Suburban Farm: Mulch, Anarchists, and Spring

Spring is here! Well, almost here anyway. Ryan and I have been clearing out the wild blueberry bushes behind the house. I've been bushhoggin' with my mower again!!! For those of you who don't know - I have a love affair with my push mower. I adore her, and I will use any excuse to rev her up. This weekend we're tackling the leaves in the swamp. I'm shivering with anticipation.

We're hoping to convert the cleared area into a grassless yard and turn the back swamp into a 7 story garden. This is a LONG term plan, but for now we have an area to hang out in that isn't squishy.

If you are planning to mulch your gardens this season, (and you should be) ~~please be cautious and know your supplier!~~ After Katrina hit New Orleans, many trees were blown over. In efforts to clean up some of the devastation these trees were turned into mulch, so much mulch in fact that the they were willing to let it go to state or company that's willing to haul it away. So cheap mulch may be showing up at a garden center or superstore near you, with the added bonus of Formosan Termites! The Formosan Subterranean Termite is the most destructive insect in Louisiana. It is found in about half of Louisiana’s parishes. New Orleans is one of the areas Formosan Termites have a strong hold, and most of the trees that fell were infested badly. In efforts to stanch a termite epidemic, the commissioner of agriculture in Louisiana imposed a quarantine for the Formosan Subterranean Termite on October 3, 2005. Ok, so this has been debunked - there are no termites in mulch being shipped around the country. I retract, I retract. Click here to read the article debunking the myth.

If you missed it in the NYTimes, take a minute to read this story: Liz Seymore , a 50-something writer, turned her house into an anarchist commune. Ryan and I are not anarchists by any stretch, libertarians yes, but definitely not anarchists. Ok, so the jury is still out on Ryan. But either way we like to read stories about people who are doing something different with their lives.