Urban Farm Co-Op
- On February 17, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Organic Gardening, Uncategorized, Veggies
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Karla at Bossy Acres' Minneapolis headquarters
There are people who dream about what they would like to do with their lives in a perfect world. And there are people who just go ahead and do whatever it is they’re dreaming about, knowing that the world will never be perfect so they’d better just go for it. Karla Pankow is in the latter group. And if you’ve ever met her, you know that’s not surprising. As hooky as it sounds, if positive energy could take human form, it would be Karla.
Not long ago, Karla was willing herself up out of bed every morning to go to work as a pharmaceutical sales rep. After seven years, she was beyond disillusioned with the profession and thinking about how to escape. And then it happened. She was laid off in the midst of yet another company restructuring. Today, less than two years later, Karla and her partner, Elizabeth Millard (a longtime writer friend of mine), are running a small organic farm they named Bossy Acres.
I wrote about Bossy Acres, and their recent move into the greenhouses of Grow! Twin Cities in this week’s issue of the online magazine, The Line. Grow! Twin Cities doesn’t have a website up yet or I’d post the link. But they do have a Facebook page if you’d like to follow what they’re up to.
Read More»Amaryllis
I have no idea what I was thinking trying to brighten up the winter by planting paperwhites in bowls filled with colorful glass marbles and water all these years. Yes, sure, the flowers are nice enough. But that sickly sweet smell they give off is worse than being trapped with a bunch of over-perfumed grannies in a hot elevator.
That’s why this year, even though red is my least-favorite color, I brought home a couple of big-ass amaryllis bulbs and gave them a try. (There are other colors, just not at my local garden center on the day that I thought I must buy some.) Wow! I’m going with these every year from now on. Not only do they have no smell, these long-blooming flowers—four from each bulb—are huge. And I have to say that even midlife-crisis-sports-car red has definitely lifted my spirits during this cold, gray stretch of the season.
Read More»Hoar Frost
- On February 08, 2012
- By Meleah
- In Natural Wonders
- 1
I’ve lived in Minnesota for more than two decades. But I admit I had no idea that frost went by all sorts of different names until a couple of years ago when our local paper mistakenly proclaimed that the world was covered in “whore frost” and we should all get outside and see it.
Who wouldn’t want to see that? Turns out, they were talking about hoar frost, which is not anything like the aforementioned frost, I’d imagine.
Hoar frost occurs on winter nights when water vapor (fog, for example) touches very cold surfaces and freezes. Words can’t come close to describing the storybook beauty of hoar frost.
So, as always, when I woke up to a hoar-frost-covered wonderland last Saturday, I grabbed my camera and snapped a few photos. Enjoy!
Crocodile Fern
The crocodile fern (Microsorum musifolium ) really couldn’t be more aptly named. Exotic yet easy to grow as a houseplant (if you can find it), this fern has fronds that look remarkably like crocodile scales. I snapped this at our local conservatory, which was filled to bursting with Minnesotans looking to get out of the cold this weekend.
Of course if you live in a warmer place, you can also grow these outdoors. I’ve got a friend who says they carry crocodile ferns in big-box stores in the South. Luckies.
What In Tarnation?
- On February 02, 2012
- By Meleah
- In What In Tarnation?
- 1
Yesterday I posted the inaugural photo for a new blog feature: What In Tarnation? And today, I couldn’t resist adding one more because, hey, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on out there in the world and I like to take pictures of it. Might as well share, right?
This hideous mess certainly did solve the question of: “Hmm, what should we plant on that slope, honey?”
