Bees will love your Coyote Brush Hedge

March 27, 2014

Image: Wikipedia (our picture of the NHM’s coyote brush hedge came out blurry–which really is a shame because they 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 pollina...

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Connect with Nature Project #2: Rediscover Your Feet

Mrs. Homegrown

June 17, 2013

Miscellaneous

11 Comments

...your knees soft and springy, even slightly bent. Take your arms out of the picture. No swinging arms. Fox Walking is not striding, it’s creeping. Clasp your hands in front of you or hold them bent softly at your sides. Whatever is most comfortable. Just keep them still. Lift one foot, transferring all your weight to your grounded foot. Lead with the toe. Let the ball of the foot, touch earth first. Before committing to lowering your heel, pause to...

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Fabulous Postcards from HenCam

Mrs. Homegrown

October 2, 2013

Animals, Reviews

...but it seems kitties were a little too sly for early cameras, making good pictures (as opposed to cat-shaped blurs) hard to find.) She tells us she spent two years collecting pictures for these collections, searching everywhere, from flea markets to eBay, parsing through thousands of photos. Her favorites are collected in books of 30. She picked good ones. Every card tells the story, and most of them leave me with questions, too. Also, I really l...

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Maintaining a Worm Bin

Mrs. Homegrown

July 19, 2013

Composting, Miscellaneous, Vermiculture

31 Comments

...wet and compact. Fudge is a less than ideal environment for worms. In the picture at the top you’ll see my most recent working side. There’s a lot going on in there still, some big food pockets, wood shavings everywhere, but the texture is becoming too black and dense overall. Compost worms like a little air, a little “wiggle room” and a diversity of habitat. It was past time to change this working side to a resting side. Resting comes before har...

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Viewpoints in the Garden

Mr. Homegrown

March 13, 2014

Garden Design, Gardening

18 Comments

...t there’s some nice viewpoints developing. I thought I’d take a few random pictures to highlight what’s working and what isn’t. I took a seat on the worm bin and discovered this nice vista. It’s the view from where I’m planning a new seating area. Of course photography is a kind of lie. Taking a picture is as much about what we frame out as what we include. Widen the previous shot and you see junk laying around on the ugly concrete slab in the for...

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