being not doing

After many delays, I finally updated the version of WordPress I’m using to one that supports tags. In an effort to blend in more (hah!) I’ve been going back and finessing old entries to have fewer categories and more tags. In the meantime, things may look a little odd, for which I apologize.
Once [...]

As a general rule, I don’t like to spread poisons around. Not inside the house, not on the lawn, not to kill bugs, and not on any of the plants I’ve planted. There are, of course, exceptions. For the first couple of years we lived here, we sprayed poison in a perimeter [...]

First of the Gay Butterflies Butterfly Weed assortment to bloom.
One of my goals in selecting plants to add to our garden is to attract more butterflies and predator insects. As with the desire to have more birds, it’s my hope that the mosquitoes can be kept to a minimum by natural predation. So [...]

Freshly installed rain barrel, with rhododendron.
I have two overarching goals with regard to our house: (1) to make the entire enterprise of living here more energy efficient and (2) to make the yard and garden more pleasant and usable. Rain barrels address both of these aims to a certain degree, by reducing the amount [...]

There have always been a lot of birds around our yard, but this year we seem to have hit a sweet spot in terms of cover and food because we’ve seen a greater variety of fledgling birds than ever before. It’s possible that these birds have been here every year and I just haven’t [...]