Native Landscaping

I just thought I'd post a couple resources as I've been researching landscaping with native plants. Everyone knows what a waste of time, energy, space, and resources the typical American yard is, and they are generally pretty boring to look at. I've become tired of trying to maintain my yard, so I'm researching how I can landscape with native plants that will need little maintenance and no watering once they are established.

Here are a few resources that I've run across:
Landscaping with Native Plants in Pennsylvania -- Perfect place to start! I've been cross-referencing their lists with "National Audubon Society, Field Guide to North American Wildflowers"

There are also links to a few other places on the DCNR website.

I also found these videos on Treehugger.com with similar ideas about making better use of space:
Edible Estates
Urban Homestead

Since what we're talking about is really a part of the whole concept of permaculture here is a great video series about permaculture featuring Bill Mollison (who is credited with originating the idea of permaculture):
The Permaculture Concept is a series of videos. I'm only linking to the first one, but I think there are 6 parts total.

Busy week

Just a quick post to say that we have had a busy couple of weeks. My apologies for the lack of posts.

We took a short vacation to Virginia Beach over the weekend and had some great local food and saw a lot of wildlife on our hikes and bicycle rides.

Food recommendations: Steamed hardshell crabs. Fantastic. Fresh. Local. A little on the pricey side, but how often do you get to have fresh crabs? We got ours at Bubba's on the corner of Shore Dr. and Vista.

Restaurant: Hot Tuna. Ask what their fresh, local catch of the day is. We had Tilapia with a spinach and crab "topping." Their "she crab" soup is incredible as well.

The wildlife we saw at First Landing State Park included Osprey, Green Herons, Chicken turtles, painted turtles, one huge cottonmouth, and a water snake.

I've also been busy researching improvements to our home's insulation (starting with increasing our attic's R value to at least 49 with blown in cellulose insulation), composting projects for my little garden, looking into local foods that I can store for the winter (potatoes, apples, onions, garlic, squash, etc.), and getting back into practicing taiji (tai chi) daily. My wife is also a professional opera singer. I help manage her business on the side and this is a busy time of year for her business as well.

If anyone has any recommendations in regards to where to buy large-ish quantities of local (preferably organic) foods for winter storage please leave a comment. I'm planning on checking out the farmer's markets in the area, but haven't had a chance to do so yet.

Happy Harvesting!

Beating the Heat

It is a little known fact that homo sapiens require a very narrow temperature range for survival. We thrive between roughly 20°C and 24°C (68°F - 75°F). A degree or two warmer or cooler and we begin to wilt like flowers in the scorching sun or enter the beginning stages of hypothermia. At least that’s what you’d believe if you examined how most homes and offices manage their heating and cooling.

There are two clear reasons why how we use our heating and air conditioning matters. The first is economic, and the other is environmental. There are a few other potentially more important reasons, but let’s start with those two. The economics is easy. Electricity costs hard-earned money. Air conditioning requires electricity. The more you use air conditioning the more of your hard-earned money goes to the electric company. The environmental impact is directly related to electricity generation. As energy demands spike, electricity generators increase their production and, therefore, pollution. Remember, power generators are among our dirtiest polluters.

My other reasons for disliking AC are related to how air conditioning may affect our culture. Before the days of central air, I remember spending Sunday evenings sitting on my grandparents’ front lawn with my family. We’d talk to neighbors and friends when they passed by. It’s only anecdotal evidence, but I suspect that air conditioning may contribute to a culture in which individuals are increasingly insulated and alienated from one another. My other concern is about what happens to a culture whose every whim is satisfied. Yes, some people with medical conditions truly need AC. For the rest of us, I think it would do us good to experience a greater diversity of temperatures. I find that when I spend too much time in the air conditioning, I have more difficulty working outside in hot weather and become more susceptible to minor illnesses that seem to be related to shifts in the weather. I also share Teddy Roosevelt’s concern that many of the comforts of modern life are making us weak and less independent.

So where do we start? Nobody (unless you’re as crazy as I am) wants to just turn off their AC. Here are the highlights from a few sites that I'll link to below.

Set your thermostat as high as is comfortable during the summer.

Use a programmable thermostat. Allow the AC to turn off or the temperature to go up when no one is home. You’ll save more than maintaining the same cool temperature 24/7.

Turn off the AC and open your windows in the evenings and mornings when it's cool outside.

Close your windows and draw the shades during the day to keep the sun from heating up your home's interior.

Drink lots of water.

Rest during the heat of the day, and plan physical activity for the cooler mornings and evenings.

Avoid caffeine and alcohol.

Eat light and eat what's in season locally. Fruits and veggies are exactly what your body needs in hot weather.

Use the stovetop or oven less.

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/tips/air_conditioners.html U.S. Dept. of Energy website.

http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cooling.html Great website on energy conservation. This page is on cooling.

http://financialplan.about.com/od/savingmoney/a/CoolingCosts.htm?terms=save+on+cooling An about.com page on saving money on air conditioning.

Our Recycling Project

Over the years, I've experimented with different ways of handling my recycling. I'm sure that I've spent an inordinate amount of time and energy working on my recycling project, so, in the spirit of trying to save others some time and effort, this is what we're able to recycle and how it is organized.

Under our kitchen sink we have 7 separate containers (from left to right) for compost, mixed recyclables (glass, plastic, and metal), corrugated cardboard, paper, newspaper, grayboard (paperboard), and magazines.

In case you were wondering, those are milk boxes. I just took three half gallon boxes, washed them thoroughly, cut out some sides, and taped them together with gorilla tape. The containers under the sink provide a convenient location to sort recyclables without having to take everything to our larger recycling bins in the garage everyday. (Our trash can for what can't be recycled is separate and located elsewhere in the kitchen.) I empty these small containers into our larger recycling bins in our garage once each week where they stay until we take them to our community recycling program once each month.

This is about a month's worth of recycling.

In addition to the categories I mentioned above, I also have separate containers/bags for batteries, electronics, grocery bags, telephone books, and printer cartridges that I keep in the garage.

The key to successful recycling is finding a system that works for you. It must be simple, clean, and out-of-the-way. This system only requires a few minutes every week. I've never actually weighed our trash, but I'd say we recycle roughly 75% of our household waste.

Action: Carbon Offsets

You've done everything you can possibly do to reduce the amount of pollution that you're responsible for pumping into the environment, but you are bothered by what's left. Face it. Unless you are willing to live a primitive lifestyle, you will be responsible for some environmental degradation and human rights abuses.

That's it, right? We've done everything we can do. Time to go on about our merry way.

Maybe not. There's another idea that has been gaining support recently. They are called Carbon Offsets. The idea is that you can balance (or offset, if you like) the carbon dioxide you release into the atmosphere by supporting the production of clean energy.

Initially, I had reservations. It sounded an awful lot like the Catholic Church's practice of selling indulgences in the Middle Ages; in this case, a license to pollute. After doing some research though, I think carbon offsets can be used wisely. For example, my family does everything we can to reduce our negative impacts on other people and the environment. We change the way we drive and walk to work to conserve gas. We rarely use the air conditioning at home. We use sunlight to illuminate our house during the day and compact flourescent lightbulbs the rest of the time. We buy most of our food locally. We recycle. The list could go on, but in the end we still use some electricity, natural gas, and gasoline.

Until our society catches up to our ethics, carbon offsets appear to be the best way to close the gap. By purchasing carbon offsets, we help new windmills, solar arrays, and farm methane projects come to realization, and we support the generation of sustainable energy from already existing producers. Most importantly, we reduce the demand for energy from some of our heaviest polluters like coal-fired powerplants.

Native Energy http://www.nativeenergy.com/ is a company in which the majority of the shareholders are Native American. From their website: "NativeEnergy helps you help build Native American, farmer-owned, community based renewable energy projects that create social, economic, and environmental benefits." Most of their projects help build windmills on Native American lands that will then be owned and operated by the local community. The rest of their projects direct funds toward sustainable energy projects on family farms across the U.S. (There are several projects in Pennsylvania.)

Check out their website. Even if you don't decide to purchase any offsets, it's very informative.

If you do a search on "The Grist" you'll find a plethora of articles and discussions about carbon offsets. Perhaps surprisingly, not all of the opinions are on the side of offsetting. http://www.grist.org/

NPRs Scott Simon recently interviewed Al Gore and quized him about carbon offsets. This was the interview that got me interested in researching the topic. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11789919

Great website from the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Tufts Climate Initiative. They have many resources about the practices of carbon offseting and carbon trading, and they have a review/rating of the major companies who sell carbon offsets worldwide. http://www.tufts.edu/tie/tci/carbonoffsets/ratings.htm

"If you think you're too small to have an impact try going to bed with a mosquito in the room." -- Anita Koddick

"The begining is the most important part of the work." -- Plato

My Favorite Sun Tea

Always looking for ways to have a smaller eco-footprint*, I've taken to making sun tea. No energy required to heat the water other than the free energy of the sun.

You can easily create your own flavors with the vast variety of teas and infusions out there. My favorite is 2 or 3 bags of Lipton tea and 1 bag of Earl Grey to a half gallon of water. Place your tea bags in a glass container filled with water. Put in the sunlight to brew for at least 2 hours. Sweeten to taste.

*Eco-footprint: short for Ecological footprint, an illustration that compares our impact on the environment to a footprint.

Action: Replace Standard Lightbulbs with Compact Flourescents

According to the government's Energy Star website Compact Flourescent Lightbulbs (CFLs) last 10 times longer and use 75% less energy.

They are initially more expensive, but will save between $30 and $45 in electricity over their lifetime.

When a CFL burns out (depending on use that should about 7 years later) they should be disposed of properly because they contain a very small amount of mercury. From the Energy Star website: "CFLs contain a very small amount of mercury sealed within the glass tubing – an average of 5 milligrams, which is roughly equivalent to an amount that would cover the tip of a ball-point pen. No mercury is released when the bulbs are intact or in use. By comparison, older thermometers contain about 500 milligrams of mercury. It would take 100 CFLs to equal that amount."

Because CFLs are so much more energy efficient they result in overall less pollution. Much of our household electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, one of the dirtiest forms of energy production, and burning coal emits mercury into the environment.

Check out http://www.earth911.org/ for proper disposal options. There are local and national companies that will handle the lightbulbs correctly.

Here are a few resources for more information:
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls
http://www.ncgreenpower.org/media/newsletters/2005/newsletter_fall2005_page6.html
http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/lighting.html One of my favorite sites on energy efficiency.

"Whenever you see darkness, there is extraordinary opportunity for the light to burn brighter." -- Bono