Bidens rebuttal

November 8, 2016

...tified, but fairly harmless. I kept meaning to look it up, and at the same time, I pondered pulling it because it was competing for water with my more officially invited garden plants. (Since then I’ve learned that it might give off competitive chemicals, so probably isn’t the best companion to plants I actually want to keep in my garden.) I am always curious about volunteers in the garden because they’re saying something about the state of the ga...

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Paper Wasps: Your New BFFs

Mrs. Homegrown

October 31, 2016

Gardening, Insects, Nature Awareness

10 Comments

...he rest of the colony disperses and dies. The fertile queens mate one last time in the fall, and then find some little nook in which to hibernate over the winter (this is amazing to me and I haven’t found any details about it yet.) In the early spring she emerges and builds a tiny nest, like maybe six cells, to generate a first generation of workers to help her out. These workers are female, as with the bees, and as soon as they hatch they get to...

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A Cure for Plantar Faciitis?

Mr. Homegrown

September 19, 2016

Fitness

16 Comments

...ning and one by fencing. I’d cured my PF last time by going barefoot. That time, it worked quickly. When it didn’t work quickly this time around, I gave up and decided to seek the advice of medical professionals, including a sports medicine specialist. I didn’t trust my own experience. This was a mistake. The standard medical advice for PF is rest, immobilizing the foot, constant arch support (I was never barefoot unless in the shower or pool), or...

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Tolkien and Trees

Mrs. Homegrown

September 8, 2016

Nature Awareness, Thoughtstylings, Trees

6 Comments

...th me. I daresay something had been going on in the ‘unconscious’ for some time, and that accounts for my feeling throughout, especially when stuck, that I was not inventing but reporting (imperfectly) and had at times to wait till ‘what really happened’ came through. But looking back analytically I should say that Ents are composed of philology, literature, and life. They owe their name to the eald enta geweorc of Anglo-Saxon, and their connectio...

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Best veggies to cook in a solar oven

Mrs. Homegrown

August 5, 2016

Food, Recipes, Solar Oven Summer

2 Comments

...cooked looked like a failure but were actually successful. What I did that time was simply throw them in a covered pot and left them for 2 hours at around 250F. When I went to check on them, I was appalled to see that they’d turned brown. They looked roasted. Their outer leaves were dried out and hard. But I took them inside and tried one of those crispy outer leaves. The flesh at the base was succulent and sweet, even extra artichoke-y in flavor....

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