Category: Experimental Work Farm

  • All things come to those who wait

    Practicing the virtues of benign neglect. Now it transpires that we should leave the leaves (English is a wondrous language!) on the lawn. Beneficial to over-wintering bugs, apparently. Which is fortuitous because this Head Groundskeeper had no intention of turning over a new leaf this fall. We’ll deal with next Spring when it gets here,…

  • Green with garden envy

    Rabbits not welcome! It’s our annual guilt trip: the annual Olbrich Gardens Home Garden Tour. Due to advancing decrepitude and diverse topography, the Lovely Lisa and the Head Groundskeeper visited only four of the seven on the tour Saturday 07-12-25 — enough to reach for the ibuprofen. No cure for Stage Four case of terminal…

  • Healthy soil, healthy folks?

    Well the man IS a vigorous 80! Few personalities have been more consequential and just damned interesting than Jonathan Barry. Former Dane County executive, state legislator, UW Regent, deputy secretary at Workforce Development, business exec in the private sector, candidate for governor, and Democrat turned Republican. That’s only a partial list. Probably his most enduring…

  • Kill the wascals, kill the wascals 🎵

    We will not be species shamed! News break! Blaska’s Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony) is being overrun by chipmunks. The industrious rodents (about 8 inches long) are multiplying like Tucker’s conspiracy theories — eating our garden beans as they sprout. If past is prologue, the voracious critters will take a bite out of every…

  • Send in the Marines

    the invasive bellflower will fool ya! The Head Groundskeeper here at Madison WI is ignoring the peace-at-any-price people and has declared war — not on the pusher man but on that seed of Satan, creeping bellflower. Campanula rapunculoides was imported out of Asia — probably from the Houthis before Trump’s tariffs. Once found for sale…

  • We hope you have the best day!

    and that the WI Badgers keep winning! Old enough to remember Dave Garroway, the original host of NBC’s Today Show. He’d sign off each show with the word “Peace” while making the two-finger symbol. In the 1950s, before Abby Hoffman! Appearing with Mr. Garroway on our b&w Philco was a sidekick named J. Fred Muggs,…