I See Men as Trees Walking

February 22, 2008

...Above, the image of a “Vegetable Caterpillar”, an unlucky hybrid between vegetable and insect, from an essay by Lily Pepper on the implications of animal/vegetable hybrids brought about by advances in genetic manipulation. Read this excellent essay in the current issue of Steps Magazine here....

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DIY Christmas Trees

Mrs. Homegrown

December 11, 2012

Design

5 Comments

A while ago Erik posted a link to an Instructable on how to make chairs out of scrapwood. William, author of that project, just let us know that he’s done a holiday Intructable on how to make a cute and quick modernist “flat pack” Christmas tree. This sent me into an internet rabbit hole, wherein I procrastinated for a long time by reading about homemade Christmas-tree-like-structures. Two favorites: 1) The Mountain Dew Christmas tree. On one han...

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Made in the shade- Passive cooling

Homegrown Neighbor

September 28, 2009

Domesticus

14 Comments

...de, make sure to provide them with a cool, shady spot for hot summer days. Trees can also provide valuable shade for your house. Leafy trees will protect your house from the direct rays of the sun. Shade prevents solar heat gain. Pure and simple. Deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the Winter can allow sunlight to enter your house in the cool season, making them ideally suited to passive heating and cooling. You can also shade your windows....

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Did Kelly follow her 2012 resolutions?

Mrs. Homegrown

December 31, 2012

Miscellaneous

11 Comments

...-Learn to identify trees. What a crappy goal. It’s too vaguely stated. All trees? How many trees? I do know a few more trees this year than I did last year. -Take up archery again. This means starting with practice in the back yard once or twice a week, until I have the chops back enough to visit the range without embarrassment. Uh….nope. As a partial defense, I will say there was a huge dirt pile blocking our target for at least 6 months this yea...

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Planting in a Post-Wild World

Mrs. Homegrown

October 19, 2015

Back to the Garden, Garden Design, Gardening

25 Comments

...ies present. Woodland/shrubland relates to the typical suburban yard where trees and shrubs mix with lawn. The forest is for those lucky enough to have land with stands of trees. Planting in Post-Wild World is not a simple how-to book. In fact, there’s nothing simple about it at all– but it is very clear. Its goals are ambitious, and while it might seem like it was written for designers, it can be used by a determined home gardener. It has to be,...

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