Tearing up your grass in California just got smarter

We found this on reddit.com.  (link) I have never liked mowing the lawn and thought is was kind of fruitless (both literally and figuratively) and wasteful.  Since the never-ending drought cycle in California is only going to get worse with shifting climate patterns, it is amazing more people didn't think of this sooner.  Saves water, less yard work, and if you do it right, it can make your lawn look like it belongs where you live instead of some sort of idilic suburban dream from an old tv show dropped down in the middle of the desert

 

Houseplants

The top 10 plants for removing indoor toxins

Wild Flowers

One of the really nice things about having a garden is all the wild stuff that grows unexpectedly. Here are some photos of flowers blooming in our garden right now. Every couple of weeks there's something new.

Lettuce flowers?

So we had 3 lettuce plants and 2 of them grew up to be large, delicious heads of lettuce (kind of like butter lettuce)  but the third one stayed small and didn't develop into a nice head.*  It stayed like a little shrub. 

 Eventually it began to grow taller and a little bit pointy.  

As it grew taller we noticed that small flower buds were developing and a whole stalk like structure was under the little shrub-like leaves.  

We had long ago realized that this lettuce was not developing into  something we would want to eat.  Instead maybe we can gather its seeds and plant our own lettuce next spring using our big window as a greenhouse. 

According to wikipedia, lettuce flowers are good for seed saving beginners-- that's us!  (Learn about it here.)  We will have updates to show what a lettuce flower looks like.

 *It should be noted that this lettuce plant was kept indoors for 3-4 weeks longer than the other 2 because it seemed to be thriving inside. 

Wild Plants

Our yard is very big and we only used a small portion of it to plant our food. In the rest of the yard, we let things grow as they may. We got a lot of grass, a lot of flowers, a some questionable edibles. Above are photos of what we think is a blackberry bush. It grows very fast and it likes to spread out and try to take over the yard. Below are photos of what we think are wild grapevines. They also grow fast and try to take over, but they're much easier to handle. Unlike the blackberry plant, they don't have thorns. In addition, they have a velcro-like quality so they stick to each other.

Bottled Water Is Dumb

I stopped drinking bottled water years ago when I learned that it's just BOTTLED TAP WATER. The last time I drank bottled water it tasted like plastic and I was pretty grossed out. Don't waste your money, and stop ruining the environment shipping tap water all over the place and creating plastic bottle waste. Seriously, this is a no-brainer. If you live in a developed country, you have fresh water everywhere you go. There's no excuse. Want to bring water with you somewhere? Buy a reusable glass or stainless steal bottle, fill it with water at your home tap, and there you go. You'll have it forever, and you won't be contributing to this monstrosity: Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean.

Five Reasons Not To Drink Bottled Water

The Slow Food Movement

"Peter Hoffman, chef of Savoy and Back Forty, joins us for Part II of our Food in the City series. He’ll be explaining how to create meals from what you buy at the farmer’s market and how to talk to farmers and choose the best produce." Listen to the WNYC podcast here. 

Check out the rest of WNYC's Food in the City series here.

Learn about America's Slow Food Movement here.