“For nearly as long as they’ve been popular, lawns have served as a totem of middle-class vulgarity, conformity, and excess. In her landmark 1962 book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson denounced the wanton use of lawn pesticides. Carson’s contemporary, activist Lorrie Otto, condemned yards as ‘sterile’ and ‘flagrantly wasteful.’ Polemics as cutting as a mower’s blade have proliferated in the decades since, but lawns abide. Spivak and her team come not to bury them, but to adapt them to the insects vital to the entire ecosystem—and our food supply.”

— Tom Philpott,
Your Perfect Green Lawn Is a Buzz Kill.
Mother Jones,

Continue reading “It’s time to change the standard for American lawns”

It’s time to change the standard for American lawns

Posted in Progress

Hidden Treasure!

The garage bed is one we have not yet cleared in its entirety.  This is partly due to the copious amounts of tiny thorned berry creepers as well as the fact that some time in the past someone put landscape cloth over the entire thing which of course is now broken down into plastic fiber-y bits and a pain to get out given all the plants that have pushed through over time.

Today I finally remembered to cut back the old growth on the red raspberries on the southern end, and while doing that I started clearing around the nearby daylily as well…and then I found a hidden treasure.

Continue reading “Hidden Treasure!”