The Return of the Portière?

August 11, 2017

Design

...al establishments, but modern designs also exist. Interior noren are often used to separate dining areas from kitchens or other preparation areas, which also prevents smoke or smells from escaping. The August 1903 issue of Gustav Stickley’s The Craftsman has a few pages devoted to portières. At over $200 each in today’s dollars, these were luxury items. [1] The very same portal that allows our UPS driver a full view of our bathroom has the telltal...

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Root Simple’s New CritterCam

Mr. Homegrown

August 18, 2014

Animals

8 Comments

.... I’ll share the results on the blog over the next year. The first night I used the camera I pointed it at the grape arbor where I know rats visit. The resulting images, that I strung together into the video above, show at least two rats who set off the camera around 30 times throughout the night between 8:30 PM and 5:30 AM. This is the first year that we’ve got a significant crop off of either of our two grapevines. I think I could have prevented...

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Be Idle

Mr. Homegrown

December 3, 2006

Thoughtstylings

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...the new simplicity. A compelling speaker, Andrews echoed our wariness and used the Slow Food movement as an counter-example to the pitfalls of the simplicity movement. The Slow Food movement began in Italy as a reaction to the invasion of American style fast food which threatened Italy’s rich culinary traditions. The genius of the Slow Food movement according to Andrews, is that it linked the pleasures of good food with the issues of knowing wher...

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On the Problem of Food Storage and Hoarding

Mr. Homegrown

October 29, 2018

Domesticus, Tidying up

23 Comments

...the utility room. Those shelves quickly filled with aspirational but never used ingredients such as tapioca flour as well as mediocre food preservation projects that I just couldn’t admit defeat on. Our kitchen’s ample built-in cabinets. When it came time for our painters to work on the utility room we decided to take down the shelves and try to live with the storage built for the original inhabitants of this house. Now I’ve noticed that when I go...

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Our Keyhole Vegetable Bed: What Worked and What Didn’t Work

Mr. Homegrown

April 17, 2013

Gardening, Vegetable Gardening

10 Comments

...t back in October. Note the compost repository in the center of the bed. I used straw wattle (available where professional irrigation supplies are sold) to form the sides of the keyhole. A month later in November a few seedlings were popping up. I had to robustify the skunk barrier (made out of bird netting) after repeated skunk raids. What worked: The compost decomposed nicely and seemed to attract insect life. Stuff grew. What didn’t work: I did...

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