Bicycles and GPS

May 14, 2009

Bikes

So at a time when the whole hipster stripped-down fixed-gear bike phenomenon has just passed its inevitable pop cultural zenith, this post will come across as impossibly nerdy. Yesterday I finally got around to strapping my small handheld GPS unit to the handlebars of my road bike and I can say that this particular combination of 19th century technology and 20th century electronics rocks. The only sane way to get around Los Angeles and most large...

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Interview With Apartment Gardener Helen Kim

Mr. Homegrown

August 27, 2008

Gardening, Herbs

1 Comment

...I have to say that, yes, the plants are a bit happier than they were this time last year. I’ve been using Dr. Earth fertilizer and making fertilizer tea. HE: Did you choose your apartment with the idea that you’d be gardening in it? If so, what should a prospective renter look for? HK: I had three main things on my mind when I was looking for an apartment: the place would need to comfortably house me, my dog, and my plants. There were so few buil...

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Getting Hardscaping Right

Mr. Homegrown

July 18, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening, Mistakes

14 Comments

...do it right the first time, rather than re-do badly done projects multiple times. Go where contractors get materials not the big box stores. A recent trip to Home Depot reminded me about how ugly most of their stuff is. Get materials delivered. I once dropped a very heavy load of Trex on a steep hill near our home and watched, in horror, as it slid a hundred feet down the road. Thankfully no one got hurt. But it was not fun to reload the car on a...

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Revolutionary Rusks

Mr. Homegrown

November 5, 2006

Bread, Food

3 Comments

...cipes From the Cooks at the Legendary Restaurant” To make the most of your time and maximize energy efficiency, bake two batches and stack them all up together for the 12-hour dry-a-thon following the initial 25-minute bake. You’ll end up with about 20 pieces from a single batch, and they go pretty fast. While rusks historically were created as hot-weather food, baking them during the winter is more pleasant because you end up having the oven on a...

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Leisure The Basis of Culture

Mr. Homegrown

March 6, 2015

Thoughtstylings

11 Comments

...and rediscovered in hard work. Fr. Mark Kowalewski, who tipped me off to Pieper’s book, describes this state of leisure as “profoundly counter-cultural.” And yet I hear Gmail calling me. Time to update my Facebook profile and get out some tweets. How do you deal with life’s distractions? How do you carve out some time for true leisure?...

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