So Cal Alert: Polyphagus Shot Hole Borer

June 15, 2015

...ht stressed right now. It’s a perfect storm. So now, more than ever, it is time to take care of your trees. Our trees have been gamely enduring the drought for the last few years, but this year, tree experts tell me, the signs of deep distress are appearing. We’re at risk losing many trees due to drought alone this summer. The Shot Hole Borer is merely upping the stakes. Keep in mind that a mature tree needs to be watered such that the water penet...

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An Awareness of What is Missing

Mr. Homegrown

June 18, 2015

Thoughtstylings

17 Comments

...rms. So what can we do? Perhaps it’s futile, but I thought I’d devote some time in the next few weeks to developing skills that run counter to the prevailing technological winds. I’m hoping to, as George Clinton put it, “Free my mind so my ass will follow.” At the very least I’d like to enhance my own skills in these areas, but I’d also like to develop some classes or gatherings around these topics. And I’m hoping to reduce screen time. The beginn...

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Admitting Gardening Mistakes

Mr. Homegrown

August 17, 2015

Garden Design, Gardening

15 Comments

...hatever is incorrect in the current situation will likely show up again in the execution of the new project. Gardening requires a ruthlessness and lack of attachment that I often don’t have the stomach for. Sometimes you have to embrace creative destruction and curse that fig tree (or, in our case, curse the diseased and unproductive Nectaplum tree; the fig is doing just fine). Time to get started . . ....

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I Spent a Year Making a Bed

Mr. Homegrown

April 18, 2024

Design

8 Comments

...bait title? But I really did spend almost a year on this with most of that time eaten up teaching myself how to do marquetry and inlay work. As I mentioned before, my first attempts didn’t go well and I spent a lot of time searching for advice on how to do this particular style of Art Nouveau work that almost nobody does anymore. Sanding and finishing metal and wood right next to each other also proved difficult and I’m not entirely satisfied with...

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Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gardening Wisdom

Mr. Homegrown

August 18, 2015

Garden Design, Gardening

2 Comments

...leasure. I think I’ve spent too much time in the installing and not enough time contemplating the placing. In so doing gardening has become more of a chore than a pleasure. Superior gardens are composed of Glooms and Solitudes and not of plants and trees. I take this to mean that a garden should express moods and ideas and not be just a collection of plants or a collection of objects set amidst plants. Finlay’s garden is a poem. While it has a lot...

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