So many fellow coffee ground people on this site its a great Xmas present! Good advice with adding to wood chips, lawn clippins, or leaves, and keeping the whole stack moist is a good tip also. I've found that when they are used in isolation it can cause problems with crusting and preventing air and water flow to the lower levels, so always have some additional materials ready to add. When adding to the worm farm, the best results seem to come from letting the bag of UCG ferment for a week or two and then add them in with lawn clippings or kitchen scraps, again never on its own. Here is a link that might be useful: Ground to Ground

One of you cottagers posted a list of Michigan strange items a while back, so I'll try not to repeat that, but here are a few terms you might hear around here. The state is divided into two peninsulas, the upper one is the U.P. and the good folks who live there are yoopers. The peninsulas are connected by the Mackinac Bridge which crosses the Straits of Mackinac and has one end in MackinawCity. Nearby is MackinawIsland. All are pronounced the same way, courtesy of the French. People who live in the L.P. are called trolls, because, of course, they live below the bridge. The Mackinac Bridge is almost always called just the bridge. If we are going to the U.P. we say we are going up across. A U.P. city straddling the border to Canada is Sault Ste. Marie, pronounced Soo Saint Marie (French again). If we are heading that way, we say we are going to the Soo, and while we're there we may take a look at the locks. Tourists on Mackinaw Island (and now everywhere in the state) are called fudgies, due to the boxes of fudge many of them carry around after they have been enticed inside one of the many fudge shops by the irresistible aroma of boiling chocolate. Lots of Michiganders enjoy a meal of pasties (that's pass - tees), courtesy of the Cornish miners that came to live in the U.P. They are like a folded-over pie-crust with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and often rutabagas inside. (My mom always used to say rutabeggies.) They're very good, if a little on the dry side. A little gravy helps a lot. If you get too thirsty while eating one, you can always have a pop ( not a soda - you have to go to a soda fountain for those, which you can't hardly find anymore) Hope you learned something fun. ThinMan

Hi Monaw, First of all, thank you so much for writing such a great content! I've grown up in a house where my grandmom and mom always had "real" flour sack towels in the kitchen. I've been always a great fan of those wonderful kitchen "tools" and recently opened my own flour sack towel company. We call it Mary's Kitchen Flour Sack Towels. Here is the link, if you want to check it out: https://www.floursacktowels.com/ I've worked a lot on the thickness (I hate when almost all the towels are so thin like a cheesecloth which makes it impossible to embroidery) and made our flour sack towels thicker and heavier. I also managed to increase the absorbancy about 50% more any flour sack towels available on the market. Finally, I believe our price is reasonable when you consider the quality difference. P.S. Sorry for sounding self-promotion, I'm just so excited with the quality of my flour sack towels.

While hydrangeas in general are better in acid soils, according to author Scott Ogden they will grow in alkaline soil as long as it is well amended with compost and the bed is shaded. Our limey clays are mineral rich, but it takes humus to unlock that richness. Oakleaf hydrangea has a greater tolerance to limey soils than other species and hybrids. In Central Texas it is combined summer heat and humidity that causes failure even in many heat-tolerant plants.