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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Connect with Nature Project #2: Rediscover Your Feet

..., natural splay. My foot size also increased by an inconvenient half size, making it newly difficult to find shoes which fit. Next came barefoot walking. As has been oft mentioned in this blog, Erik is a barefoot runner. I don’t run, but I am a barefoot walker. Barefoot walking woke me to a world of forgotten sensations: the warm softness of asphalt, the fresh coolness of a sprinkler soaked sidewalk, the delicate slide of wet leaves beneath my toe...

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An open letter to Trader Joes

...ks were snoozing during their high school biology classes. We replaced the picturesque barn with a windowless industrial shed to show the most prevalent housing for poultry and, more than likely, where these cage free eggs came from. The family poultry farm alluded to in your cover art has long since been replaced by huge industrial operations housing thousands of chickens in enormous sheds. Our relatives, living on a nearly century old family far...

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Federico Tbn’s Self Irrigating Pots

...elf irrigating pots (SIPs) he built out of found materials. The one in the picture above uses a water jug and a five gallon bucket. Unlike my really ugly SIPs, Federico has taken the time to ornament the outside of the bucket. Federico says, This one is a variation on the 5 gallon bucket system. The handle on the jug was a convenient way of inserting a piece of 1/2 inch PVC pipe to refill the reservoir. The plastic on the 5 gallon jug was surprisi...

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End of Season Tomato Review

...s were grown in cages made from concrete reinforcing wire (instructions on making tomato cages here) in raised beds with a drip irrigation system as pictured above. As an experiment for folks in apartments or with limited space, we grew a bunch of tomatoes in self watering containers on a strip of concrete next to the back wall of our garage (note crappy picture below). You’ll see that we were too lazy to put the container tomatoes in cages–don’t...

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