I have been feeling the pain these past few well-below-freezing April mornings knowing what our local vegetable farmers are suffering at the hand of winter that won’t give it up. Thousands of tender sets and sprouts in long rows, the…
We are late to the late winter tradition of tapping maples for sap and then syrup. This is only our second season, after learning that you don’t have to have a sugar maples to get sweet returns for your efforts.…
Some leafhoppers look for all the world like thorns on the side of a twig. Some are remarkably colorful or bizarrely shaped–if you take the time to look very closely. (In this image, the splash of color is the garden…
The title here came first as I sat mulling over the possibilities this morning, and so a wildflower closeup or some other oooooh-ahhhhh image would have been more appropriate perhaps, but this is what I selected from the recent Lumix…
I’m not sure I have any other images these 13 years here of a lizard. They just–at least until lately–have not been able to survive winters this far north. A generation from now, we may have reticulated pythons and Gila…
…and slugs do slither under the bare feet of the wicked. I’m serious. Somehow, more than once, orange (yet again!) slugs have appeared–or been found underfoot–on the hardwood floor of the greatroom. This is not an experience that leaves one’s…
My wife, God bless her, will take into her care whatever needy creature happens to fall into her space. She came home a few months ago with various tomato plants because she took pity on the local gal selling them…
It has been a most pleasant June, save for the too-frequent rains–a statement you would never have heard 8 out of 10 of the past Junes, when the gardens most need and least receive the moisture we now have in…
It is officially summer. So far, I don’t hate it. Enough rainfall, enough warmth to suit me, coupled with nice cool nights. And the garden insects have not become pestiferous. Yet. The voles seemingly have enjoyed the gummy bears I’ve…
At last, after two plantings of saved heirloom seeds stillborn in the cold soil, a third generation is birthed and growing. Goose Beans have been the staple of our stable of legumes, Tendercrop or some such bush bean making up…
I am remembering now why the coming of warmer, longer, greener days is so disruptive to what has passed for winter-normal especially-morning cycles of attention and energy. With the first days in the 70s, one realizes that they are swimming once…
And good luck with that. The annual day of the Cussing of the Small Engines has finally arrived. Hi Ho Hi Ho It’s off to Earth I go. To the rectangular gardened part of her, to be precise. And I’m…
Alert! Top Tomato Contest in Floyd this weekend at The Community Market at the Station. Click the image for larger version of the poster. Get your maters ready. Alert! For the first time today, the SustainFloyd Refrigerated Truck will be…
Fried. That’s the way you get your first solid food in the Deep South. Squash is no exception–battered, fried yellow squash went with fresh-sliced vine ripe tomatoes straight from our vegetable man, Mr. Puckett (who died just recently.) I don’t…