Animals
What a bored cat or dog actually does all day
Chewed baseboards, four a.m. sprints and a dog who barks at every passing car: what boredom really looks like, and the cheap routines that soak it up.
Small breaks that actually take the edge off a workday
The three questions to ask before you order a couch
Why seedlings go pale and leggy, and the light they actually need
The posture advice that is actually worth following
Everyone has seen the diagram. A figure sitting at ninety degrees in every joint, spine stacked, feet flat, screen dead ahead. It is not wrong, exactly. It is a snapshot of a body that never moves, and no body sits still for seven hours.…
Continue readingBefore you buy a greenhouse, price the ventilation and the base
The picture in most people's heads when they price a greenhouse involves picking something in January. The reality of an unheated structure is closer to a few extra weeks at each end of the season and a reliable crop of tomatoes, which is genuinely…
Continue readingWhat to check before you buy second-hand furniture
A solid oak dresser turns up on a local listing for sixty dollars because the family is moving Saturday and it will not fit in the van. That is the good version of buying used. The bad version is the same photograph and the…
Continue readingPot size, mix and drainage: the three things containers get wrong
A pot is a small closed system with no groundwater under it, no surrounding soil to wick from, and sun hitting it from the sides as well as the top. Everything that makes container growing convenient also makes it unforgiving. The good news is…
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