Time for a photo tour! It’s always fun to see what other people are growing, so here’s a tour of my garden. Just click your way through. Do you have photos of your garden somewhere on the interwoobles? Post a link in the comments and let’s all be nosy virtual neighbors.
Top 20 Tips Every Gardener Should Know
I’ve handed out a lot of gardening advice in the 4+ years I’ve been writing here, but some tips are just so timeless I find myself coming back to them over and over. Here are 20 tips I think every gardener should know.
The Life Changing Magic of Folding Socks
On of the great joys of my recent Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up experience was learning how to fold socks. Yes, I know what you are thinking: “What a sad life that chick must have if folding socks bring her joy.” But just wait! When you see how I fold my socks now, you might become a happy-sock-folding…
Carrot Soup with Green Curry and Coconut Milk
This soup didn’t make the final cut for the book. That’s not, I hasten to say, because it’s not absolutely delicious and easy. But we already had a curried soup, and two seemed overkill, so this Thai-flavored smooth and creamy carrot soup ended up on the cutting room floor. When I was cleaning out the…
Updates From The Homestead
I feel like the last several weeks have just been a wild ride of revelation and ducklings and craziness. I want to invite you over to have a big piping mug of coffee or an herbal cocktail, and I want to just talk, because everything is happening faster than I can reasonably chronicle it on…
Duckling Drama
Ducklings have basically taken over my life. Our story starts about two weeks ago, when we find one of our female Ancona ducks killed and, separately, a freshly hatched baby duckling hanging out under the other broody female. The next day, new mama duck Minkie takes the single duckling on a grand tour of the yard, quacking all…
The Life and Death of Ducks
Death Monday was pretty rough. My daughter came in from her normal morning check of the chickens and ducks and said, “I think Frances was attacked.” Out I rushed, and my daughter led me to the trail of feathers, the splatters of blood, the slaughtered but uneaten carcass of our female duck, Frances. Her neck…
The Honey Badger Cocktail
I’m quite sure that, were it not for that viral YouTube video of a Honey Badger, there would be no cocktails celebrating this ferocious, Cobra-snake-eating badass of an animal. The Honey Badger is what you might call an interpretive cocktail. Drinks based off memes are, by definition, not classics. There are as many variations of the Honey Badger Cocktail…
14 Easy Ways To Bring More Flavor To Your Food
There’s no magic to great cooking – but there are a few tricks. When you cook professionally, you’re always trying to find those little things that can help bump up the flavor of a dish. Here are 14 things that make my cooking better. I’d love to know your tips and tricks – if you’ve got something to…
The Cabbageworm Caterpillar In Your Garden: How To Control It
You can always tell the non-gardeners. They’re the ones who see the bland white butterflies with the black spots on their wings fluttering over my cabbage plants and say things like, “Ohmygosh how pretty! Butterflies!” Poor, poor, misguided fools. They never go crazy, like I do, for the dive-bombing glint of dozens of dragonflies. They never…
Eat From The Larder Challenge 2015
Maybe I didn’t plan very well when I enthusiastically committed to doing another Eat From The Larder Challenge this April. We already had a scheduled a family vacation. Non-negotiable. We already had a scheduled dinner-date with friends. Non-negotiable. We were completely out of butter. Clearly, running out of butter is a dire failure of larder maintenance….
Lawn To Garden In A Single Weekend: 6 Easy Steps
Just because gardening is an exercise in patience doesn’t mean gardeners are patient. If you want to join the grow-it-yourself club, and you don’t want to wait, you can turn your unproductive, resource intensive lawn into a ready-to-thrive vegetable garden this weekend. It’ll take some work, but probably less than you think. It’ll take money…