Are Miniature Books the New Smartphone?

October 17, 2016

...man historian whose extant books chronicle the tumultuous years around the time of Constantine. So far it’s even more lurid than the updates on our current presidential election I get when I glace at the iPhone. Yes, you can read books on a smartphone, but I still think that the medium of a paper book lends itself to developing a greater ability to focus. And as Cal Newport suggests, anyone who can focus on a problem in depth for a long period of...

Read…

How to kill your palm tree

Mrs. Homegrown

November 14, 2016

Gardening, Trees

...ic street palms. We tend to give them no thought whatsoever, but it may be time to start watering them if we want to keep them. Over Prune. If you imagine a clock face overlaid on the crown of a palm, never cut above 9 and 3 o’clock. And never, ever, opt for the heinous and misguided extreme pruning called the pineapple or hurricane or candle style cut, which leaves just a few fronds poking out at the top. Pruning a palm this way will only stress...

Read…

The Return of the Apron?

Mr. Homegrown

August 28, 2018

Cleaning, Domesticus

12 Comments

...s and pencils. A quick perusal of the interwebs will show you that, at one time, all of the trades had their own aprons. In addition to safety and tool holstering, aprons are from a time before the cheap, disposable clothes we now wear. The decline of the apron could also be about our modern world’s distaste for visible signs of physical labor. We’re all supposed to be spending our days in front of glowing screens. Speaking of which, I’ve got to g...

Read…

Timing Sourdough Feeding

Mr. Homegrown

April 6, 2020

Bread, Food

12 Comments

...or is important if you want to get a decent sourdough bread: the amount of time between feeding your starter and making your dough. I keep a small amount of starter on hand since I bake, at most, twice a week under normal circumstances (Under quarantine I’m baking a lot more but the reasons for that would be the subject of another blog post). Just before I go to bed, the night before I’m going to make bread, I take a tablespoon of starer and add i...

Read…

Maplewoodshop: Saving Shop Class

Mr. Homegrown

August 24, 2018

Design, Thoughtstylings

2 Comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=148&v=JDVJS7xDA2E In U.S. schools shop class has been sacrificed to the Moloch of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Ninety percent of shop classes have been eliminated with the exception of a few robotics programs. The result, ironically, is STEM graduates so out of touch with the physical world that they design things impossible to build. Image: Maplewoodworking Maplewoodshop seeks to r...

Read…