Our Disastrous Summer Garden

September 15, 2015

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

...po with some ideas: Spend a little less time on Facebook and a little more time in the garden. Come up with better raccoon fortifications. Take out stone fruit that isn’t performing (Kelly has wanted to do this for a long time but I’ve dragged my heels). Take better notes. Improve soil and restart a composting project. Come up with small metal cages to enclose fruit (I have a notion that involves 3D printing–more on this later). How did your garde...

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A Day of the Dead Altar

Mrs. Homegrown

October 30, 2015

Domesticus, Thoughtstylings

13 Comments

...ure, such thoughts have been considered morbid, even unhealthy, for a long time–but that is changing. This year I felt ambitious, so built a much bigger altar, or ofrenda, than usual. Actually, the cats made me do it. Given access to the altar, they’d eat the flowers (ending up muerto themselves as a result, no doubt) and bat the rest of the objets to the ground. For the safety of the cats and my treasures, the entire surface needed to be so tight...

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Haint Blue

Mrs. Homegrown

June 5, 2015

Design, Insects

14 Comments

...rotect themselves from evil spirits. I spent a little time ( a very little time, admittedly!) looking for some solid historical writing on this haint blue business, but found nothing but hearsay. The same basic info seems to be distributed all over the Internets, which means the resource pool is pretty small, or pretty shallow. Nonetheless, I think the idea of a blue porch ceiling very appealing, if for no other reason than it extends the open sky...

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White Sage and Bees and our other sage friends

Mrs. Homegrown

May 14, 2013

Gardening, Herbal Medicine, Herbs, Native Plants

25 Comments

...ees. Covered. It hums. Now, these workers are so busy that they don’t have time to be aggressive. For instance, they let me stand around taking blurry pictures of them working, until I got the one above. But stings happen by unfortunate mischance in crowded conditions. I suppose I could cut back the spikes, but whom am I to interrupt this passionate sage & bee love affair? Besides, it’s really pretty. The spikes are about six feet high, but delica...

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A Grand Rapids End Table

Mr. Homegrown

October 26, 2020

Design

12 Comments

...m sized for a particular spot in your house. With this end table I took my time looking for the perfect piece to reproduce. While the Arts and Crafts thing is way out of style, I don’t care. For whatever reason I just happen to like this period. In the early analysis paralysis phase of the project, I made up an end table Pinterest board and set about searching for end tables made between the years 1900 and 1910. I picked this one because of that u...

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