How to Grow Blueberries (Vaccinium spp.)
2024-12-04
Blueberries are amazing plants for the home gardener to grow. They are small shrubs growing up to two metres tall and 1.5 metres wide. Deciduous blueberry plants can display stunning autumn foliage, so they are a great addition to ornamental gardens as well as those focussing on edibles. However, the main reason to grow blueberries is for the fruit. Blueberries taste great, are packed full of nutrients and can be frozen for use throughout the year.
How to grow mushrooms at home
2024-12-04
Hello! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.
Here’s what landed in subscriber inboxes the past couple of weeks:
If you’re reading this by chance — welcome! You can enter your email below to ensure you never miss my twice weekly posts (Thursdays and Sundays).
I have a wonderful guest column for you this week that I think would make a really fun project during the strange but welcome liminal downtime between Christmas and New Year.
How to Help Ukrainians, a Year In
2024-12-04
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In emails through Substack and in the recent live discussion, a number of you have asked me to send a current list of causes to back in and for Ukraine. I see that I have not done this for months, and I appreciate the reminder.
In other settings I get asked why Americans should donate to Ukraine, given that our government is supporting the Ukrainian government. This is a perfectly reasonable question.
How to Host Your First Dinner Party
2024-12-04
Hosting a dinner party may sound intimidating, yet it can be done by anyone in any space. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned host looking to enhance your skills, this detailed guide will lead you through each step, ensuring your dinner party is a resounding success.
By following the steps below, you will be well on your way to hosting your first ever dinner party.
Step 1: Set the Date
In 2011, storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted Pixar’s "22 Rules For Storytelling."
The post blew up with thousands of likes, comments, and shares. If you’ve never read the list, it’s worth reading. BUT there’s one rule that’s generated more attention than all the others combined.
And that rule is…
Before we get to the formula, you need to know the Story Spine didn’t originate with Pixar.
They just made it famous.
Have you seen the above image on social over the past few days? Did you immediately see the hidden message and think “ah, this is how Boomers are going to get into generative AI”? Or, like me, did you spend an inordinate amount of time squinting at the image, moving your phone further and closer away, like it was a 90’s magic eye illusion. Until finally, when looking at it from the corner of your eye, it became clear that the people’s clothes spell out the word ‘obey’?
How To Kill Your Mother
2024-12-04
If my son wrote a play like Confessions, I’d disown him. (He’s been forewarned). Strangely, Alexandre Zeldin, and (luckily for him) most of his play’s reviewers, seem to think he’s made a profound and moving testament to his mom. It reminds me of the French movie Amour, one of the bitterest profiles of marriage on cellul…
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How to leave a life
2024-12-04
Each month, I share reflections on writing, creativity and making slow chewy art. This newsletter is always free.
I didn’t write for nearly 8 years. Well, to be fair, I did write email campaigns and landing pages and flashy paragraphs called brand narratives which read like bad poems but occasionally still made my clients cry. I worked hard and got promotions and always felt a little impressive when I ordered Manhattans on the company card.
Dear reader, This is an article about surviving the ending of a partnership. What to do when the person we hold the most dear in our hearts is no longer “our person”—but a person. What to do when our attachment to our partner was the thick rope anchoring us to our lives, anchoring us to the earth. How to keep our hearts open when we trusted in an uncertainty (indeed all relationships are an uncertainty) and got seriously hurt in the process.