Radish Surprise

...it all day, every day. It has become one of the queens of the garden. The picture below is horrible. The radish plant really is quite pretty, the equal of any ornamental flowering shrub–but as bad is the picture is, it gives you some scale. See the bales of our straw bale garden behind it? I think it must be pulling water from there, which accounts for its size and longevity. It’s gone a little past its prime now– a couple of weeks ago the blooms...

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Front Yard Update: Welcome to Crazy Town

...n ongoing experiment. The golden yarrow is the small yellow flower in this picture. Surprise number one is Golden Yarrow (Eriophyllum confertiflorum) which is not a true yarrow at all. This was supposed to be a relatively small plant, maybe one foot high by two feet wide. I planted 3, and they’ve taken over the left side of the slope. Obviously, they like sunny hillsides! But you know, that side of the slope gets some shade, too, and the shade pat...

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How to Rodent Proof a Chicken Coop

...very night I put the entire feeder within the trash can you can see in the picture on the right (it has a much more secure lid than the larger can I used to keep the feed in). In the morning I put the food out again for our four hens. It means that I have to get up just a few minutes earlier than I usually do but that’s not a big deal as I’m one of those tedious and boring morning persons. Some folks use rodent proof treadle feeders. These feeders...

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Breaking Broodiness in Chickens

This picture is what happens when I forget to take a picture of our broody hens. This past week three of our four hens decided to all get broody at once. And since we have only one nesting box they all crammed into the box as tight as passengers in economy class in what passes for air travel these days. Since it’s August and hot and humid, I began to worry that they would overheat. Then I remembered a trick passed along by a UC David avian veteri...

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Toilet paper in the woods: a rant and some advice

What’s wrong with this picture? Ladies. Sisters. I have a rant for you. It’s an appeal to women, because this is pretty much a woman-centered problem. It’s about leaving toilet paper behind after peeing outdoors, and menfolk don’t leave toilet paper behind after they pee. (Yes, there is #2, but that is less often seen in recreation areas. Backpackers know how to Leave No Trace and daytrippers mostly hold it.) This means 95% of nasty clumps of toi...

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