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Thornless Blackberry Blessings

Thornless Blackberries are the most prolific fruit in our back garden. Thornless (or prickle-free) blackberries are a cultivar of other blackberries -- maybe wild blackberries, but most often, other commercial varieties, such as loganberries. Wild blackberries still spring up with wily abandon on most empty lots in the Pacific Northwest (Canada and the USA).   When we came to Vancouver Island nine years ago this Fall, I was thrilled to hike around our neighborhood berry patches with a pail every summer.  Most of our neighbours were quite incredulous at my  industry-- why was I picking so many berries?  Most of them picked enough for a pie or a few jars of jam, and that was it.  The novelty had worn off.  They had so many other wonderful fruits and berries to choose from, many growing in their yards.  At the time, my husband and I were falling in love with-- actually, fast becoming addicted to-- green smoothies.  We were amazed by the simple abundance of the FREE blackberries.  W

25 Things You Can Do With Lavender

I love lavender . Beautiful hues of purple. Drought resistant. Heavenly scent. Edible. Organic. What is not to love?  Here are 25 Things You Can Do With Lavender (if you have other suggestions, please add below!) 1. Scent your Linens :  Put sprays of dry lavender in with your sheets for a pleasant, relaxing effect. 2. Protect your Wardrobe: Hang Sachets filled with lavender buds to repel moths and bugs. 3. Make Lavender Chocolate Truffles for that everything-chocolate Auntie with a birthday. 4. Create a beautiful Lavender Bouquet for your wedding. 5. Bake a Lavender Cake for that Summer Tea Party. 6. Stop a Heat Stroke in its tracks with a couple of drops of  Lavender Essential Oil 7. Braid an enchanting Lavender Wand . 8. Chill out with Lavender Ices (ever so elegant!) 9. Spritz home-made Lavender Water to disinfect and before storing linen and clothing. 10. Wash doggie down with home-made Lavender Doggie Shampoo and repel fleas. 11. Relieve a heada

Keeping the Deer Out of Your Garden

Traditional Landscape by Sterling Landscape Architects; Designers SURROUNDS Landscape Architecture + Construction -----------------------------------------------------------------  You may have deer trespassing into your yard, hoping to get a meal around your patio. Or, as in the case of our son, you might have bunnies chomping up your strawberries (leaving the lettuces intact-- there goes that myth)or neighborhood dogs-without-boundaries bouncing through your tomatoes. What to do? What to do? Well, traditionally, an elegant fence (like the one above) is an adequate barrier to roaming, intrusive critters. Here are some suggestions to keep other critters out of your garden area: Cats  are usually drawn to a veggie or flower garden because of the loose soil that is easy to dig up and dispose of their feces.  Cat feces are not suitable to compost or dig in as fertilizer because they are carnivores, and as such, may harbour pathogenic bacteria and viruses in their feces t

Food Wars on the Island

Our smallish Canadian city (12,000 souls) is a battleground for the grocery big stores: Costco, Walmart, Superstore, and Sobey's (via Thrifty's, that used to be a Vancouver Island chain in the not-distant-past). Safeway will be closing May 2014. Read more HERE Safeway recently opted out, or was opted out when Sobey's failed to follow through on the purchase.  Target (or Tar-jay as I hear it called by the 30somethings who shop there) also has a grocery section, but it is nothing much, mostly American brands we've seen on TV for years and already know are poison. We have another large store in town called Quality Foods, and in 2012 (I think) it won a national grocery store award.  However, over the last couple of years QF has been receiving  injections of support from the rival SaveOnFoods cartel (aka Jimmy Pattison).  The irony is that QFcame in and set up in the same mall location that had been vacated by SaveOnFoods.  A greater irony is that another rumor ha