Beware of linen in wolves’ clothing

I decided several years ago to beef up the amount of linen clothing I have. It’s a beautiful fabric that while wrinkly as all get out, wears well, breathes and has, I believe, a natural elegance about it that faux-fiber clothing simply can’t match. One of my best sources for linen clothes is thrift stores. [...]

Earth Day: My style

I’m spending much of the week up at Buckland Farm. Good friends Dan and Carrie are new farmers, having just purchased their farm in January of this year, and there is much to do here, many things to start — from seedlings and plants to marketing and communications projects, both of which I’m a part-time [...]

Freecycle your perennials: give and get

A Letter to the Editor I submitted to the Columbia Flier was published this week. It’s about Freecycling.org and using the site for sharing your wealth of perennials … or about receiving from the abundance of others. I’m glad the Flier ran the editorial. And — just to be super-clear about my hypocrisy on this [...]

ChickenCam: My first-ever video.

Tonight I made my first video ever. It’s ChickenCam and features the growing chicks at my friends’ new farm: Buckland Farm in Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Here’s the video: If getting a close-up of chicks, farm life and stunning clear night skies sounds like your idea of fun, they’re opening their bed and breakfast in May. [...]

Oh em gee, that’s my sister!

Haha. This is a great pic I just saw. My sister is a leader in her community for the practice of seed saving and seed swapping, among other things. This is a pic of her, as part of the Richmond Grows Seed Library. Adorable! She soooo rocks!

Resurrection.

I love this time of year. I love watching the Earth — and all her pieces — wake up, emerge. I love seeing that which was dead, transformed to become something anew. A couple years back, interestingly — or oddly, depending on your perspective — I went on a binge collecting dry, raked leaves. I believe [...]

Blueberry and mango smoothie. Keeping it simple.

The weather in the DC Metropolitan area yesterday was gorgeous! I celebrated that it was a Good Friday, indeed, with an annual tradition (chore) of digging out the compost pile. This is not a small project. Ever. But I get giddy and gleeful when I come across the hot zone for worms. I find it [...]

Fight global warming. Promote global WORMing.

How to build a worm bin. A video sent to me from my sister. … Who is both avid — and a bit of a nut (in the loving and adoring and I know-her-so-well version of “a nut) — about acquiring and using environmental smarts. She’s an inspiration to me in identifying what’s important to [...]

I’ll take the soup of the day and the flu buster.

I have my own relationship to food. To health. To my body. I find myself intrigued and compelled to things that seem logical, Godly and easy. In that, I like the concept that food is God’s kindest and smartest medicine for strength and capacity, for curative powers and for prevention. And while I eat my [...]

My best-ever tomato salad

So, you may ask, what was I thinking, buying tomatoes in mid-September? Shouldn’t my appetite for garden-fresh tomatoes be waning and my thoughts moving to squashes, beets, cabbage and the vegetables of fall? Well, I was at Second Sunday, a delightful market in Historic Ellicott City, and the farmers were nice, and the price was [...]

I need to buy some grass.

I’m looking for grass, but I don’t want to buy it from just any source. No, I need a specific kind of dealer … a transaction that makes me feel safe and confident. See, I’m looking to build up the organic material I can add in coming years to my garden, and I want to [...]

Scratch and sniff.

Oh, if only the internet offered a scratch-and-sniff option. Your nose might be as happy as mine is at this moment. Those are fresh strawberries, right out of the garden. Fresh, fragrant and home-grown. And gone. Took me but a minute or two to eat them all after taking this photo.

Earth Day: Gettin’ wiggly wit it

It’s Earth Day weekend, so to speak. Everyone’s going green. Except me. Hey, call me an iconic gen xer. I’m just so tired of causes, preaching and big-cost events to show alignment with values. So, I skipped the Green Apple Festival in DC and went brown. Yes, brown as in earth, dirt, soil. See, yesterday, [...]

Local Wild Life Hero

Michael Oberman, ozoni11 on flickr, tells a story of a how one of his photos, and the concern and action of a few others, saved this beautiful Great Blue Heron from death. Here’s the story, below, but you gotta click to see the pics. From a Feb. 2008 post on Michael’s flickr account – For [...]

A gardener’s paradise on Freecycle ?

I think it would be just grand if there was a Gardeners’ Paradise on Freecycle. A site just for perennial plants wanted and given. A site where people could find homes for (as opposed to The Dump, aka Alpha Ridge Landfill) their unwanted hardscape. A place where neighbors could help neighbors beautify their yards and [...]

SuperTonic Plague Fighter: A recipe

Every couple of years, I make a whopping batch of SuperTonic Plague Fighter, a recipe I got from the avid proselytizer of natural health solutions: Dr. Richard Schulze . I like to make my batch on special days. I made a Blue Moon batch in 2001, a Night of the Living Dead batch in 2003 [...]

Burn and Blister Cure

I just read this article. Found it fascinating: egg whites to stop burn pain and prevent blistering. I’ve never used it as a cure, and I’m curious to know if anyone else had heard of (used) such a method. And with what degree of success … Home remedies, especially for urgent situations, interest me.

Geese Police Franchises Available

It’s time to get those fake-lake-lovin’ geese packing. And there appears to be money to be made in the process.

Be kind to the butterflies

They were pushing ‘weed. Milkweed, that is. I met some ladies at the Takoma Park Folklife Festival, and they explained to me that the monarch butterfly, which traverses crazy distances (3,200 miles) to chill with its homeboys in Mexico, needs milkweed to lay its eggs. See, not one butterfly flies the whole distance to Mexico. [...]

Weed? Grass? What’s the difference?

Well, if you’re a human, “weed” and “grass” may seem to be the same thing. But if you were a goat … well, there’s a world of difference. And this distinction may provide some interesting options for controlling scrub. Did you know? Goats prefer weeds over grass; they also seem to like sticky, thorny plants. [...]