Book Review: The Urban Homesteading Cookbook
Karen Do you live in the city but want to homestead? Michelle Catherine Nelson’s book, The Urban Homesteading Cookbook, will give you all the information you need to start collecting, growing,…
Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wine: Clover Wine
Clover wine today is made with the flowers or red rather than white clover. Over a hundred years ago when my paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright, wrote her book Old…
Plant Profile: Desert Olive (Forestiera pubescens var. pubescens aka F. neomexicana)
Desert olive, also known as stretchberry, elbowbush, spring goldengrow, Texas forsythia, and downy forestier, is a thicket-forming deciduous shrub or small tree is native to desert slopes, canyons, woodland edges…
Plant Combination: Rose ‘Graham Thomas’ and Clematis’ Francizka Maria’
‘Graham Thomas’ is an exceptional rose with intense gold colored flowers that fade to lemon yellow. The plant blooms in flushes all summer and makes a striking combination with the…
Plant Profile: Stiff Aster (Aster liniarifolius aka Ionactis linariifolia )
Stiff aster, also known by other names including bristle aster, flaxleaf whitetop, and savory leaf aster, is a clump-forming herbaceous perennial native to eastern and central US where it grows…
Book Review: Embroidery from the Garden
Inspired by the flora of South Africa, Diane Lampe’s book Embroidery from the Garden presents forty eight embroidery designs suitable for using in many varied projects. Some of the flowers…
Weeds and Their Control: Yellow Rocket (Barbarea vulgaris)
Also called bittercress, herb barbara, rocketcress, winter rocket, and wound rocket, this herbaceous biennial belongs to the mustard family, Brassicaceae, that also includes broccoli, alyssum, and stock. It is native…
Plant Profile: Texas Ranger (Leucophyllum frutescens aka Terania frutescens)
Also known as cenizo, purple sage, Texas barometer bush, and silverleaf, this compact evergreen shrub is native to open canyons, arroyos, ditches, ravines, and hillsides in Texas and northern Mexico…
Shakespeare’s Garden: Barnacles
According to The Travels of Sir John Mandeville written in the fourteenth century, the barnacle tree, also called goose tree, bore a fruit that became flying birds. These trees were…
Plant Profile: Rose ‘Marie Daly’
A sport of ‘Marie Pavie, “Marie Daly has long pointed buds that open to small medium pink flowers that fade to white. The compact rounded bushes have almost thornless stems…