020 Emily Green on the Mow and Blow Landscape Paradigm

October 8, 2014

...dependent. She blogs at Chance of Rain. Writing in the Los Angeles Times in 2011 Emily says, What would you do if a neighbor came to you and asked, “For 20 minutes every week, may I turn on your vacuum cleaner, smoke detector and garbage disposal and run them all at once?” Holding that thought, consider if the neighbor added, “Ah, may I also blow noxious dust your way for those same 20 minutes?” Imagine that not just one neighbor on the street ask...

Read…

De-Cluttering for DIYers, Homesteaders, Artists, Preppers, etc.

Mrs. Homegrown

February 9, 2015

Cleaning, Tidying up

52 Comments

...sely, you have a steady core interest which takes up most of your creative energy. I believe there are two basic types of creative people. There are those who commit to a skill and practice it the rest of their lives. I call those people the Masters. And then there’s the rest of us, those of us who love learning new things and who are always changing interests. I call us the Dabblers. (Fondly) Masters might accumulate too much stuff around their c...

Read…

Tips on growing great garlic

Mr. Homegrown

September 12, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

8 Comments

...f they appear. The flowers pull energy from the plant that is better spent making big cloves. The flowers are also edible: some farmers are actually making more money selling the flowers as culinary exotics. Growing garlic in hot climates I’ve had mixed success growing garlic in Los Angeles. It turns out I was growing the wrong varieties. Most garlics appreciate cold weather, including some time spent under a blanket of snow. For hot climates you...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Don’t Fear the Green Reaper

Mr. Homegrown

February 2, 2019

Saturday Linkages

...the light relentlessly pierced through even the tiny slits in the shades, making it difficult to fall asleep. Thanks goodness I moved from that area. pic.twitter.com/ECmbRPxz4h — Robert Kwolek (@RobertKwolek) January 31, 2019 “The internet’s emphasis on metrics and quantity over depth and quality has engendered a society that values celebrity, sensationalism, and numeric measures of success.” – #TeamHuman, #39 Get the manifestohttps://t.co/QCJ0Ng...

Read…

When it’s time to remove a tree

Mrs. Homegrown

October 22, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening

11 Comments

...le. The garden feels more lively or, conversely, more peaceful. It’s as if energy which was blocked by that ailing or misplaced plant is now flowing again. It’s an almost physical sensation–like a fresh breeze blowing through your yard. But when a plant, especially a tree, is removed in a thoughtless or untimely way, though, it feels like a wound. The empty space looks haunted. The wrongness is deep, and it takes a long time to fade. There are pla...

Read…