igrowhort.com - Garden Solutions

10/18/2026

Armeria maritima subsp. elongata
Zawciąg pospolity wydłużony
Native to Poland, particularly dry, sandy, nutrient-poor grasslands and open woodland edges. It becomes progressively rarer toward northeastern Poland.

10/13/2026

THE CROOKED GATE · BELONGING
“Who convinced us that owning the land means we belong to it?”
From the book: Native By Nature - Spring: Belonging “It’s not about perfection or possession.”
Land ownership, borders, displacement, private property, and our strange assumption that nature belongs to us rather than the reverse.

10/08/2026

An October harvest at the 7 house 🍎🍂

There’s something wonderfully satisfying about stepping outside and gathering what the land has quietly been growing all season.

A handful of late autumn raspberries, crisp red apples still hanging from old trees, and Philly keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.

No perfect orchard, no carefully manicured garden. Just an old farmstead, a little wild around the edges, continuing to provide in its own time.

We’re learning that abundance isn’t always something you have to create. Sometimes it’s already there, waiting to be noticed, appreciated, and cared for.

Native by Nature — Autumn at the 7 house

SeasonalAbundance

09/29/2026

Leaving seedheads standing supports birds, insects, and soil health through autumn and winter. Seedheads provide food when resources are scarce, offer shelter for wildlife, and add structural interest to the garden long after flowering has ended. https://igrowhort.com/why-leave-seedheads-standing

To leave seedheads standing is to recognise that the life of a plant does not end at flowering.

09/29/2026

A perfect September evening along the Bug — quiet tracks, open meadows, cattle in the late sun, and Philly waiting back at home; this is the kind of landscape that reminds me why we came here.

09/28/2026

Even the red admirals seem to know when to slowdown.

I found this one resting on a pile of old timber at Osłowo — battered around the edges, wings a little worn, but still carrying that extraordinary flash of red through the autumn light.

There’s something about seeing a butterfly this late in the season that makes you look twice. Summer hasn’t entirely gone, but neither is it pretending to stay.

Today felt a little like that too. Not a day for pushing hard, just settling back into the place, tending the fire, feeding the animals and allowing the rhythm here to take over again.

Sometimes rest isn’t an interruption to the work.

Sometimes it is part of the fall season of letting go.

Native by Nature | Osłowo, Podlasie

09/25/2026

Goodbye Oil, Hello Old-School Heat 🔥

That was a real adventure at the 7 house it involved rather more pipes, valves, coal dust and detective work than I’d anticipated. 😂

With heating now simply too expensive for us to justify, it was time to find out whether the old solid-fuel boiler in the basement could still do what it was built to do.

And thank goodness, the old girl works.

After tracing what felt like several kilometres of large red or white-painted pipework, figuring out which valves belonged to which part of the system, and starting with a deliberately small fire, one by one the radiators began to warm. Then the great network of exposed pipes throughout the house started giving off its own residual heat.

And finally — the real test — the hot-water tank began to warm too.

That tank has had quite a week of its own. Last week it split, had to be removed, welded, reinstalled and repressurised. Now it is back doing the job it was originally installed to do, being heated from a boiler that probably hasn’t been asked to work properly in years.

There’s something wonderfully reassuring about discovering that beneath all the later additions, this old house still has its original bones.

Oil may be convenient, but if it becomes too expensive or difficult to obtain, we now know we can heat the house and our water using a system that requires remarkably little beyond attention, patience and fuel.

And the is already here.

There’s accumulated deadwood throughout the that needs clearing anyway, along with a pallet of left behind by the family who cared for this house before us. Somehow that makes today feel less like switching systems and more like continuing something.

The house came with the means to keep itself warm.

We just had to learn how to listen to it. ❤️🔥🏡

09/24/2026

An autumn parasol in the grass. 🍄‍🟫

One of the pleasures of walking the Bug River landscape at this time of year is that the ground itself seems to change almost overnight.

Among the grasses and pine needles, this extraordinary mushroom was standing almost improbably tall — a slender stem supporting a broad, patterned cap like a little woodland umbrella catching the afternoon light.

It is most likely the Parasol Mushroom, Macrolepiota procera — czubajka kania in Polish — a species that feels perfectly suited to the beginning of autumn. It often appears in grassy clearings, woodland margins and open places just as the season begins its shift from growth towards decomposition and renewal.

And that is one of the things I love about fungi. They remind us that autumn isn’t simply an ending. Beneath our feet, an enormous amount of ecological work is only just beginning.

The fruiting body may last only a short while, but the organism itself is largely hidden below ground, woven through the soil as mycelium — breaking down organic material, cycling nutrients and participating in the quiet reconstruction of the landscape.

Another tiny piece of the biodiversity story unfolding around Osłowo.

And, naturally, Philly and I had to stop and investigate. 🍂🍄🐾

09/24/2026

09/21/2026

It’s been a few weeks since we been able to get to the seven house so I thought it was time, to take dad for a long walk. 💕Philly