Good Life Greenscapes

07/06/2023

looking forward to tending a larger, more bountiful landscape here on out in the Forests surrounding the many Rocky Mountain Towns and beyond along with Spru-Seal and the Forage It! Brands and the Spruce Healing Initiative to get Homeless Vets off the Streets and doing important fire hazard reduction work.

07/27/2022

Nobody does gardens like the Good Life

07/24/2022

Don't swat away these little friends.

07/09/2022

Won't be long til only means working class folk have to drive farther and burn more fuel to come work in Breck.

Fate uncertain for Jerome Osentowski’s 35-year-old demonstration farm

07/02/2022

I think we'll keep pulling it and composting it. But our all organic methods might make for the meanest honey mustard in the high country! Maybe we'll make some to celebrate Year 10 in a couple more seasons... maybe.

I noticed my first dried pennycress (Thlaspi arvense) of the season a couple days ago in Boulder, Colorado. It will be a long time before they are ripe up here in the mountains where I live, but low-country dwellers should be on the lookout for good patches now. Once they dry to the brittle stage, the seedpods can be collected and the seeds separated from the chaff. These make a good honey mustard or dry mustard powder. For the honey mustard recipe and how to separate the seeds, see: https://wildfoodgirl.com/2017/three-pennycress-mustard-recipes/

05/06/2022

From 3/18/2022, while out clearing snow! This garden is already growing in STRONG for its first full growing season!

04/28/2022

Don't plant yews here... honestly, why would yew ever when there are beautiful spruce & firs that are native?

Two moose calves were found dead in Silverthorne last month, and a toxicologist says they were poisoned by yew trees. Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed that necropsy results showed that the two calves consumed parts...

04/10/2022

What better day than Palm Sunday to realize and announce our Rebirth, Transformation and Realignment towards a Higher Purpose?

JD won the Edgewood Elementary School Geography Bee in 5th grade with the answer, "Renewable Resource," to describe our native pine forests. Sure, they "natural" too, but so are beetles and lightning strikes and, get this, Human Beings, who once thinned and harvested firewood for hundreds of thousands of years...

It's time to quit pretending like the forests are separate from our nature and isolating ourselves from one another.

Come to find that there IS funding, but imagine that: there's no one to handle the actual hands-on, back-breaking work.

Sensing the economic tidal wave that's looming, JD is getting into historical Great Depression mode by creating a simple, useful, often beloved product at a good price point and establishing a massive employment opportunity for those willing to put in the work to restore our relationship with the natural cycles of the Forest.

Good Life Greenscapes are where we All envision spending more time but never quite make the time for.

Well, now there's a concerted effort and plans in the works to spend LOTS more of our time in the forest among the Spruce.

To be totally honest, I don't know if we need to establish a SpruceHeal.org sort of holding company to survive the work period before the US Forest Service pays back our work receipts or if we simply need to land major Spru-Seal orders with the likes of REI & Tractor Supply Co. to be able to better utilize the resources and vision of Good Life Greenscapes.

The ball is rolling, and we'll still be tending to gardens around Town this summer.

Seeing as the patios, staircases & waterfall projects have dried up, it's simply not going to be worth JD's efforts to neglect his spirit-fueling Spru-Seal venture any longer.

To the Spruce,
JD Schein.
Founder, Good Life Greenscapes.
Founder, Spru-Seal by Forage It Brands

With two beetle-kill epidemics in the last 20 years, the devastation to the tree population throughout Colorado is shockingly evident, destroying almost 3.4 ...

01/31/2022

So fun to watch them fill in (and spread!) over the years. 🥰

Easy going, low-maintenance, gorgeous, and long living. Perennials that stand the test of time are all the above. These undemanding perennial plants are a perfect way to begin establishing a legacy…

01/21/2022

Your support supports JD's dreams of eventually graduating to a hemp-intensive permaculture ranch and medicinal+industrial mushroom farm. :) He still wants to build some killer waterfalls and wonderful outdoor living spaces for a good while longer!

H**p vs Cotton

01/15/2022

Anyone else ready for mushroom season already? 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️🍄

01/13/2022

Rhubarb is a fun summer treat we can grow at altitude!

In fact, I've transplanted a rhubarb root in Frisco that was as big as my arm and took our mini excavator to unearth!!!

"Force" your rhubarb to grow earlier in the season with this clever little trick. Plus your rhubarb stalks will taste sweeter.