We bought our new home for the possibilities, projects and experiments it afforded us, in the quiet of the countryside just outside the city limits, but where school buses still stop to pickup our 3 kids en route to 3 different schools. Here, our neighbour walks her horse up and down our street to graze … Continue reading Making a Tiny Forest, the Miyawaki way
I went to a therapy session right after our most recent Butterflyway planting, still wearing my giant monarch wings and Butterflyway Ranger t-shirt, excited to gush to my therapist about the morning I had spent with some of my Pollinate Aylmer peeps and two classes of kindergarten kids building little pollinator habitats at a local … Continue reading The very personal downward spiral of crumpled butterfly wings
I've been quiet. It's a great feeling, because we've been so busy outside this first spring in our new place, with so many ideas and discoveries and projects, and dirty hands with mud-crusted nails, and if you know me you know that means I am happy. We finally got around to starting one project both … Continue reading A purpose-built (future) rain garden
As our little Facebook group Pollinate / Pollinisez Aylmer prepares to begin planting Butterflyway gardens across Aylmer next week (watch this space), I am so moved and humbled by how we have begun coming together, and what this little group of perfect strangers 6 weeks ago have begun putting in motion. Swamp Milkweed seedlings at … Continue reading Gratitude Post
The quick pollinator shade garden I made last week is doing great. I think I may have cooked some of the really early spring bloomers by waiting so late to plant them, but they are rebounding and will come back next year. Today I checked on them and found a couple of patches of Virginia … Continue reading A groomed garden bed approach to killing my lawn to build pollinator habitat
So I did a thing today. It was a pretty big thing as it was the first time I've planted anything in our new place. As you may recall, or maybe you have no idea and that's okay too, we moved late last fall, and I brought divisions of a lot of my plants with … Continue reading Native shade garden in a day
I met a maybe-new-friend last week, and of course we chatted plants, chickens, and weird ailments. She said something to me along the lines of wishing she could bring herself to just do, and not overthink her garden planning. If she reads this post I hope this will inspire her to trust she can. Or … Continue reading Embrace Impulsive Gardening: How killing plants makes me a better gardener
Our little Aylmer village grew quite interested in our micro-nursery project, as Aylmer does in any new business endeavour that isn't shawarma or pizza (except for Rose Pizza, because their pizza is in a world of its own 🥰). Some winter experiments heading to the greenhouse We got a lot of messages of interest, and … Continue reading What happened to the nursery?
Every plant we sell is grown locally, from seed, by us, on our own property, here in Aylmer. Most of our seeds are ethically harvested from our own extensive gardens, in Aylmer, or from our cottage in Blue Sea. These are the plants we can claim are truly 100% Localeaf. A patch of what was … Continue reading How Local is Localeaf?
We LOVE tomatoes around here. My personal favorites are large beefsteak and slicing varieties, but the kids prefer cherry, grape and any other small type of small tomatoes so we have always grown a few different kinds. Last year I experimented with growing more tomato plants than we needed, and placing some in random parts … Continue reading Tomatoes, tomAHtoes and 34 varieties of everything in between
LocaLeaf 