Search Results for: label/least favorite plant/page/2/2010/06/the-urban-homestead/2011/04/making-it

1217 results

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

Avatar photo
Gardening, Native Plants
6 Comments
...place up even in the heart of a drought. All we have to do is treat these plants right. Native plants have a reputation for being tricky, and it’s true, in that they don’t act like typical imported landscape plants–the lawns and the boxwood hedges. They don’t need even a fraction of the water as exotics do, so they are almost always overwatered, and die as a result. I think it is hard for us to even imagine that plants can be so profoundly unthir...

Read…

Book Review: The Urban Bestiary

Avatar photo
Animals, Reviews
8 Comments
...estiary is an exploration of the intimate intersection of humans and other urban animals, such as coyotes and raccoons and opossums and squirrels. In The Urban Bestiary, Haupt introduces us to our close neighbors, the animals which share our land, and sometimes even our homes. She gives us a naturalist’s overview of their behaviors, physiology and life cycles, interspersed with personal anecdotes and interviews with wildlife experts. The resulting...

Read…

Low Moments in Plant Theivery

Avatar photo
Gardening
8 Comments
...can’t believe the cheek of them. I’m quite speechless about it.” In local plant theft news, a security camera at the Village Bakery in Los Angeles caught a woman stealing plants for the second time in two years. CBS news reports, She digs through, she grabs what she wants, and she puts them in her shopping cart,” Village Bakery and Cafe owner Barbara Monderine said. “It makes me really sad that somebody would do that. She is ruining what we’re tr...

Read…

Failed Experiment: Bermuda Buttercup or Sour Grass (Oxalis pes-caprae) as Dye

Avatar photo
Domesticus, Herbs, Mistakes
26 Comments
...are supposed to use equal measurements of each (e.g. 6 oz of t-shirt/6 oz. plants). The second step is to steep the plants in water. This is where I made my first half-assed mistake. I threw the plants into the pot whole, instead of chopping them up, as I was supposed to. Then, I covered the greens with water. The instructions didn’t give exact water quantities to match the fabric weight–it only said “cover”–which seems a bit problematic. “Cover w...

Read…