More boneheaded plant representations from Hollywood

January 4, 2016

Gardening, Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings

...lent in the face of such horror. In the deeply unpromising pilot to the YA series The 100, a group of handsome teens are walking through a stand of ferns in a redwood forest-type biome. The ferns (and, indiscriminately, the adjacent moss tufts) have been studded with purple pansy heads by the set designers. Nevermind that ferns don’t flower. One kid picks a pansy head and tucks it behind his love interest’s ear. A smarty pants kid watching this in...

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Coffee Roasting Demo at Summer Nights in the Garden July 8

Mr. Homegrown

June 20, 2016

Events

3 Comments

The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum puts on a fun and free series every summer called Summer Nights in the Garden. It’s a fun mix of hands-on science demos, crafts, food trucks, music and cocktails in the museum’s beautiful garden. We’ve been a part of it each year and we’re returning on July 8th from 5-9 p.m. to do a home coffee roasting demo. Of all the crazy home ec things we do around the Root Simple compound, coffee roasting is one...

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Our new front yard, part 5: Constructing a meadow community

Mrs. Homegrown

December 2, 2015

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

15 Comments

...ons were edited to fit what I could actually find in stock at our local nurseries. (Most of the plants came from the wonderful Theodore Payne Foundation Nursery.) I’ve been doing this long enough to pretty much expect a certain percentage of these plants will not do well…you know, just ’cause. And then I also expect that once stuff comes in and starts to come together, I’ll have to make changes or fill gaps. Editing comes with the territory. If I’...

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Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

Mr. Homegrown

March 9, 2015

Gardening

14 Comments

...u that there would be blood in the streets. We need a new cultural narrative and a crash course in plant appreciation. Such a reeducation program is a long term project. In the short term, another local writer (who was a guest on episode 20 of our podcast), Emily Green, has a very useful series of posts, “After the Lawn,” that will walk you through a “safe and sane” lawn replacement. Lawn replacement in our dry Mediterranean climate could serve as...

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What we think about when we try not to think about global warming

Mrs. Homegrown

October 26, 2015

Reviews

2 Comments

...e him with the PowerPoint in front of a group of executives. Here he has a series of solid suggestions for tactical change, including reframing climate messages in positive terms while avoiding negative ones, using social networks to make conservation fun and competitive, using policy change to make it simple for people to make good choices, and developing signals for social progress besides the almighty GDP. In light of what he lays out in Part 1...

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