Big City, Little Homestead

When a plain house roof became a “green” metal roof

July 22, 2025 / Jane S (BCLH) / 0 Comments

Soooooo… the shingles over my garage have been telling me for years that I need to get a new roof. When it became apparent just how scrappy they were becoming, I tried to add a downspout tube from the top egress to the garage eavestrough/downspout, so that at least the water would stay contained, but no dice; I needed a good crimp tool and cutter to make it fit. The new downspout pipe floated off the roof one rain, right onto the driveway. Bummer.

This wasn’t the first time I had to reshingle the roof; back when I bought the house, the seller’s notes stated the roof was due. I did it not the first spring, but the following. It was the biggest expense I’d ever paid at that point. I even had to spring an extra $20 (or maybe it was $40) for them to roll the little plastic leaf-exclusion nets over the eavestroughs (a rip-off, both the cursory labour needed and the devices, which the squirrels ripped down in less than a minute). But at least the roof was done, with 25-year shingles, which really means 20.

Exploring the idea of a green roof

Summer 2024. The clematis has been bumped over, the asters transplanted elsewhere, the feverfew still there

Revising the front yard and green driveway

June 30, 2025 / Jane S (BCLH) / 0 Comments

Whelp, it’s now been 10 years since I converted my driveway to a green one, and laid an infiltration gallery into the front yard. I’ve written about it in Harrowsmith Mag, and I’ve been interviewed about my yard and its expansion in Modern Farmer. And of course I’ve written about it here, sometimes just in passing while observing the progress of my endeavours, my pets and the creatures that use it, and the changing seasons.

Objectively, when I look at the house from the street, the yard — the landscaping right up to the front door — seems to have both vertical and horizontal depth. It holds so much more, it just feels bigger than neighbouring properties. But as…it holds more… the gardening is as necessary as housework. I find both rewarding, but gardening is like therapy or meditation or something productive and relaxing at the same time. It never ends (except for winter’s recess), and it never gets boring, because something’s always changing.

Plant community changes

The first few years after the entrenching and conversion work, I did as much food-gardening as the garden would let me. The plan was to maintain the box hedge at the sidewalk perimeter, have a long box garden down the property line with the welded wire fence, and regular yard in between. Other plants could grow where they wanted to, or where I had room to fit them. I got quite a bounty in my first year.

As the shade from the growing tree dwindled the harvests, I tapered off growing vegetables and just cultivated as many flowers as appeared. And they did, in fact, take over. I had, and still have, big pots and balcony planters for a small potager of vegetables and bunny food. I literally grow more for my rabbits than for humans. (And yes, I absolutely did get lazy about cultivating a potager garden.)

Happy World Frog, Sparrow, and Rewilding Day! (March 20th)

March 20, 2025 / Jane S (BCLH) / 0 Comments

So, over the past year, I’ve been updating this website by paring down and consolidating, but also elaborating, on blog topics. Mostly I stuck to the context of what was going on at the time of their publication, but sometimes I added a quick update in the post. And sometimes I overhauled and republished it anew. I now have a lot more visitors than before (still modest, though), because it’s good to enjoy the simple life!

Now that I’ve combed through my content history and brought it up to a certain standard, I’m thinking about what else this Big City, Little Homestead website could do. I’m having trouble coming up with a new name, or even a reason to change it.

I expect to continue making 4 to 6 blog posts a year, usually projects to build and observations I make about nature or whatever. But that’s just holding a pattern, and I’m looking to shake something up. I have an upcoming new-roof project, and last October, I changed up the basic configuration of my front yard so I have some new ideas to update the landscaping. I’ll blog about both of these when they’re underway. But I want to do something else, something more.

A photo archive-and-use project

I got to this present state through an effort I began during the pandemic. That’s when I began organizing, harmonizing, and sometimes publicizing my photos and other resources – and I did so exhaustively. It continued on a monthly basis, for years, because I was going through 20+ years of digital and scanned photographs. Finally knowing where all my photos were helped me massively improve my photos here. Even considering they were the same pics I used at the time, I could use them at higher resolution.

Photo of a year (2012) where we had as much snow as this year.

February’s Snowmageddon (and its removal)

February 23, 2025 / Jane S (BCLH) / 1 Comment

I thought about writing this type of post ages ago, and then thought “no way ugh” and then last Sunday’s absolute deluge compelled me to write something. I was actually happy to have such a big storm, because the snow hasn’t been this deep in years.

The 2012 photo I’ve had in prep for YEARS (the wall to the right is much more viney now; the row of box hedge moved)

The above two pics and the header might not be the last time we had snowbanks 3 feet deep (but they might). I kept these from a 2012 post I’ve since deleted, when I blurbed about a big storm. We must have had one more big-snow winter since then, but it really is that rare.

Here’s what this year’s storms (two in the space of a week) left on everybody’s doorstep:

When a plain house roof became a “green” metal roof

Exploring the idea of a green roof

Like this:

Revising the front yard and green driveway

Plant community changes

Like this:

Happy World Frog, Sparrow, and Rewilding Day! (March 20th)

A photo archive-and-use project

Like this:

February’s Snowmageddon (and its removal)

Like this:

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