A closer look at the everyday
A compost heap that has stopped working looks exactly like a compost heap that is working slowly. Both are a pile of stuff in the corner of the yard. The difference only shows up months later, when one…
Read moreA pot is a small closed system with no groundwater under it, no surrounding soil to wick from, and sun hitting it from the sides as well as the top. Everything that makes container growing convenient also makes…
Read moreSeed catalogs arrive in January, which is the cruellest possible timing. By the first week of February most of us have sown something, and by the middle of March we are looking after a windowsill of pale, floppy…
Read moreGarden tools fail in three places and only three: where the head meets the handle, somewhere along the handle, and at the working edge. Every question worth asking in a shop is about one of those three. None…
Read moreTwo cans sit on the same shelf. Same color, mixed from the same tinting machine. One is twenty-two dollars and one is sixty-five, and both say something about one-coat coverage on the front. Nothing in the store explains…
Read moreThe classic sequence goes like this. Saturday morning you look at the spare room and decide today is the day. You go out and come back with nine matching bins, a label maker, and a set of drawer…
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