A Day of the Dead Altar

October 30, 2015

...oss around quietly within my own heart. Also, I live in Los Angeles, which used to belong to Mexico, and still does in many ways. Halloween is big here, and Día de Muertos (more often called Día de los Muertos, at least up here in the north, but I believe Día de Muertos is correct–although it may be one of those cases where the incorrect swallows the correct via common usage) reigns alongside of Halloween, extending the celebration over the course...

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Our new front yard, part 4: a digression on the new paradigm

Mrs. Homegrown

November 19, 2015

Back to the Garden, front yard series, Garden Design, Gardening, Miscellaneous

5 Comments

...h, changes to parts of the community ripple through the whole community. I used to buy plants to suit my needs. These needs came in two general categories. The first was the need to fulfill a limited function: “I need a bush over there to hide that section of fence.” The second was acquisitive lust: “That plant is beautiful. I’m going to buy it and find some place to put it.” Both of these ways of thinking are, to go back to the first simile, very...

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Is Facebook Useful?

Mr. Homegrown

November 30, 2015

Thoughtstylings

34 Comments

...bout and helping promote interesting events. Getting advice and/or help on homesteading projects. Getting rid of stuff and finding free things for a project. Access to expert advice (the Garden Professors Facebook group is a good example of this). Hearing the opinions of folks I don’t agree with. The negatives? Facebook as acedia engine If I’m avoiding an important project Facebook is there for me to offer distraction fueled by my own narcissism....

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The Manzanita Miracle, or, why you should love native plants if you live in a dry climate

Mrs. Homegrown

December 17, 2015

Gardening, Native Plants

6 Comments

...ere able to calculate how much water the soil held, and how much the plant used daily, leading us to figure out how long this particular plant can go between waterings–safely. Not pushing it to the edge of death, you understand, just calculating its normal water needs. This figure is called the “irrigation interval” and the answer was 225 days. Let me repeat that. This particular plant expects to go 225 consecutive days without water every year, a...

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Build a vegetable prison to keep out raccoons and skunks

Mr. Homegrown

January 12, 2016

Gardening, Pests

18 Comments

...ings about the usefulness of the free 3d drawing program Sketchup, which I used to plan out my veggie prison. It was especially useful for figuring out the angles of the cuts I needed to make for the top. I was able to dial in those angles and dimensions on my compound miter saw. All that was left to do was screw the whole thing together and staple the 14-Guage welded wire from Home Despot. The access panels have two positions. Down to protect sma...

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