Of Gnomes and Peak Oil

...of canned tomatoes. At any given moment, there may be a dozen cases in the store, but that inventory is constantly being replenished with the money the customers pay for the cans they remove, and the more tomatoes that customers buy, the bigger an inventory the store will carry. Paracelsus uses a more poetic metaphor. Instead of ordering shipments of tomatoes, it’s our task to command gnomes, The earth is filled by gnomes even to its center, creat...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

...n leaves. Get your neighbor’s leaves, if you can. Spread them in place, or store them in bags until you need them. Pine needles work, too. Pull weeds before they go to seed and leave them on the ground to dry up and vanish into the mulch layer. I swear, it might look strange to see them laying there at first, all green and bright, but they’ll be pretty much invisible in a few days. Practice “chop n’ drop”. When you’re pruning bushes or trees, chop...

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Everything Must Go Part 5: The nitty gritty

...ral dusty old 12 oz bottles of homemade mead–a few of which were helpfully labeled, “Bad Mead?”–which have sat on a back shelf unloved and undrunk for many years, for so long the printer ink on the labels was fading. Far longer than any aging period. Erik caught me draining the bottles and just about had kittens. He’d planned on carbonating these bottles…someday…to see if that would improve the flavor and now I’d gone and ruined all of his work. H...

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Everything Must Go Part 3: Clothing

..., you thank the item for its service to you and “release it” to the thrift store. For KonMari, it all comes down to your emotional relationship with the item–your positive relationship, that is. Nothing is kept through guilt or false nostalgia. She doesn’t believe in following the more usual sorting advice, such as discarding anything you haven’t worn for a year, or doesn’t fit your current body shape, etc., but I also kept those ideas in my mind...

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Dramm’s Breaker Nozzle: My Favorite Watering Implement

...s we’ve gone through since we bought this house fifteen years ago. Big box store watering widgets seem to last just a few weeks before heading to the landfill. I think I’ve found a solution. During the Garden Blogger’s Fling I attended back in June there was a demo by a Dramm Company representative. What impressed me most at the demo was Dramm’s simplest products, the Heavy-Duty Aluminum Water Breaker Nozzle combined with their Aluminum Shut-Off V...

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