Quick Tip: DIY Decaf Tea

...tea as you normally would, but start counting as soon as you pour the hot water. After at least 30 seconds but no more than 1 minute you pour off all of what has brewed so far. And yes, that’s all the good stuff. It’s sad, but being all headachey and jittery is sad too, so I do it. Then you top off the tea leaves with fresh hot water and start the brew again. This one you drink. Commercially decaf tea is lower in caffeine than this homebrew–just...

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An Ancient Quince Recipe

...website, but to summarize you simply cook quince in equal parts honey and water until it turns red. The addition of a small amount of cracked pepper cuts the sweetness ever so slightly. You can then process the jars in a hot water bath. The end result is quince slices preserved in honey. It turned out great and, without having to worry about the jell point, reduced the anxiety level associated with preserving my entire harvest at once. Do you hav...

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Compost Piles on Fire!

...en with a low moisture, large pile with little air exchange, combined with water getting into the pile in a place where there is enough air to support biological activity and chemical oxidation, but not enough to cool the pile. An old, dry compost pile, or a pile of overs screened out of the finished product, is a case in point. Water seeping into the dry compost can restart microbial activity and initiate reheating. A “macropore” or crack from th...

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Behold the Ant Lion

...have been made by a big man’s thumb. I might think it was made by dripping water, if there was ever any water anywhere in this dry land. The answer was “ant lion” — and I was the only one among them who did not know the answer. Ant lion??? It was such as strange conjunction of terms (see jackalope) that I thought they were pulling my leg. When I got home and checked the Internets, I realized that, as always, truth is stranger than fiction. The nam...

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Will the Lawn Rebate Turn LA into a Gravel Moonscape?

...nintended consequences! Drought conditions here in California prompted our water utilities to offer rebates for ripping out water hungry lawns. Unfortunately, as Ivette Soler has pointed out in a blog post, “The Road to Hell is Paved with Chunky Gravel and Indifferently Chosen Plants,” unscrupulous “landscapers” are taking those rebates and installing gravel and mulch moonscapes. It’s an education problem. For most people plants are a sort of gree...

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