News

Urban Ecology Center takes lesser celandine, which is non-native to the U.S. and is now classified as a nasty invasive, as its case study in this blog post to illustrate why we should care about growing native plants and why we need to be so careful about growing non-native ones. I’ll just quote a bit of a summary paragraph, but you should read the whole post. So, we’ve got an aggressive plant with no natural predators to keep its population in check. This plant emerges sooner than native spring ephemerals, and therefore has the advantage of size when competing for space and...

This work begins the night of August 31, the feast day of St. Raymond Nonnatus, but there is some wiggle room and you absolutely can book late, as long as you see slots still available. St. Raymond Nonnatus gets his name — which means the not-born — by virtue of his being delivered by C-section. Considering this happened in the early 13th century, it was quite an unusual event (and doubtless quite grisly), but his poor mother died in childbirth and this was the only way Raymond could be saved. This is where his patronage of pregnant women, childbirth, midwives, and babies comes...

This is a three-day service beginning the night of August 24th, the feast day of St. Bartholomew. There is some wiggle room and you can join up after the work starts as long as you see that there are still spots left and it doesn’t say “sold out.” St. Bartholomew is the patron saint of bookbinders, butchers, tanners, and cheese makers. Some very brief and pretty confusing scriptural references mean he’s numbered among the original apostles, so we don’t know that much about him as a historical figure. But as is so often the case, rich folk traditions have filled in the gaps. His strong...

Yes, Saturn’s been in Aquarius for a while now. This isn’t new. And it will be there into 2023. And it’s been all stompy and cranky with the lockdowns and restrictions and quarantines.  But we just had a major, stellar full moon, astrologically speaking (forgive the pun), with the moon in Aquarius conjunct beneficent Jupiter and making actually ZERO hard or negative aspects for just a few hours. Pretty rare lineup of lovely, really. Talked about it in the client forum a bit if you missed it. And right now, the sun’s conjunct Regulus, one of the so-called Fixed Stars, the brightest one in...

I think I finally, finally found a way to be able to afford to sell small packets of powder and small packets of herbs. I had to try out five different potential solutions, but I think the one I’ve got now will work. You’ll see a little widget on the page telling you about price breaks you get at certain tiers, like so: The issue: Listing, site, and processing/transaction fees are breathtaking, and many of them are a flat fee per transaction plus a percentage. 50 cents plus 3.5% plus 2% off the top of every transaction is maybe not such...