My friend Betsy Talbot of Married With Luggage turned me on to this awesome Facebook page called Recycled, UpCycled, Freecycled Garden Projects, and I can’t get enough of it! How cool is this recycled trampoline tepee/hammock/meditation area? I love it! It solves so many problems and meets so many goals at once: creating a Zen garden space, staying out […]
Frugal, drought-tolerant landscaping
This is very unusual for me, a post with a lot of photos! We lived in this house for five years before we did one speck of landscaping. This first photo is from the day we planted the first plants in the front yard, after my husband had built the tile walkway and done an entire […]
Drought tolerance
These flowers were planted just two years ago. This one is my favorite, the Matilija poppy. Lavender… And this one’s called lion’s tail. I love it, but it only bloomed like this for about two weeks in June. All of these plants are drought tolerant, and we didn’t need to water them all winter. What […]
Happy Mother’s Day
These photos are from my favorite plant, the Matilija Poppy. It grows like a weed, and hardly needs any water, just a lot of sun. Perfect for southern California. I would never have been able to grow this beautiful plant and all the plants in our gorgeous front yard, without the help, advice, and inspiration […]
My Parsley Problem, solved
What I used to refer to as “my parsley problem” was the fact that I wasted so much of it. It’s a staple in our house, I use it for a few of our favorite meals, and so I’d buy it at the market almost every week. And every week, I’d toss out at least […]
Buy Nothing New mid-year report
Yesterday I realized that I’m exactly halfway through my year of following The Compact. As I looked at a couple of my first posts, I couldn’t believe how differently things have gone from what I expected when I embarked upon this journey. The woman who set off on a panicked shopping spree for the perfect […]