Running the natural course

Plants are waking up, stretching their leaves and saying hello.  Those tuckered out from a long fall and winter of growing are setting seed, ensuring their place in the gardens next year.

Most projects only get a few minutes of attention here and there. Just like building soil, everything requires time, so time gets split between chores. Painting the playhouse would be a prime example. The tee pee won't be finished until the peas grow and climb. 

{Click on the images to see them larger}

A stark reminder

This (though this view is from a different angle) was the view from our kitchen window on Saturday.   We need some work done on the house foundation, which meant a little bit of cutting, and pruning was needed.
Instead of just clearing out just what was needed, we also cleared out the volunteer privet, a source of tension between us and the neighbor. We've had an ongoing battle of the wits with our neighbor about the area, the trees and the "messy" hedge. They prefer topped trees and open lawn, we prefer figs to eat and oxygen to breathe.

By 2 PM Sunday, the street was lined with privet and fig debris. The pine branches are from a 3-day, 3 40 year old tree-toppling spree performed by professionals. I won't go into why those trees came down, except to say they were too tall for a certain person's taste.

The view from the kitchen window now looks out into Blandsville, a stark reminder of our suburban lifestyle.

Are you noting the tinge of sadness (and depth of bitterness) as I write this? It's kind of a shock to me, the difference. I take comfort in the privacy the trees offered and the bareness of the space has left me feeling quite bare. Soon enough we'll fill the space with more appropriate plants, but in the meantime it feels quite like an open wound.

down wind of chemical stench

My lengthy dislike for Scotts MiracleGro products started when I was just getting interested in gardening. Scotts was suing TerraCycle for using green and yellow on their packaging, though I never really believed that was all it was about. Perhaps a small start up company with a great idea for reused packaging and simple organic ingredients was putting a hurting on a major corporation's profits. Whatever it was, Scotts image seemed like the popular football star stuffing a nerdy kid in a locker.

Companies like Scotts promote chemical use in the garden, persistent chemicals that perpetuate reliance for gigantic yields and "weed-free" gardens. They promote the idea that a singular plant (grass) is the only acceptable basis of a beautiful, lush yard. A single variety plant space, such as a weed free lawn, is known as a monocrop, and a monocrop's lack of diversity can create all sorts of issues that need other synthetic products to resolve.

I won't get into the many uses of weeds...well maybe for just a second--some of those weeds might replace your prescription medicine, others could be pulled up and used to make an organic plant food, yet others simply feed the wildlife in your yard. Perhaps if the critters had natural forage they wouldn't go after your tomatoes and you wouldn't need that Scotts brand pesticide after all.

The more I learn about gardening, the more I learn that popular kid in the green and gold uniform had a few unsavory secrets. Enter stage left: Monsanto, wealthy, smooth-talking hip best friend to Scotts. Monsanto's own GMO-tainted politics does nothing to endear me to Scotts. 


To put my feelings into perspective, let's talk about something most people have some level of concern about: the honeybees. We've all heard about the rapid decline of bee populations and what will happen if they keep mysteriously dying. Bees an accessible environmental issue: less bees, less pollination, less productive crops, less food, higher food prices, food shortages...you get the idea. Scotts sells all sorts of weed killer monocrop the hell out of your yard. Make it all grass, get rid of that nasty clover...that nasty clover that bees find so useful as a source of food. Yeah, food, that little thing that keeps us all alive. Of course, Scotts' BFF Monsanto, the company that sues farmers whose crops have accidentally cross-pollinated with Monsanto GMO crops. The GMO crops that may or may not contribute to the decline of bee populations, certainly contributing to the loss of monarch butterfly populations (another handy insect that pollinates plants).

And then the National Wildlife Federation announced its partnership with Scotts. Frankly I took the news personally. I felt like an old friend went and made out with the dude that used to tease me every day about being flat-chested. Betrayal.


How do you feel about the partnership? Care, don't care, wish I'd saved my breath for some pretty furniture and lovely pictures?

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You Grow Girl and Native Plants and Wildlife Gardens discuss the new partnership on their blogs.

I finished my 30-day grain fast last weekend. After a couple experiments with wheat since them I've decided to stick with very limited wheat. Seriously, people, a couple days after the detox I had a sandwich followed by an hour of very sharp pain.

Seems there might be something to this gluten sensitivity after all, sayeth the nay sayer. *sigh*

Here's to a wheat free weekend.

Vacation, all I ever wanted

Pardon the disappearance,we made it to the beach and had a lovely vacation. In fact, we came back so well rested we spent the past couple days doing some intense cleaning including, but not limited to: the refrigerator and steam cleaning all the rugs in the house.

Cleaning is not a normal pre-vacation activity, but I knew I'd be much happier coming home to a clean house than a messy one. Then spending a week in a house without stacks of papers and clutter made it hard to come home to a clean yet cluttered space.

With clean spaces all around and a well rested body and spirit, I'm finally ready to really tackle a few personal goals: really digging into Beautiful You, a book introduced to me by Amber Karnes. I meant to do the book club but didn't get my book until too late and excuses and more excuses.

Now I feel ready. What about you? Do you feel as beautiful as you actually are?