Feeder Hack

I’ve had mixed luck feeding goldfinches with fresh nyjer seed. The main problem is the feeder holds far more seed than the birds will eat. I think I finally have a solution.

Go, snow!

The snow gun is blowing out there. We just got our first hit of nearly a foot of fluffy, dry snow. Friday afternoon, overnight, off and on Saturday, Sunday morning, in a steady shift from dry snow to wet snow. During any quiet period, the birds are crowding the feeders looking for a bite. Sparrows, […]

It snew!

Last night, it snew. And then it rained. And then it sleeted. Yick. No one wants to look at slush, so here’s another plant staying green in the snow. It’s Alpine strawberry. They don’t spread like regular strawberries and all summer they produce tiny little sweet berries.

Guppies are pretty … awful

When I was a kid, I just saw guppies as pretty. Now I see them with different eyes. The males constantly harassing the females. The females constantly at some stage of pregnancy. The fry always in danger of being eaten. But they don’t all get eaten, and some of them are turning out quite pretty.

Would you like a bit of snow on your greens?

The first bit of snow started drifting down last night, leaving just a light frosting, not even enough to hold a cat’s pawprint. I think there’s more snow gathered in these collard leaves than ever hit the ground. By the way, these are the same plants that were looking so droopy last week. Tough plants, […]

The Reddened

I know it’s silly (as if writing in a blog wasn’t silly) to get excited about this, but every single one of the tomatoes I picked turned red! We’ve been cooking our way into the basket, and they even have tomato nature in their flavor. A bit acid and not at all sweet, but definitely […]

A peek outside at my compost tumblers

Behold the my favorite compost tumblers! Believe it or not, this is the view I can get if I stick my head out the window by my desk to admire my compost. That’s how much I love them. You see, I’ve been through the tedium of forking over a compost bin full of leaves and […]

Hard Frost

Daylight Savings Time ended, the juncos showed up, and now we’ve had a week of hard frosts overnight and mostly twenty-degree days. I guess it’s time to admit winter has started. There was even a white rime on the ground this morning, but no way was I going outside to get a picture. You’ll have […]

A peek into my worm bin

Icky Worm Girl speaking. This is my Worm Factory, which I’ve maintained for just about a year and a month. It has five trays with mesh bottoms. You bury food scraps under the bedding on top, and as the trays fill, the worms migrate to the upper trays. After a couple months, the bottom tray […]

The Reddening

That was quick. It’s only a week since my tomato harvest started to color up, and now lots of tomatoes are getting red. Last year’s batch took a lot longer; I had tomatoes slowly, slowly blushing pink until January. You may notice that I’m carefully not saying “ripening.” While the color is nice, I have […]