De Mott

My dog collects ticks like crazy. I keep an old coffee mug (that I sharpied "TICKS" on to) that has soapy water in it. I pull them off and drop them in there, and get great delight watching them frantically swim a little bit before dying and dropping to the bottom.

I just tried to order from https://www.tagari-usa.com/ and the website says the coupon has expired. I tried both permies2021 and PERMIES 2021. Any suggestions or  ideas?

Several things have helped me. In order of helpfulness:

- Tai Chi - I'm lucky to have classes near me (Master Moy style) but since Covid canceled in-person classes, I've been doing livestream classes at awareness tai chi. Awesome instructor IMHO.
- Not eating grains - esp. wheat, but also corn. Rice seems OK
- PT exercises for the arthritic knee (one is worse than the other.) Lunges, squats, etc. My PT watched me stand up from a squat to the floor, saw that I did it mostly on the good leg, and assigned me one legged squats. Evil! But really helped.
- Turmeric supplement

We bought mountain land 16 years ago, with no intention to do anything other than have fun up there (we're still weekenders, but have slowly improved the property in a permaculture-inspired way.) Around that time, my grandmother turned 100 years old. I called her on her birthday, and told her we bought land. Somehow "land" turned into "farm" and she told all my cousins that we bought a farm. A few weeks later at her birthday party, all my cousins were kidding me about slopping the pigs and such  A few weeks after that, we were wandering around the pasture and found an old plastic pink flamingo. Years before, someone (not me) decided I liked flamingoes and people started giving me flamingo things. My mother-on-law was an antiques dealer, and she was constantly showing up with flamingo things. So we ended up with Flamingo Farm.

I've recently started using sweet potato leaves in green smoothies. Every thing else "green" in my garden has about pooped out by now, but sweet potato vines are going nuts! I've also read that they can be sauteed or stir-fried like any other green, but have not tried that yet.

Thank you for the ideas! I have the perfect "showcase" area, right behind my property, where the easement shortcuts a loop of high traffic greenway trail. It is very visible to local walkers, runners, and bikers. The easement itself is used as a shortcut by neighbor kids on bikes, but they stick to one side of the 60' easement. I have connections with NC State Entomology and other biologists who might be willing to help. We don't get much snow here (Piedmont NC) but hopefully enough freezes (more like frosts) to work some seeds in.

I had a front row seat to the pipeline construction, and other than completely demolishing the landscape I saw no other potential issues like toxic fairy dust. There is still "tree protection" fencing that they will take down but then they should be done with us, I hope.

It is very generous of you to offer to help with buying seed! I'm thinking I have enough like-minded neighbors that will chip in, and probably even help seed. I will need help with what to sow, hopefully some local experts will be able to help. I'm beginning to think this might work :-)

I live adjacent to a flood plain which has numerous sewer line easements running through it, along a major creek. One pipeline just completed this past year is at least 60' wide, consisting of crappy concrete-like subsoil planted in rye which is now dead. I'd love to get the city (in NC) interested in a pollinator highway, urban foodscaping, wildlife corridor, etc. Maybe get neighborhood groups involved, other organizations too. Does anyone have any experience with this type project? Anyone tried guerrilla gardening in utility easements? I think this could also apply to power line easements and more. I'd love to hear your ideas... thank you!

Our neglected lawn has turned into mostly crab grass and a few other random weeds. At one point we had fescue. Thankfully no HOA watching us - but would like it to be mow-able and to not have bare dirt spots in the winter. It is shade to part-shade. It's a small area but not small enough to hand-weed, as I want to spend my time in the gardens. Any suggestions? Thank you!

Aronia looks like a good candidate, thank you!
Jerusalem artichokes are appealing, but it looks like deer love them. I may try them by the creek with a very small fence.

john holmes wrote:Fencing possible?

Not very practical for us to fence in 15+ acres of woods, plus we don't want to - it's where we hunt deer for one thing. We do have very small fenced in areas for gardens around the house. What I'm interested in doing is enhancing the forest we already have. We'd be ok with removing white pine and replacing with other trees, but mostly I'm looking to plant something in the woods that's more useful than Christmas fern which is most of what I see.