131 Learning to Smell the Roses with Kendra Gaeta

June 5, 2019

...tion Beyond perfume–who works with scent The Smelly Viles Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles Perfumers Apprentice + Flavors Apprentice (An amazing source for small quantities of scents and flavors) The smell of the International Space Station If you’d like to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to rootsimple@gmail.com. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. Closing...

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Scooters? Not a New Idea

Mr. Homegrown

July 1, 2019

Transportation

7 Comments

...8 · New York Herald (New York, New York) · Newspapers.com It turns out the urban scooter craze isn’t a new idea. From a story in an October 8, 1916 newspaper, “Skidding Through Fact and Fancy on an Autoped: Solo Devil Wagon Taken Up in a Serious Way Might Add New Terrors to City Life” is a description of motorized scooter not all that different than the ones we see today: You stand on the cute platform and get your feet neatly fitted on the rubber...

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For the Locals . . .

Mr. Homegrown

July 12, 2019

Animals, Events, Thoughtstylings

5 Comments

On that foot sign Alissa Walker, one of my favorite journalists, covers urban design here in Los Angeles. She wrote a great piece on our nieghborhood’s iconic podiatrist sign. Walker agrees with me that we need much more than kitschy signs to mark our neighborhoods. She concludes, We need more reminders of what history predates our presence. We need more streets that are designed to connect us instead of being fast-forwarded through in cars. We n...

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007 RIP Handsome, 3 Power Tools You Should Own and Hipster Compost

Mr. Homegrown

July 9, 2014

Podcasts

4 Comments

...ecent comment on the blog we review an old post on three power tools every urban homesteader should own: drill, circular saw and jigsaw. Lastly, we expand on a recent post about composting brew waste, coffee grounds, juice pulp and coconut husks. In other words, “hipster compost.” During the discussion we answer a reader concern about black solider flies in compost. For more info on soldier flies (they are beneficial in compost but can be a proble...

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Black Widow or False Black Widow?

Mrs. Homegrown

May 9, 2013

Animals, Composting, Insects

73 Comments

...an invasive, this spider seems to be displacing our native black widows in urban areas. This spider is roughly the same size and shape as a black widow, but is brown with a faint purple sheen. I like this false black widow option a lot. The false widows don’t have a dangerous sting. The spiders in my box are pretty shy, but insofar as I can tell, they are all sort of an eggplant color–not that true, bad-ass black of a classic widow. Nor have I see...

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