Cactus Thief Strikes Again

April 24, 2014

...and the Thorny Response Will Have You in Tears.” Stoic philosopher Epictetus set me straight on what I should really do. He says, “Stop admiring your clothes and you are not angry at the man who steals them . . . our losses and our pains have to do only with the things we posses.” (Discourses Book 1.18) And wanting to posses a Home Depot cactus is quite pathetic. It reminds me of something a friend told me, “Never drive by and look at a garden in...

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Food Preservation Disasters

Mr. Homegrown

April 2, 2014

Food, Food Preservation, Mistakes

16 Comments

...me preservation projects. Some of the recipes I tried were from unfamiliar books and dubious websites. Some sources I’ve come to trust: The National Center for Home Food Preservation’s website. Kevin West’s book Saving the Season: A Cook’s Guide to Home Canning, Pickling, and Preserving . Between those two sources I’ve got just about all the recipes I need. One Ring to rule them all When you’re done processing jars and they’ve cooled down, remove...

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Why You Should Avoid Staking Trees

Mr. Homegrown

November 26, 2012

Fruit Trees, Gardening, Miscellaneous, Trees

6 Comments

...efits from chaos and shock. This idea is the subject of Nassim Taleb’s new book on what he calls “anti-fragility“. By contrast, natural or organic systems are antifragile: They need some dose of disorder in order to develop. Deprive your bones of stress and they become brittle. This denial of the antifragility of living or complex systems is the costliest mistake that we have made in modern times. Stifling natural fluctuations masks real problems,...

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Defining a Garden’s Purpose

Mr. Homegrown

July 8, 2013

Garden Design, Gardening

13 Comments

...imagine living in the building and wandering down to the garden to read a book, do some work on a laptop, throw a party or simply to soak in the overwhelming peacefulness of this lush space. Sean Stout looking down on the garden from the balcony of his apartment. It’s also clear that the Organic Mechanics created this garden on a budget. The materials were scavenged, but carefully chosen (I’m often too indiscriminate with the objects I place in t...

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How to Bake a Traditional German Rye Bread

Mr. Homegrown

December 5, 2012

Bread, Fermentation, Food, How-to, Recipes

33 Comments

...00% whole rye sourdough loaves. I’ve used as my guide a nicely illustrated book How to Make Bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. His specialty is just the sort of rustic German style breads I’ve always wanted to learn to bake. What I love in particular about his caraway rye sourdough loaf (pictured above) is the crust. Unlike most other breads you don’t slash it before tossing it in the oven. The goal is a kind of perfect imperfection–a hard, thick cru...

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