When it’s time to remove a tree

October 22, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening

...ing two shrubs too close together, so now they’re crowding one another and making a sort of Frankenstein hedge, you have to correct it. Gardening has a huge learning curve. You’re going to make mistakes. It’s inevitable. You have to fix the problem. If the plant in question is thriving, full of rude health, not poorly placed but not fitting into your future plans, meditate on that. A thriving plant–the kind that doesn’t seem to need any care at al...

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SIPS and Kraut at Project Butterfly

Mr. Homegrown

August 24, 2009

Events

2 Comments

...108 Los Angeles CA 90013 Blurbs: “The Urban Homestead…touches on vegetable gardening, poultry, DIY cleaning products and beer making — all outlined with a sense of play and fun. —Whole Life Times “…a delightfully readable and very useful guide to front- and back-yard vegetable gardening, food foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping, and other useful skills for anyone interested in taking a more active role in growing and preparing the food they...

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Making the Shed Great Yet Again

Mr. Homegrown

February 17, 2020

Design, Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

Here’s a picture from May of 1999 showing our late doberman Spike guarding me while I worked on our then 90 now 100 year old shed. Guess what I’m doing over 20 years later? Working on the same shed. Me in 1999. In 2020 I need glasses. The shed has gone through two previous improvement battles starting with shoving a foundation under it, electrification and strengthening the floor followed by a somewhat misguided attempt at insulation and ceiling...

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Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)

Mrs. Homegrown

June 2, 2016

Domesticus, Food, How-to, Solar Oven Summer

8 Comments

...ambitious you could sew in an elastic band to hold the cover tight. How-To Making the cloths is very easy. All you have to do is cut some squares or circles of thin cotton fabric, like muslin. Pink the edges if you have pinking shears–this looks better, but I don’t think the edges will unravel much anyway, because of the wax. Size depends on intended use. I can imagine eventually having a range of sizes and shapes. For instance, I’m imagining that...

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Adventures in Extreme Making: The White Rose

Mr. Homegrown

February 9, 2017

Design

2 Comments

For reasons I can’t fully articulate, I often think about an obscure film by the artist Bruce Conner called “The White Rose.” Conner’s film documents the moving of a huge and mysterious painting by the artist Jay DeFeo. The painting is so large that the moving company had to cut a hole in the wall of DeFeo’s second second floor apartment to get it out. Perhaps the appeal of this film is the problem solving or the obsessiveness of DeFeo. Or maybe...

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