The Strawberry Wall

A few weeks ago, I saw an email on the Seattle farm co-op listserv about buying strawberry starts in bulk from Rain Tree Nursery, for great prices.  Before I stopped to think about space requirements, I had purchased 125 strawberry plants for $30.  A great deal, right?  But where to put all of these babies?  I love, love, love strawberries, and I can't think of many better uses of garden space than a gigantic strawberry patch.  However, 125 strawberry plans require a space of roughly 20' x 20', which is more space than want to devote just to strawberries.  Plus, the dogs have completely decimated last year's strawberry patch in their quest to rid our yard of moles and voles, and the idea of getting the plants off the ground was enticing to me.  I did a bit of research and found some cool vertical ideas for strawberries. 

First,  these amazing Plants on Walls containers, made out of some kind of beautiful magical fabric called "florafelt." While beautiful, these are quite expensive at $50/ panel (and I would need many of them). 

Homemade Holidays

The holiday season typically causes some trepidation around here. There is the challenge of balancing Chad's and my different holiday traditions, but there's also the struggle with the consumptive aspect of the holidays.  Every year, I strive to come up with meaningful home made gifts that reflect our values and provide some alternative to mindless consumerism that seems to drive us all during this time of year.  However, I almost always plan more projects than I can handle and, faced with no better last-minute alternative, I find myself in some big box retail or mall with all of the other last minute shoppers, feeling slightly ashamed/ guilty and questioning the importance of spending significant amounts of money on largely disposable stuff.  It really comes down to a time/ values trade off that I'm not always comfortable with.