Gardening in an Apartment Windowsill

July 12, 2008

...controls or the weight of the food harvested. It’s about a love for beauty, an attention to detail and an appreciation of good food. Imagine if all our unused or neglected urban spaces were as beautiful and useful as Helen’s garden. We’d live in a world transformed, one windowsill at a time....

Read…

Waking up on New Year’s Day with the world of long crowing roosters

Mr. Homegrown

January 1, 2009

Animals, Chickens

9 Comments

Now I’m not suggesting these guys for urban situations, but New Year’s Day seems an appropriate moment to survey the world of long crowing roosters. According to poultry expert Gail Damerow, writing in the current issue of Backyard Poultry Magazine, long crowers probably have their origins in Japan and have spread throughout the world through deliberate selection. Here’s a play list for your listening pleasure, consisting of a Turkish long crowin...

Read…

In Praise of Disorder

Mr. Homegrown

March 29, 2008

Thoughtstylings

7 Comments

...club presents just the right level of civic inattention to allow the urban homesteader to get away with many of the illegal projects profiled in this blog: greywater, backyard poultry, and front yard vegetable gardening, to mention just a few. Ideally you have a balance between order and disorder–neither gunfire nor the prying eyes of city inspectors. Where I’m staying in Houston, with its flocks of loose chickens, packs of feral dogs, and broken...

Read…

The Great Sunflower Project

Mr. Homegrown

April 1, 2008

Animals, Bees

6 Comments

Help determine the health of urban bees with a citizen science experiment called the Great Sunflower Project. It’s simple and free. Just register at the Great Sunflower Project website and you’ll be sent a package of wild annual sunflower seeds (Helianthus annuus). Twice a month you’ll get an email to remind you to time how long it takes for five bees to visit your sunflowers. Sounds like it has drinking game potential, though that might lead to...

Read…

We’ve taken the flowers out of our hair

Mr. Homegrown

August 21, 2007

Animals, Bikes, Chickens, Thoughtstylings

4 Comments

...us rides two wheels and takes the bus and does indeed look anguished every time we open the gas cap. 2. We took our bike with us and enjoyed the numbered bike routes that take you north-south and east-west. While not perfect (we would have preferred a few more signs to point the way) these routes help a cyclist navigate thought the city taking you down more bike friendly and less hilly streets. The San Francisco bike map (pdf) shows the routes in...

Read…