Our Disastrous Summer Garden

...ed by climate change. Drought, of course, made everything worse. 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. Despi...

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How to Remove Bees from a Wall

...ipment are ready: hammer, crowbar, smoker, bee suits, gloves, knife, sugar water, spray bottle, box and frames, rubber bands, burlap and matches. Suit up Bees are usually pretty mellow to work with but cutouts are an exception. After all, you are breaking and entering their home. This hive was small and not defensive at all, but I’ve done large cutouts where the situation was much more intense. For cutouts I like to use head to tail bee suits like...

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Greywater Design and Installation Workshop

...oduce and how many plants you can water What soaps and detergents are “greywater friendly” Tour Real L2L greywater system Gravity “branched drain” greywater system from sinks Date: February 22, 2014 – 10:00am to 12:30pm Location: Los Angeles EcoVillage 117 Bimini Place LA, CA 90004 Cost: Sliding scale $15 to $40, limited work trade positions available Register HERE Bring: Photographs of your laundry room and landscape. Site plan of your yard. For...

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Saturday Tweets: Cow Appreciation Day

...com/QxzmAXw2Rh — Scratching The Surface (@surfacepodcast) July 9, 2018 Low-water gardens buzz with life. They are bright, brilliant, colorful gardens with as much interest and variety—and in some ways more—than any other gardens. In fact, color and low water go hand in hand. https://t.co/Z4ltkYnlXo pic.twitter.com/oGny74F3TD — Timber Press (@timberpress) July 10, 2018 “Eventually, I gave up on staying on protected bike routes and went for cruising...

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Use Your Microwave as Dough Proofing Box

...t a microwave you’ve got a proofing box. Just heat a mason jar filled with water for a few minutes and stick your dough in for both the bulk fermentation and proofing. If you don’t have a microwave you could heat some water on a stove and put it and your dough in a cooler. If you want to get really fancy you could use a seed propagation heating mat in a cooler. I don’t have a mat so I’ve been using the microwave and it works great. There are reaso...

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