Cottage Wood Hill

This is my most beautiful vegetable garden creation yet! I started this in my raised bed and I’ve recently put netting over this bed to keep the cabbage butterflies out. So far everything is propering.

Flickr photo by Living in Monrovia What I thought originally was a zucchini plant turned out to be pumpkin. I think at one point I put a whole pumpkin in my compost and after moving the composter to a new location, this is what happened! Okay by me…I was having a hard time deciding what [...]

I occasionally buy plants from Home Depot, and couldn’t pass this one up. This “Ultra” Dwarf D’Anjou pear tree was only $18 and will do well in a container. I didn’t even know they came in “ultra” dwarf. I already have a larger pear tree, but you can’t have too many pears in my book. [...]

Flickr photo by Melissa A I just finished watching a poignant PBS video (watched the whole thing online!), Silence of the Bees, about honey bees disappearing around the world. Although I had heard about this problem, called Colony Collapse Disorder, I didn’t realize the severity of it, and hardly ever thought about how most of [...]

I’m always keeping my eye out for information about the safety of the food chain and the dangers of industrial farming practices, and today ran across a story on the change.org website about fertilizer—particularly manure. Sure, we all know that milk without antibiotics is better for us (so we don’t build up resistance in our [...]

Flickr photo by Steevithak Butterflies are a lovely addition to any garden, and I’m thinking of planting a Dutchman’s Pipevine in the far corner of my yard to attract this lovely speciman, the Pipevine Swallowtail. The Dutchman’s Pipevine is a carnivorous plant, and apparently the flowers can have a carrion like smell when they first [...]

I have a volunteer squash where my compost pile used to be and it’s becoming gigantic!