cultivating a sustainable life
We’ve had two gorgeous days in a row and the flowers are bustin’ out. The view down our street is one of my favorite things about this house, the cherry trees are amazing. The photo doesn’t show it very well, but when they planted the …
I’m falling behind in my seed starting this year, as planting has had to take a back seat to everything else we’ve been doing lately. I did manage to start my onions a few weeks ago, though.I grew onions from seed for the first time …
It’s really hard to have the February blahs when the sun is shining. It’s even more difficult when you step outside and notice that there are flowers blooming! The crocuses are poking their heads out of the soil… …and the apricot tree is starting to …
Today was a beautiful, sunny day and I found myself with a bad case of spring fever – getting out into the garden was the only way of dealing with that.I planted out some Jerusalem Artichokes, transplanted my Arctic Beauty kiwis from the back yard …
We had a nice, relatively quiet weekend (our weekend is Sunday/Monday), puttering and getting a few things done around the house. I pruned the fruit trees that needed pruning (we put in one each of apple, apricot, pear, cherry, peach, plum and fig trees last …
I finally sat down and sorted my seeds out today, deciding what I need to order more of, what I’m going to sacrifice to free up some space in the garden, and what kinds of new things I’d like to try this year. I’ve been …
I’ve been feeling like a total ingrate all day for my little rant about the house last night, because I’m ecstatic that we were actually able to buy anything here, let alone something that’s cute (in spite of it’s aforementioned flaws) and in a nice …
The recent snowfall has been wreaking havoc on local plants. Trees everywhere are breaking from the weight, including a beautiful old willow tree just up the block, and I noticed today that my rhododendron has several broken branches. Some things are holding up though, and …
Our November weather has been absolutely crazy. We’ve had flooding, severe winds that knocked out power and destroyed several houses, and landslides that have filled the city’s reservoirs with silt, resulting in a boil water advisory for the past two weeks (and counting).Today’s forecast includes …
Today I finally got around to doing the long overdue cleaning of the mason bee house. I put a bee house in our yard a couple of years ago hoping to help increase the numbers of these threatened pollinators, and with the hope that their …