doing with-out the dine-in…

The wabi-sabi cottage has the tiny kitchen typical of the era, the area, and its bungalow style. A patch job on the floor indicates that what is now a small dine-in kitchen was once two separate spaces, perhaps the kitchen and a butler’s pantry. The kitchen looks to have been redone some time near the […]

how wexford made my day…

I have mentioned this before, nearly everywhere I have been, digitally or physically: I have a thing for Wexford. To be clear, Wexford pressed glassware by Anchor Hocking. Some thirteen-odd years ago, I started an intense relationship, with thrift stores. Nearly everything I wear, save undergarments, is second hand at this point. My husband as […]

slow yields

This is our third summer in our wabi-sabi cottage. Without any major upheaval, we consider this our forever home. Moving in, the easiest form of our goal for the yard: less grass to mow as we age. The more complex goal: more beauty and food to sustain us. Growing up, my family garden was two […]

herbs of the hobbit house, redux

We had a late start with the new herbs. Cilantro was a bust, with the volunteers from last year blooming out fast and sowing the new seeds too late, but we have a huge amount of new seeds from the volunteers for next year. Onward and upward. This lavender plant is in its second year, […]

the summer of the shishito

In our side garden as it turns out, we have a hedge of shishito pepper plants. A hedge. Last year, we fell across shishito peppers entirely by accident while perusing the Bonnie plants selections at various garden centers about KCMO. Before ever reading of the variety, before the name dropping of the Food Network and […]

newly screened: a room with a view

Last year’s work party, us with my mom and two sisters, included re-screening the side porch. The middle child rebuilt the screen door and clad the previous owner’s particle board half walls with beadboard. Mom re-screened the window openings, all of us caulked and handled paint brushes, and I re-trimmed the openings. Through last summer […]

as advertised, results may vary

I planted gladiolus corms this year, for the first time ever. They are almost bloomed out at this point, but they were pretty glorious. None of them were right, but they were glorious. LOL Something to understand: I *hate* pulling things for winter. No cannas. No elephant ears. If it goes into the ground, it […]

some guys named herb

This year, Kansas City got hot. Fast. We’ve been riding around 95 degrees nearly a month with only one brief reprieve last week. So what does one do on a blistering Saturday afternoon, when the sky clouds over and begins to grumble? A hobbit house gardens mini-project: I have neglected the herbs of our garden […]

growing into something

“Don’t let perfect get in the way of better.” My boss uses that phrase often; I am working to embrace it fully in life. I don’t want to miss documenting all this beautiful growth in our yard, because it hasn’t filled out the picture frame yet. Seriously: the south lot was a vacant weed pile […]

fireflies of our little hobbit house

I remember fireflies while growning up in northern Ohio, but here they seem so… amplified. They never leave; I see them all day long. And at night, they light it up.