I’m traveling home today from southwest Florida, where it is — as my father is fond of saying — another lousy day in paradise. I am leaving Naples to head back to Minnesota where the weather has been rainy, windy, and really lousy during the few days I’ve been visiting my folks. The weather here has been fabulous, with temps…
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Something both surprising and a little worrisome has happened to one of my favorite trees. A crack about 6 feet long and as wide as my pinky finger in some spots has opened up along the trunk of the oak that sits on the north side of our house. As far as I can tell, the crack opened up over…
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As vegetable gardeners salivate over catalogs during the long winter nights, the perennial question emerges: Should I plant bush or pole beans? During the Vegetable Gardening 101 class I attended at Just Food Co-op, Laura Frerichs of Loon Organics offered a good summary of the pros and cons of each. Bush Beans: Generally, they are earlier to harvest, with beans…
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I’ve been reading Julie Moir Messervy’s excellent new book, Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love, which gives homeowners several techniques for figuring out what they want from their yard and garden and how to achieve it. One of her suggestions is to name your landscape. Here’s what she says: Naming helps you establish a theme that will provide an…
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I spent most evenings over the past week digging through the stacks of seed catalogs that have been arriving at my house since Thanksgiving. While I probably get more catalogs than most gardeners, it struck me how daunting it is to decide what to grow, if you are a beginning vegetable gardener. So — as a gardener who has watched…
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