giveaway: i hate to water, but met a hose to love

If you love plants but don’t like the mess of handling the soil they come with, then don’t worry! For people who hate dirt in their homes, these are the best Houseplants that Grow Without Soil!

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Trees, shrubs and all plants have developed methods to procreate and ensure the continuity of their species. ‘Natures Home winter 2018’ looks at trees that use Anemochory, Autochory, Zoochory, Barachory plus other methods. For our purposes we will look in the same order at wind distribution, explosive seed pods, animal dispersion and drop and roll plus other methods.

Yorkshire has suffered an exceptionally wet autumn culminating in disastrous floods at Fishlake and around the river Don. One plant that will thrive in these wet northerly conditions is our old friend Moss.  As this has been covered before I am just using this post to link you to other observations and tips about moss.

Changing weather patterns due to climate change are resulting in longer and more frequent periods without rain, putting water resources under increasing pressure. Hosepipe bans are therefore becoming more frequent. Hosepipe bans are designed to restrict water consumption by banning the use of a hose for watering plants, as well as activities including cleaning the car, filling pools and hot tubs, and cleaning paths. But don’t despair, there are plenty of ways to keep your plants watered, especially with some prior planning.

South Carolina is a very special place. From the coast to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, South Carolina has a diversity of climates and landscapes. The diversity of climates allows for different grasses to flourish. Warm season grasses such as zoysia, St. Augustinegrass, bermudagrass, centipedegrass, and bahiagrass flourish at the coast throughout the year, but those grown in the upstate go dormant in the winter. In the dormant stage, the grass turns brown and looks dead, but new growth will appear in spring. Cool season grasses, such as ryegrass and certain fescues, grow best primarily in the upstate but go dormant, or do not survive the heat of summer. Here too, the grass looks dead, with regrowth appearing as the weather begins to turn cool in fall and flourish through spring. Dormant grass still has live roots in the ground that require water, just not as much as when they are actively growing. Unless it has been uncommonly dry or windy, natural rain events are enough to sustain dormant grasses.

As temperatures drop and summer leaves change colors, outdoor physical activity becomes enjoyable. There are many ways you and your family can get active during the fall season.

SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT.Andre Jordan seems to keep hoping for the best, despite a few well-documented cases of rejection (as in, loc. cit., The Girl I Love With All My Heart. Caveat emptor: Deliciously not PG!).

Colocasia ‘Mojito’ (Zone 7b-10), like all its cousins that we call elephant ears or taro, is a heat-loving plant that’s also hungry and thirsty. I grew it in a bright spot in a potting soil with lots of compost, and stood a big, deep saucer underneath—something I wouldn’t do with most other plants outdoors for fear of rotting them off. I don’t use chemical fertilizers, but I mixed in some all-natural organic formulation at planting time and occasionally added fish and seaweed emulsion to the water I gave it.In food production, prevalent in Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, it’s the starchy tubers that are the thing—bigger is better. In ornamental horticulture, the above-ground portion is where it’s at, and here’s where the tricky part comes in about overwintering some of the most spectacular new taros—including ‘Mojito,’ and the better known ‘Black Magic.’ They don’t produce big tubers that can be lifted, like you might a canna or some of the elephant ears, and stashed dry in the cellar.

What makes the gray fox special? Not rarity–though you don’t see them much, since they are neither nocturnal nor diurnal but crepuscular (meaning most active in the twilight of dawn and dusk). It’s their unusual claws. Thanks to hook-style claws that other dog relatives don’t possess, gray fox are one of only two canids who can climb trees. As in fruit trees, for instance, because these guys apparently like a fruit course with a summer meal of garden-fresh chipmunk. Amazing.I got so excited I quickly emailed Jennifer Rae Atkins out in New Mexico, who draws a lot of mammals (and has challenged herself to draw every one on earth, all 5,000ish mammals on the planet, which even at one a day means she’s got 14-plus years of her own version of doodling ahead of her). But Jennifer quickly researched and drew the gray fox, which you can see here. I love the little extra touch she added in the

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

Under normal circumstances, the bark on P. bungeana’s muscular trunk begins to peel off as the plant matures, and leaves behind a camouflage pattern of greens and yellows and tans. By pruning out some of its evergreen branches and opening up the structure of the plant, you can get a great view of the show from every angle, every day.Mine was really shaping up, getting to be a proper tree. And then HE showed up, the same male sapsucker who spent much of the winter in one of my older magnolias, the same guy who drums on the siding outside my bedroom to stake a claim to the territory in spring, to act really macho. In just a few days of visiting the pine, he’d opened up holes in a large section of the formerly