While we are all celebrating the season of spending money on each other, how about making some of those gifts benefit both the recipients and the planet? It’s a great opportunity to put a little green into the lives of those you love. Here are a few places you may […]
Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) is turning up in the Midwest, and leaving dead ash trees in its wake. They have got ecologists and entymologists scrambling to understand what this means so that arborists and foresters can be prepared. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, UW- Extension and Dane County combined […]
Last summer (see my post Peeling Trees for our House) we selected the trees on our land that will be used to build our house, and Tuesday December 5, 20011, our construction foreman, Bryan Dalstrom started felling those trees so they can be prepped for construction, working with Kellen Anderson […]
This year I did my required volunteer hours (and then some!) for the Madison Area Master Gardeners Association by co-editing its Wisconsin Garden Journal. The efforts and expertise of many Master Gardener Volunteers were poured enthusiastically into this volume. THIS BOOK WOULD MAKE A GREAT GIFT FOR EVERY GARDENER IN […]
Your roller coaster creeps slowly, slowly toward the top of the track, and for a moment, you pause before plummeting. It’s a moment in which you are eager for the thrilling plunge and yet, you may also be asking yourself whatever possessed you to get on this ride. There is […]
When you decide to build something, these days you have a choice of four primary building materials : Steel Concrete Processed Wood Wooden timbers Which one would you guess is the most sustainable? Unmilled timbers are what we using to build our house, which is currently a tiny subset of […]
No matter where you sit down to your Thanksgiving meal this Thursday, your cranberries may well have been grown in Wisconsin. We produce more cranberries here than any other state. Cranberries were grown here before Wisconsin achieved statehood in 1830. Your cranberries may have come from one of 13 commercial […]
Lisa P. Jackson, Obama’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency spoke at UW-Madison campus this week, and I pedaled down to campus to hear her. Jackson’s visit to Madison could be considered something of a pilgrimage. Her job and all the main environmental protection laws grew out of the Earth […]
To live sustainably, we have to learn how to use the sun’s energy in real time – the way people used to do it before we began to depend on the super-charged sun power of fossil fuels. Some solutions are high tech like solar panels and some solutions are low […]
We all know trees are essential to our survival. Trees produce oxygen. The big oak in my backyard is producing enough oxygen for 10 people to breath. Trees clean the soil. Phytoremediation –That’s a mouthful of sylables we depend on. Trees are carbon sinks, locking up carbon and keeping it […]
Digging in the Driftless 