Surface Walk with Nance Klehm Saturday February 11th

...he Bowtie Project exploring the human uses and ecological functions of the native and spontaneous vegetation at the site. On this walk we will investigate how the vegetation relates to the ecology and vitality of the soil that supports it. Surface Walk is part of Nance Klehm’s Bowtie residency titled Double Pairing. Nance Klehm has been an ecological systems designer, landscaper, horticultural consultant, and permacultural grower for more than two...

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Of paper wasps and scrub jays

...honey bee from a yellow jacket from a wasp–and we won’t even start on the native bees. Yet it pays to be able to do so, because each is quite different, and we can interact peaceably with all of them if we know their ways. Paper wasps, also called umbrella wasps, are those guys who build smallish, open celled nests in protected places, often the eaves of your house. Wasp stings are quite painful, but few people know that these wasps rarely attack...

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An Open Letter to Our Mammalian Friends

...home released you back in 1905. From there you displaced your more polite, native cousins. I get that you’re not going away. But can you please leave at least one peach for us humans? Keep this up and I’ll put together an unfavorable social media strategy to rebrand you as “#cuterats.” To the possums of Los Angeles: I appreciate your freakishness and you’re actually kind of cute up close. But you guys don’t look so good under the glare of an unfla...

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Our Disastrous Summer Garden

...e. We had to water our already alkaline soil with alkaline water. Only the native plants and what we call the Biblical plants seem happy (e.g. the fig and the pomegranate). The drought and an extreme heat wave pushed everything in the garden to the edge–and a few over the edge: in the last month we abruptly lost some garden stalwarts, including a rosemary bush and a culinary sage. Despite all these disasters, I came back from the Heirloom Expo wit...

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Picture Sundays: Agave Roast

...he Malki Museum on the Morongo Reservation to sample a large assortment of Native American foods as well as celebrate the end of a agave harvest and roast. I’ll nudge Mrs. Homegrown to blog about it, but let’s just go over a few of the delicious items on this plate: agave, yucca, beavertail cactus, chola buds, two forms of acorn mush, venison, rabbit stew, fry bread and a salad with a white sage dressing. I didn’t get to the fried crickets in time...

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