Saturday Linkages: Paleo Flour, Viking Tents and Chinese Cabbage as the New Kale

...— Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 16, 2015 Via @NPR: Paleo People Were Making Flour 32,000 Years Ago http://t.co/Q6xlGIBBG3 — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 17, 2015 Equity, the Mobility Plan, and the Myth of Luxury-Loving Lane Stealers http://t.co/nPB0sbqjug via @streetsblogla — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 18, 2015 How America’s Staggering Traffic Death Rate Became Matter-of-Fact http://t.co/onrP7oreWC via @StreetsblogUSA — Root...

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Heirloom Expo in Photos

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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Lost from the cradle of connection: the high price of driving

...he way from the Santa Monica Mountains to Pyramid Lake. Cameras caught him making four freeway crossings in the past, and certainly he made more He had to cross highways. An adult mountain lion needs about 200 miles of home range to make a living. State officials call his death “Sad, but not surprising.” On August 10th, P32 became “roadkill.” Roadkill is an odd term, isn’t it? The road didn’t kill P32, a driver did. There’s some odd blameshifting...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

...waters are continually flowing in.” Installing is the hard toil of garden making, placing is its pleasure. I think I’ve spent too much time in the installing and not enough time contemplating the placing. In so doing gardening has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees. I take this to mean that a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of...

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Black Friday Book Suggestions

...ooks–and I mean that in a good way! They are sturdy hardbacks with lots of pictures, step by step instructions and detailed reference charts. They’re pretty intense in their obsession with detail–a world away from your usual lightweight “10 Quick n’ Easy Projects” type of books. They strike me as books for a craftsperson ready to take that next step toward making these products as a home business. Malle and Schmickl are scientists–stern Austrian s...

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