This year Earth Hour begins at 8:30 PM local time on Saturday, March 28.
Go ahead, turn off your lights, your computer and your appliances if you choose for one hour.
I’m thrilled that a neighbor asked me to support her campaign to notify local leaders about Earth Hour. Change begins with one small step.
The robin’s whinny woke me up this morning and it occurred to me that I’ve been twittering and tweeting – or at least present while others twitter and tweet – for years.
I’m headed outdoors to spend the day with the robins, blue jays, cardinals and the rest of the original twitterers.
I enjoy taking classes and workshops that ensure my ability to live sustainably.
When I first got the information about this one-day Women in Agriculture workshop, I could not envision how I would learn all these skills. Hats off to Rogowski Farms for putting together an effective and valuable program.
Each presenter used their 45-minute time slot to share basic vocabulary, identify tools and supplies, and demonstrate a simple task. I now have an idea of how splice electric wire, solder copper pipes without making a mess, and replace an air filter on a lawnmower. Am I an expert? No, but I know how to begin and ways I can practice safely until I learn. (more…)
Happy Vernal Equinox.
Back in 2006 I published Edible and Natural: How Do I Know What Plants are Safe to Eat?
I typically reference this advice when I write about foraging. As I learn and develop my skills, there are a few more rules that I have added to my guidelines.
1. There are fewer poisonous plants than non-poisonous plants. If you learn all the poisonous plants, when you find a plant you don’t know, it’s more likely to be non-poisonous, even if it’s unpalatable.
2. Observe carefully. Chicken mushroom has no poisonous look-alike, but there’s more to identifying it than finding an orange shelf mushroom. You have to notice the pores on the underside. The deadly poisonous Jack-o-lantern mushroom has gills on its underside.
3. Harvest common plants where they grow in abundance, but never take more than 10 percent. Overharvesting is destructive to the environment and may deprive wild birds and mammals of their only source of essential nutrition.
4. Learn which plants are endangered and refrain from harvesting them at all.
5. Spend time learning to identify every plant during each season. Look at the new growth of spring, notice the changes in summer, fall and any skeletal remains in winter.
6. Make sure you harvest from healthy areas. In addition to foraging more than 50 feet from regularly traveled roads, look at the condition of the entire habitat. If the leaves are not a healthy color green, if the water is not running clear, if there is a lot of animal scat or carrion, find another place to forage.
Common sense and respect are critical to foraging. I still take classes with experts. I often learn something new about a plant I’ve been nibbling on since childhood. It’s easy to become overconfident after foraging for a few years; it’s not worth the risk to be less than 100 percent sure of your wild harvest.
I read somewhere that former president Richard Nixon removed the dollar from the gold standard in 1971. I was a freshman in college back then.
I can’t say I understand what’s going on in the economy, but it seems like “fun with numbers” to me.
I know that politicans and CEO’s can’t legislate the law of gravity and haven’t yet prevented the the sun from rising and setting, the moon from waxing and waning, the earth from rotating, and the tide from ebbing and flowing.
My CSA has a new farmer. We’re meeting in just over a week to learn what he needs us to do to help him manage a thriving, sustainable garden.
I don’t have time to be scared about the economy. I’m more concerned about produce that is not labeled. Until recently, I purchased a mixture of conventional and organic fruits. Now, without real labeling, I have no idea which produce might be genetically modified. (more…)
I began to see a pattern to my reading and have now organized my eclectic list into the following categories:
I will continue add titles as I discover new favorites and rediscover childhood favorites.
Every title on this list is a book I love it every time I read it. That makes it worth sharing.
Happy Reading.
Tags: Books, Nonfiction
My Dad has always believed that everything happens for the best, even when something apparently bad happens.
It has taken me a while to adopt this point of view, but I’m beginning to catch on to the the wisdom in Dad’s point of view.
While waiting for the leak in my ceiling to be repaired, I realized that my closets are filled with material culture I forgot I had. Since everything in my living room is in boxes anyway, I decided it’s a good time to dig through all the boxes of my accumulated possessions. Maybe I’ll find the folding saw and compass I lost about five years ago.