Italy - I've been away from the forum for a number of years now but am still actively growing. Al - It's been a rough 5 years or so. Back in 2018 I started my own business selling high quality Adeniums (cultivated by me from seed) to local nurseries. When Covid hit. All the nurseries shut down and business came to an abrupt halt, I had 118 Adeniums ready to go but no one to buy them. I eventually sold some to family and friends, but gave most away (keeping my favorites). More recently, my mom died in May this year of an aggressive form of cancer (no one saw it coming). It's left me wanting to get out of Colorado; and move to someplace where Bougainvillea's grow naturally outdoors. Rob

Katie, One of the things you need to start, and it's practically free, is a compost pile and begin to compost your yard as you go along. As you cut your lawn, set your lawnmower on its highest setting and let the grass clipping remain on the lawn. This is the first step to amending your soil, feeding the worms and building up your soil. As your begin weeding your lawn you have a few choices. I chose the more difficult route, weeding by hand, it's time consuming but in the long run easier on the soil and the health of the critters that grow there and work on your behalf. Using chemicals is a fast and easy way to kill a lot of stuff (weeds) quickly, but it's expensive and the drawbacks are sometimes significant. Instead I took each weed and threw it back onto the lawn and let it get 'mulched' by the lawn mower. The same thing for produce, fruits and vegetables from your kitchen. I built a compost pile in my backyard and put most of my kitchen waste into this pile. I avoid any meats, bones and dairy, it gets rancid quickly and stinks - don't put any in your compost pile. I water the pile lightly once or twice a week and I feel the heat, well over 120 degrees, generating from the pile. In a few weeks, sometimes months, I get good rich compost which smells like rich soil, and put it back on the lawn. Another thing I like to do is to feed the worms. 'Them thar critters' are the real saviors of my lawn, so I feed them. A few times a week I get some kitchen produce, say a banana peel and a few leaves of lettuce which aren't edible and I throw it in a blender, fill it halfway with water and throw the contents onto the lawn. Same thing for potatoes and most fruit. I blend it for at least 30 seconds and the worms love it. Now and then I throw on some corn meal, just as a treat. I've managed to tick off my wife and I take about two cups of rabbit food and run it through a coffee grinder a few times a week, making a nice powder which I throw on my lawn. My worms love it. I picked up a 25 lb bag at WalMart for $7 and it's lasted me a few months. During the fall, when my neighbors rake up their leaves, I collect a bunch of those bags and store them over the winter, taking care to pull out any branches. I spray a little water in there and this makes a heckuva leaf mulch to mow a bag or two into my lawn in late fall. By the time spring rolls around the soil is nicely amended and is overseed ready! If you've saved a few bags and made the leaf mulch, you can sprinkle it over the overseeded parts of the lawn and it will help germinate the seeds, giving a richer, thicker lawn. This approach is relatively inexpensive, the greatest cost to me was the black garbage bags I store the leaves in and then the space to store them. I got some old pallets to build the compost pile, free at my supermarket. Just don't forget to turn the pile about once a week to make a uniform compost pile. If you keep at it, this isn't as much work as it sounds. In my lawn I've also used some more exotic stuff, all organic, avoiding the N-P-K approach as too commercialized (promoted by the seed and fertilizer companies). Take your time, let the worms do most of the work...

Welcome, Patricia, and please stay awhile. I'm Nancy, and I live in Western NC..also in the foothills and near the SC border. Chattypatty and I may be neighbors, for all I know. We have two cats, Casper and Cassandra, both white but that's where the similarities end. We garden, feed the birds, do all sorts of crafty stuff when the mood strikes. I spend WAY too much time here, just to keep up on the goings-on of some of the friendliest people on earth.

I don't make ginger tea or ginger cookies. And for cookies I'd use dried or preserved ginger. I don't make or drink smoothies. I don't make ice cream. If I did I'd use preserved ginger, not fresh. And I don't eat much ice cream anyway although if I do ginger is actually my favourite flavour. In fact I rarely make sweet dishes. But I do use ginger in many savoury meals. It goes with chicken, duck, goose, turkey, pork and fish. It goes well in fruit salads and compotes, especially with pears. It works well with onions, spring onions, leeks, peppers, carrots, parsnips, sweet potatoes, butternut squash and tomatoes. I put it in the tin when making roasts. I add chopped ginger to braises. Its a key player in stir fries. I treat it more as a minority vegetable than a spice. Sorry I can't provide recipes since I don't use them but Google will turn up hundreds, I'm sure. I wouldn't waste fresh ginger root on drying and grinding. Bought ground ginger is fine for that and much cheaper. Fresh ginger flavour is citrusy and refreshing, totally different from dried. It has an affinity with citrus fruit, star anise and other S E Asian spices.