diy—Hollywood, Northeast (NE) Portland...

Event date: Nov 12, 2011

Event location: Hollywood Senior Center, 1820 NE 40th Ave

Learn how gardening with native plants can save you time, money & energy! Join us from 9 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, 11/12 at the Hollywood Senior Center for a FREE Naturescaping Basics Workshop! Naturescaping is the practice of designing a landscape that reduces water use, decreases stormwater runoff and pollution while saving you time, money and energy. Participants learn about native plant gardening & design, visit a nearby more...

Let’s imagine that it’s already Halloween, you have your patio lights up and a few carved gourds on the porch, and the important question lingering in the fall air is: what on earth are you going to be serving to your thirsty, be-costumed guests? Grog, fellow drinkers. Go with grog. Because there is no better complement to a night dripping with zombie anythings and sexy everythings than a drink whose last true heyday was more...

We know you haven’t had enough of old-school drinks and cocktails yet, so here’s the next in line we’d suggest for your go-to winter list: sherry. That’s right. Sherry. There’s a dry, complex quality to this Spanish wine that makes a lovely pair with the crisp (erm, soggy) autumn breeze starting to blow around Portland. It’s a great drink to offer guests arriving at your dinner party or to sip on more...

Event date: Oct 8, 2011

Event location: Hollywood Senior Center, 1820 NE 40th Ave

Learn how to build your own rain garden! A rain garden is a sunken garden bed designed to capture stormwater and allow it to soak back into the ground naturally. Part of a larger effort to bring healthy watershed function back to urban neighborhoods, this workshop provides step-by-step details on how to plan, design and build your own rain garden! Includes field trip to a nearby rain garden. Join your neighbors and register now while more...

When Kristl Bridge opened Portland Homestead Supply Co. in Sellwood in June, a visitor asked her why anyone would take tasks such as canning, pickling, and soap-making into their own hands when it’s often easier to pay someone else to do the work. “It was our first day open, so my first response to it ... was to sort of panic,” Bridge recalls. “I thought, ‘Wow maybe nobody will [do this], and we’ll more...

Four weeks of summer in and it’s nearly autumn again, at least according to the calendar. In other words, this is the perfect time to start infusing everything from olive oil to brandy! Because in four weeks when you are cold again, and have spent all of your money on patio beers in the sunshine, life will be better when you look around and see all kinds of home infusions that have turned your little counter bar and your kitchen more...

When the New York Times published a story in November 2008 about a renewed national interest in root cellars, the featured root cellarist was someone from Portland. It stands to reason. Here in grow-your-own, do-it-yourself central, we Portlanders would naturally be on top of a revived, time-honored trend that relates to homegrown food. Okay, so almost three years later, it’s exposé time. Harriet Fasenfest, the Northeast more...

It used to be that a collection of seeds was a vital possession, and that protecting seeds from one’s own garden meant protecting a family’s food source and livelihood. “Seeds were smuggled from Russia, from places in Europe,” says Corina Reynolds, a Portland-based permaculturist who grew up with victory-gardening grandparents. “People would sew them into their skirts or their suitcase linings when they more...

If you want a definition of optimism, find someone in Portland who’s installing solar panels—especially with the summer we’ve been having. Oh, and it doesn’t help when experts say that Portland gets the same amount of sunshine as an average American city. We live here. We’ve earned the right to question that. Still the promise of solar energy is intriguing. Who doesn’t dream of telling the power more...

To have a windowsill cocktail garden of one’s own is a beautiful, summery thing. Sure, the fresh herbs (and fruit) catapult your average homemade libation into craft cocktail territory. But more importantly, the delicious factor—how fresh everything will taste—is getting turned up to 11. Then there’s the added appeal of bragging rights when you entertain and the certain satisfaction of simply reaching out your more...