How to Hem Pants Into Shorts

A recent closet clean out revealed that I had three, count them three pairs of khaki pants. What I am going to do with three pairs of khaki pants? After looking through some photos from last summer, I had a What Not to Wear moment that gave me the answer to the pant overpopulation problem.

I needed some new summer shorts. Bermuda shorts in fact. So, I made a pair of shorts out of a spare pair of khaki pants. I cut the legs of the pants to my knee and hemmed the pants into some much more fashionable summer shorts. (The demo plays twice in the following video.)

Growing Miniature Sunflowers

I tried to grow miniature sunflowers on my back patio from seed this summer. For the longest time my flowers looked like this:

I wondered if they ever would bloom into sunflowers. Maybe they weren’t sunflowers after all. Maybe they were really some sort of mad man eating plant?

Growing Upside Down Tomatoes: Watering Schedule

I thought it was time for an upside down tomato plant update.



I’m happy to say that I have five green tomatoes growing on my plant and several flowers that I hope will turn into tomatoes. Keep your fingers crossed.

“What a minute”, you say, “You planted two tomato plants in your topsy turvey upside down tomato planter, not one. What happened to the other plant?”

Easy. I overwatered the planter and lost one of two tomato plants to root rot. Oops.

Upside Town Tomato Watering Schedule Old and New

4 Natural Ways to Kill Japanese Beetles

Last summer, after losing several bushes in my front yard to grubs I tried to plant a grub resistant garden. This summer, I thought that I had the grub problem licked. I was wrong. I still had grubs in my soil. The grubs grew up to become adult Japanese beetles. The Japanese beetles started to munch on my new plants.

I may have lost that battle but I am determined to win The War on Grubs and Japanese Beetles. In addition, for the sake of my dog Blitzkrieg and his habit of walking through my garden bed, I’m going to kill those grubs and Japanese beetles using natural and organic methods even if it kills me (which it just might.)

According to Gardens Alive

insect problems are always worse in non-organic gardens, where the balance of nature is out of whack. Chemical fertilizers cause lush, weak growth that brings in pests by the droves. And, as many listeners wrote when telling us about their beetle woes, toxic chemical pesticides like Sevin don’t work well to control
these (and other) pests, but are excellent at killing and driving off beneficial
insects, birds and other predators that DO—not to mention limiting your happy
and healthy lifespan on the planet

Four Methods for Killing Japanese Beetles in the Garden