Home and Garden

Photo: www.michiganagriculture.com

If you prefer to have a real Christmas tree there is no doubt about it Michigan is one of the best places to live. Michigan ranks third in the United States in number of Christmas trees harvested, and is home to over seven hundred Christmas tree growers.

Above: terrarium makings at Clever Clover

Been invited to be a dinner guest or house guest this holiday season? Whether your destination is local or in a distant state, consider picking up a gift for your host or hostess at one of East Lansing’s many locally-owned small businesses.

Sometimes it’s delightful to get an invitation that says “bring a dish to pass.” It’s delightful if you like to cook and you’re confident that you can make something other people will willingly eat. It’s delightful when you have lots of time to shop for ingredients, putter in the kitchen, and create something delicious for the family Thanksgiving or a neighborhood holiday gathering.

Editor's note: This article originally ran last fall in a slighly different form.

The day after East Lansing gets a killing frost, residents will likely be treated to a rain of leaves from all the local ginko trees. Most types of trees lose their leaves over the course of several weeks, but ginko trees usually lose their leaves in a day following a hard frost. Below we provide a video taken last year during East Lansing's ginko-leaf rain.

Living sustainably, or being “green” reduces your use of Earth’s natural resources, and means changing how you look at many parts of your life including transportation, energy consumption and diet.

Interested in beginning a sustainable lifestyle or amping up what you already do? Below is a list of simple things you can do around the home to become a bit more “green.”

Kermiet's garden

The month of August is almost over and with September on the horizon it is time for many avid gardeners to reassess their summertime activities and harvest. Don’t let the cooler weather and shorter days scare you - late summer is a great time to harvest warm season crops and to plant cool season vegetables.

Above: The authors’ front yard in summer.

I guess we missed the memo that front lawns need to be manicured grass. We never much liked watering the lawn and then having to mow it, and always shied away from using herbicides and turf fertilizers. So it made sense to us to lose the lawn when we moved into our home in East Lansing 30 years ago.

Image: East Lansing work crew dealing with a sewer

After Monday’s very heavy rain, a reader wrote to ask: “We have had this [a sewer back-up in the drain] happen in our home for three years in a row now, and East Lansing govt. says it is a freak ‘act of nature’ that they can't control. Do you know if there are any organizations discussing putting some pressure on City to deal with combined storm/sanitary sewer problems? I would like to be part of a group making this effort.”

Photo: Genovese Basil

At this time of year, many gardeners have a bumper crop of basil. Maybe so much basil that it’s hard to find a use for all of it.

A relative of mint, basil is thought to have originated in India. There are several kinds of basil, but most of the time we see (and grow) either the Mediterranean Genovese or Globe varietals or the purple Thai basil.

Echinacea

Native plants offer aesthetic appeal while providing many more environmental and time saving benefits compared to traditionally grown nursery plants.

Native plants provide much needed food and shelter for insects and wildlife and because they have evolved to survive Michigan’s ever-changing weather conditions, they do not require additional fertilizers, pesticides, frequent cuttings or watering once established.