If bugs wrote books, they would probably begin their book on the human era, “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…..” They would probably consider it a slightly scary book. I thought the Master Gardener Volunteer program (see my post Becoming a Master Gardener ) […]
You can beat it, but don’t eat it You may have read that the root of wild parsnip is edible – and even sweet, after being exposed to cold. But don’t risk it. We are at war with this plant. It is armed and dangerous, and blatantly defies the Geneva […]
Amphibians seem to be under siege these days, but in our little pond, they are thriving, so I hate to mess with success. Nonetheless, I have watched the pond pack itself more tightly every year with some kind of pondweed. I thought it was Eurasian Milfoil, but what is growing […]
We DON”T want to build our house out of two-by-fours and drywall. So what will we build it out of? Last weekend we explored the straw/clay insulation technique at a workshop offered by the Driftless Folk School taught by the Robert Schulz and his wife Summer. Their own home is […]
I always love the drive to our land, getting closer and closer as the highway skims the top edge of the long, high Military Ridge that shows up on every topographical map of Wisconsin till we turn south onto the country lane and drop into our little valley. It’s a […]
I love going to the farmers market and buying fresh produce, bringing it home and eating it as close to immediately as makes sense. But I would not like to be on the other side of the equation – the farmer who has poured so much resource and labor into […]
Yesterday was Doug’s and my 32nd anniversary. It is serendipitous that our anniversary is also Earth Day, but it makes a fantastic reminder of the values that drew us together in the first place. This year we celebrated by planting our raspberry patch. According to Growing Raspberries in Wisconsin, “with […]
April 2. The temperature floated up into the 70s in Madison Wisconsin yesterday. Time to think about spring cleaning. For me its time for more. We are planning the house we will build on our land. It will be a lot smaller than our current house. It’s time to declutter. […]
The snow has receded to tiny patches on northern hill slopes. The plates of ice are floating on the mostly-open surface of the pond, and that has freed the Western Chorus Frogs, who began singing three days ago. These are tiny little frogs no bigger than the tip of a […]
OR, GRAVITY ISN’T JUST A GOOD IDEA — IT’S THE LAW As Doug wrote in his recent post, Two Tree Herders Upgrade their Saws, we have a lot of trees to trim. Our architect, Della Hansmann, works with Roald Gundersen of Whole Trees Architecture, who builds homes from whole trees, […]
Digging in the Driftless 