll Medium Large, that readers of this blog will love. Small Medium Large’s series, The Back Porch of America, is like the Foxfire books come to life. You can watch a couple of episodes here. This is what television would look like if we dispensed with false reality show drama and treated subjects with respect. Four more episodes will come out later this year. http://vimeo.com/91655829 Small Medium Large also did a piece on Root Simple pal Doug Tia...

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Bees will love your Coyote Brush Hedge

Mrs. Homegrown

March 27, 2014

Bees, Garden Design, Urban Farming

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...y were good looking hedges. You wouldn’t guess it from this pic). One of a series of posts inspired by our recent tour of the new gardens at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. Baccharis pilularis, called coyote brush, or chaparral bloom, is an unassuming Western native plant with a secret super-power: native and non-native pollinators love, love, love! its tiny little flowers. If you want to lavish affection and care on the pollinators in you...

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Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder

Mrs. Homegrown

March 25, 2014

Animals

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Bird feeder in the LA Natural History Museum garden. One of a series of posts inspired by our recent tour of the new gardens at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum. The Nature Gardens at the NHM are not large by the usual standards of botanical gardens, and they are only about a year old, but they are already rich with bird and insect life. (A poorwill even visited, which apparently caused quite a bit of excitement in the birding community.) T...

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Viewpoints in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown

March 13, 2014

Garden Design, Gardening

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...need some more work. This area by the chicken coop could use some paving stones or a deck under the chairs and a better “hide the crap” fence to screen out the compost bins in the background. Overall the main design lesson is in the first photo in this series–the use of foliage or trellis work to not allow the whole space to be viewed at once. This makes a small space seem larger and lends a sense of mystery to what might be behind that avocado tr...

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What the Internet Will Look Like After the Zombie Apocalypse

Mr. Homegrown

February 27, 2014

Water and Power

...ar as ten miles with a stock router and no boost in power. And the network is self healing. If one router goes out the other routers take on the traffic. For more info on how to set up a network like this see www.broadband-hamnet.org. or watch this series of videos. There’s also a free e-Book: Wireless Networking in the Developing World. Cat photo kidding aside, this relatively simply hack has potential to help a lot of people. This post was inspi...

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