More on our gardening disasters

...plant some unusual things this spring, stuff we’ve never grown before, or plants that attract me for some idiosyncratic reason. Fun plants, in other words. Above, I re-posted that picture of the heart-shaped flax bed I created planted back in 2011. Planting a few square feet of flax was not the most practical act in the world, but it was fun. I’d never seen flax growing before, and I wanted to get to know its ways, because it’s such an important...

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Saturday Tweets: Squirrels and Other Stuff

...anuary 11, 2017 Plants need a social network. Traditional landscaping puts plants in solitary confinement. In this setting, plant lose resiliency #txplants pic.twitter.com/PLK44HpUUh — Thomas Rainer (@ThomasRainerDC) January 11, 2017 Could you make zero trash for 30 days? https://t.co/AeLJT0Bj7M — Root Simple (@rootsimple) January 10, 2017 Add Pockets to Any Skirt or Dress Without Ruining the Look https://t.co/sOM8klCneq via @lifehacker — Root Sim...

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Stirred, Not Shaken

...piles. Steiner has the biodynamic farmer spray these preparations on soil, plants and compost piles to act as a kind of homeopathy for the land. While we did not make our own preparations in class (it’s complicated!) we did a ritual stirring with pre-made preparations in buckets of water. Using sticks we created vortexes in the buckets, alternating in clockwise and counterclockwise motions. We then divided the mixture and rushed home to spread it...

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Saturday Linkages: DIY Coffee Roasting and That Crazy Rhubarb Lady

...n/~3/3_e0IccStLo/new-skateboard-can-go-down-stairs.html … Life in the city Urban Healers: http://urbanhealers.tumblr.com Clotheslines vs. HOAs: “Right to Dry” States http://bit.ly/13nMrPL The Ten Most Ambitious Failed Utopian Mass Transit Systems http://jalopnik.com/the-ten-most-ambitious-failed-utopian-mass-transit-syst-1135019271 … Making a Case to Phase Out “Beg Buttons” in Santa Monica’s Pedestrian Action Plan http://disq.us/8elfzy Meet Street...

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094 The American Woman’s Home

...vers a great deal of territory, everything from indoor air quality to houseplants, to childcare to housing the homeless. The book is in line with her family’s activism on issues such as women’s education, temperance and the abolition of slavery. We discuss many of Catherine’s specific recommendations including: butter, bread, terrariums, indoor plants, earth closets and art (she suggests everyone own a print of Eastman Johnson’s “Barefoot Boy” and...

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