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I’ve downloaded a few free Kindle book titles today. Note that often Amazon has free book titles for only a very short time, so they may revert back to regular prices at any time.

This year it looks like we are going to have plenty of blackberries. A few weeks ago, the whole woods seemed graced by clouds of small white flowers on the blackberry bushes. Now the flowers have been replaced with hard, green baby berries. I wonder how long before they turn into tender, ripe blackberries?

In May, I posted an article Natural Homemade Weed Killer to show how I had treated our brick walkway with a hot water weed killer.

Yes, it was that simple: Just pour boiling water directly on the weeds, making sure to soak each one.

Of course, you have to be careful not to splash the hot water on your feet. Or legs. Or for that matter, anywhere on yourself, your pets, and your family. But with proper safety precautions, I found the hot water weed killer to be extremely effective.

I thought you might like to see a follow-up on the effectiveness of the treatment.

I use as little pesticides as possible on our property. This works fairly well except for the brick walkway and the gravel driveway. With these we have to ramp things up a bit.

I recently read that boiling water will kill a weed right down to its roots. Hmmm. Water? That’s about as natural as you can get. I decided to try it.

The first place I have tried it is our brick walkway. Here are some shots from yesterday, before the boiling water experiment:

I’ve been busy finishing up tax season and am now starting to turn my attention to the gardens. It’s been a long, hard winter here in Indiana. Spring finally arrived with a fanfare of crocuses and daffodils. Welcome, Spring! Here are some inspiring sites to get you in a Spring kind of mood ….

Some time ago, I blogged about picking and working with mulberries – Wild Blackberries, No, They’re Mulberries . One thing that makes mulberries more time-consuming is their little green stems.  You can see them in this photo of the mulberries that we had picked. I learned a lesson in simplicity from those mulberries.  Funny how […]

I’m not sure what I like most about picking raspberries – the pretty scene of the red berries against the vibrant green leaves, the anticipation of eating the berries, or the opportunity to spend some time with Chris. Our raspberries turn a beautiful deep shade of dark red when they are ripe. In the early summer, they start out as hard, little brown buds that seem to me to look like dried up raspberries. With a little patience and a lot of rain and sun, the berries begin to turn white, then green, then pale pink, then orange-red, and finally dark red. The dark, yet vibrant, red berries are ready to pick.

This recipe is for Herbs and Cheese Bread. I’m posting my recipe here for anyone who wants to try a recipe for a quick bread with herbs, and for those of us who have more garden herbs than we know what to do with!

Most likely, we’ll have a dozen or more tomatoes ripening at a time as all those green tomatoes start turning red in earnest – and all at once. Perhaps the best method I have found for storing these tomatoes for using at a later date is to freeze them. The method I use is quick, easy, and the tomatoes stay bright red, tasty, and ready for cooking for up to a year.

Freshly picked mulberries in a bowlLast night, as Chris and I were walking in the back meadow, near the woods, we discovered a mulberry tree. We had been looking at a wild blackberry bush and talking about when the blackberries might be ripe when Chris looked up and saw a nearby tree covered with what appeared to be blackberries. Chris ate a couple and declared them to be good. I was praying that they weren’t poisonous.

Once home, a little research revealed that the berries were not blackberries, but mulberries. More research showed that they are quite rich in resveratol, a natural anti-oxidant, along with an abundant amount of vitamins.