The Plot Thickens

I’ve been a little remiss in photographing our garden lately. These pictures are from late September, when our summer squash peaked. Last week we tore out almost everything so we can mix up some new planter box soil and start fresh with new seeds. We’ve decided to let the squash remain—for now. Its days are numbered.

We’re not sure what to plant next, but we already have two spontaneous rose bushes courtesy of our neighbor’s seeds falling over the fence into our plot. More free roses!

R. Hall and B. Affleck - "The Town"

On another note, we just watched “The Town” last night on free Showtime weekend. Watching Rebecca Hall tend to her community garden plot, all I could think is, “Ugh. She’s one of those people whose plot is a jungle.” We have neighbors like that in our garden. Their plots are overgrown, intertwined tumbles of sage brush and lilacs. There isn’t a whole lot you can do with them except stand outside and water them from a safe distance.

Link: The Cash-and-Carry House

Here’s a link to an article about people who are salvaging prefab homes and dragging them to cheap land they’ve bought. This is another variation on the tiny house phenomenon, combined with the green urge to recycle. This “alternative lifestyle,” “homesteading,” “hoarding money is not as important as having a good quality of life” trend is very interesting to me.

Your Own Private (Snowy) Mountain

This link to Urban Rancher’s blog has nothing to do with community gardening, but I’m sharing it because it falls into the category of my two latest obsessions:

Building or buying a tiny house
Putting it on a vacant piece of rural land (preferably in Central NY State, but I wouldn’t sneeze at a California mountaintop like this, as well)

More gardening posts soon, I promise. We have some pictures somewhere of summer squash the size of my calf. And by calf I mean “lower leg,” not “baby cow.” Livestock is still a long way off in my future.

Link: Los Angeles River Tries on New Role, as Waterway

I hope the L.A. River becomes a usable kayaking and canoeing attraction, but it’s impossible to imagine how the city would restrict the river access when it floods and becomes wildly dangerous to the inexperienced. I’m thinking armed guards…? Something about that image is very L.A.

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I’ve emerged from my summer blogging hibernation to say, “Woot! Go SUNY!” Yesterday I didn’t know anything about SUNY Binghamton, which lies a bit west of where we live every summer. Today, I know that they’re a green college. Most excellent.

mothernaturenetwork:

2012 Green College Honor Roll
    •    American University (Washington, D.C.) 
    •    Arizona State University (Tempe, Ariz.) 
    •    College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine) 
    •    Dickinson College (Carlisle, Pa.) 
    •    Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta)
    •    Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.) 
    •    Northeastern University (Boston) 
    •    Oregon State University (Corvallis, Ore.) 
    •    San Francisco State University (San Francisco, Calif.) 
    •    Binghamton University, State University of New York
    •    University of California (Santa Cruz, Calif.) 
    •    University of Maine (Orono, Maine) 
    •    University of Washington (Seattle) 
    •    University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point 
    •    Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Va.) 
    •    Warren Wilson College (Asheville, N.C.)

Learn more about these eco-friendly institutions.

Vacay Away Message

We’re away from our urban garden for the summer as usual. I’ll be moving around the Northeast, a roving ghostwriter/book marketer. If I remember to take and share garden photos, I will, but expect to see some re-blogged items on the following semi-related lifestyle subjects in the meantime: cooking, baking, camping, hiking, biking and kayaking.

I like this one. The only campfire dessert I’ve ever improvised was a baked apple with brown sugar and raisins. It turned out to be pretty excellent. Thanks to Girl Scouts, I also highly recommend banana boats (scoop out a trough, stuff with chocolate chips & mini-marshmallows, put the skin flap back down, wrap in foil, throw in fire, remove with tongs).

mothernaturenetwork:

Bake a mini-cake in your orange peel. Here’s how.

8 delicious desserts to make around (or in) a campfire

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WOW. I believe the appropriate response to this development is an excited, “Holy crap!”

Caveat: with sewage and drowning concerns (and expense: trips are $50), this may not be family-friendly fun, but it’s certainly great news for those of us who want to see the L.A. River reclaimed, and for those of us who love to kayak flat water but have no place within easy distance of L.A. in which to practice the sport.

hereonmystar:

latimes:

Canoe, kayak trips planned along stretch of L.A. River: The 3-mile route along the San Fernando Valley’s Sepulveda Basin flood control channel will take participants through dense vegetation in water up to 15 feet deep.

Tickets for the Los Angeles River adventure are expected to go on sale as early as July 8, and promoters are promising a ride like no other.

Glen Jochimsen makes his way past a large graffiti image painted on the concrete banks of the L.A. River during a section known as the Glendale Narrows. View more photos on Framework. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

This is something I would like to do! I live right by Sepulveda.

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

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Frozen home grown spinach on top of Trader Joe’s polenta

Hipster Housewife: Make a Rocking Garden Guardian

Looks like fun.

hipsterhousewife:

One of the odd things I’ve moved around from apartment to apartment to apartment to house is a little blue cement frog my high school bestie and I painted together the summer after graduation.

We’d put him in the garden, but he needed an update.

I got out the Rustoleum Ultra Cover — a great…

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Zucchini, watermelon, patty pan squash, marigolds, calabaza.