This is Hal Sears. Hal and I used to work together at the Community Mercantile which is a cooperative grocery store in Lawrence, Kansas specializing in natural foods, organic produce, and a vast selection of bulk herbs.
Hal was the herb buyer for the store and for a few years, I was the ‘herb stocker [...]
My spinach has been growing gangbusters.
Fearing that the warmer weather might cause my spinach crop to bolt…
…like my arugula did.
I decided I better go ahead and harvest most of it and see if I could figure out how to ‘put it up’.
I collected enough spinach to fill a tall kitchen trash bag.
I set the bag [...]
After a few weeks of discussion, I finally got the Country Doctor to build a fence for my garden.
He wanted to pound a few metal stakes in the ground, stretch out some chicken wire, and call it done.
I really needed something a little prettier.
Yes.
I did…
Hey!
My garden is right outside the windows by my kitchen [...]
This story begins with a nice pile of bricks. A pile of bricks that our family salvaged from an old sidewalk in town which ran in front of my friend Kara’s house. Kara was having a new sidewalk put in and called to let me know that we could take the old bricks [...]
On a recent trip to the Italian Riviera…I mean to Lawrence, Kansas (which is practically the same thing) I stumbled across these very cute poster sized Italian papers at a wonderful store on Massachusetts Street called Brits.
I don’t know why a store called Brits which specializes in all things British was selling Italian papers. All [...]
We mixed our own stain for our trim and our kitchen cabinets. Why did we do this? Because we are insane.
I was just not happy with any of the stains I found in every hardware store within a twenty mile radius. I wanted something deeper, something a little more red, something a [...]
There are a few spots around this house that are presenting new “Christmas dilemmas” that I feel compelled to try and solve. I have a banister, where before there was none. I have a porch with a railing where before there was only an primeval aching emptiness. I have these sort of [...]