I was lucky enough to have cats with 0 interest in human food. My oldest son's cats will mug you for your food! 😂 His orange tabby will do just about anything to get at a bag of everything bagels.

Reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson saying that, in schools, we group kids "by their date of manufacture" as if that was the most important thing about them.

I enjoyed it a lot! I look forward to reading Circe sometime soon :)

#gardening #homesteading #nature #insects #prayingmantis #photography

I have long been interested in growing dandelions for food and medicine. I have foraged dandelions, including from my own yard, in years past and love them.

Although I have purchased seeds for cultivated garden varieties with pink flowers or red-veined leaves, I first wanted to see what our typical naturalized dandelions would do in the garden.

Dandelions can survive, reproduce, and even thrive is soils too poor or compacted to allow many other plants survive. But they sure won't say "No" to loose rich soil with plenty of water as my thriving plants attest. To be fair, I've only had experience for two growing seasons with these.

A bushy cluster of dandelion (I say cluster because there is more than one rosette in each plant, so it seems they are coming up from multiple root bases):

These came up from roots I transplanted out of a pot also containing a rose bush. When it was time to up-pot the rose I pulled out all the volunteer dandelions (I thought!) and planted a few roots in a raised bed and chopped and dried the rest for tea.

In spring I harvested enough flowers from my two clusters of dandelion plants to enjoy in fritters a couple of times.

I originally planned to harvest flowers for medicine as well but every time I thought of picking them there would be so many cute sweat bees, striped hover flies, and little bumblebees I ended up leaving them for the pollinators instead.

I have harvested leaves all summer by picking a few at a time. These I use in stir-fry or soup and am also drying for use as tea or in soup later.

Here is the same plant cluster as above after I picked about 1/3 of the healthy leaves:

In another month or so I will dig these guys up and dry the leaves, clean and dry most of the roots, and put a few roots back in the ground.

I've saved seed from these as well and will plant in late fall and early spring and see how they do.

#gardening #homesteading #permaculture #herbs #dandelions

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Good morning :) woke up next to my delightful spouse, the sun is shining, my garden is growing, I have good books, and good coffee, and new endeavors are on the horizon 🌤💚

Same! I do a lot of research, most of it reading, it does cut into my "reading energy", but most nights I read before sleep, even if I fall asleep at the end of the fist page. Usually fantasy or sci-fi for the bedtime read as well.

I love getting my kitty photo fix from you 😊 I'm not in a position to care for pets rn and I miss my kitties so much! My landlord has two barn kitties and I occasionally get to pet one 😻 I used to have five kitties and occasionally care for bottle kittens from our feral-infested neighborhood as well.

What a gorgeous spider! 💕

She's so pretty 🤗

Horsetail glow

Although some of the new varieties at Territorial Seed or Johnny's look intriguing.

I don't much like fresh tomatoes, so I usually grow sauce tomatoes, like Roma. Next year I'm going to try amish paste tomatoes, and yellow pears (my spouse's favorite to munch).

Depends on the pizza! 😋 Yours looks like it will be good.

Some pollen will keep for a short time in the refrigerator. 🤔

Streptopus amplexifolius

Overhanging a mountain stream

#nature #photography #plants

Oh, yeah, our meetings were long!

Yes, and you want them to have time to put down some good roots before the cold hits. I think you want to wait until the daytime temp is below 85 F.