Seven Deadly Sins In The GardenPride “Looks like Sally hasn’t gotten her beans in yet. My beans are already to the top of the trellis. People are going to notice when I’m eating fresh beans three weeks before Sally.” Greed “I’m grabbing all the basil starts I can carry at the plant sale. Outta my way,…
Productive Home
No Spend July: Be A Cheap Bastard For A Month
It’s July and that means our No Spend Month Challenge is in effect. If you’ve been following along on Facebook or on the blog, you know that June is a spendy series of weeks for us and July seems like a natural month to reign in hard on the spending. That’s where NSM comes into…
DIY vs BUY Dishwashing Detergent
We were unloading the dishwasher yesterday and Homebrew Husband pulled a sparkling wine glass out of the top rack. Forgive me that ad-copy imagery, it irritates me even to write it, but there it is: the night before we had enjoyed wine with friends, and my man willingly unloads the dishwasher. The new look of better…
Father's Day Dreams
As boys, we are taught to dream big. To throw the game-winning touchdown, to fly the Space Shuttle, to slay the dragon. The world is our oyster, we can be anything. Over time, the probabilistic realities of life and our own limitations get in the way. We grow up and take the jobs that our…
Fear And Sowing In Suburbia
I had a long conversation with my mother-in-law yesterday. She lives in California, and she told me that word on the Cali street is, if your home is burgled you don’t call the cops, because they won’t come. Because of budget cuts, there aren’t enough police officers to take a report at the scene of the crime….
Of Watts and Watt-Hours
This post has nothing to do with gardening – but it does have a great deal to do with sustainability and environmental awareness. It follows up to Erica’s experimentation with the Kill-A-Watt with a (brief) engineering lesson. Please, don’t be scared. I studied engineering for three years before realizing I hated it switching to English…
A Public Defense Of The Enthusiastic Beginner
It has come to my attention that some of the best voices on the internet – writers I admire and read and am dedicated to – would rather chew their own arms off than see another damned blog post about homemade yogurt. Okay, I get it. It’s yogurt. Homemade yogurt is so done. Jams and…
Hope In A Bottle
For the first 30ish years of my life, I enjoyed stuff as much as the average American. I bought a lot of it, and used it, and got pissed off when I had to dust it. When my stuff got a little long in the tooth, I tossed it out and bought more stuff. Several…
Life At Walking Speed
The stars aligned yesterday. Everyone was up and dressed early, it was a beautiful sunny morning, breakfast and a packed school lunch came together without a fuss. My daughter was done eating her breakfast and we had an easy half-hour until we had to be at the bus stop, so we walked. It’s a long half-mile to…
Can You Get Arrested if You Kill-A-Watt?
My local library system has partnered with my local power company to make Kill-A-Watt energy meters available for check-out, just like a book or video. A few weeks ago, I checked out a Kill-A-Watt. These things look like a remote control and a power strip had a baby. You plug your appliance into the Kill-A-Watt,…
Urban Homesteading for Corporate Tools
For those of you transitioning from the corporate world to the homestead, I have prepared this helpful guide, dual homed with one foot in a Muck Boot and the other in a Wingtip Oxford. Though they may seem divergent, the core competencies of gardening and cubicle wrangling are not so different after all. The language…
There's Not Going To Be An Earthquake. But If There Is…
“There’s not going to be an earthquake. It’s not going to happen. But if there is an earthquake, we have to be prepared.” So began the neighborhood meeting on emergency preparedness. Six of us gathered, representing about half the homes on the block. We wanted to talk about disaster readiness from a local community perspective. We talked…