I have just read The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet by Heidi Cullen, and I want everyone to read it. I’ve been following climate change closely and writing about its local impact for a while now. (see my posts: 6 […]
Last Saturday was a day I wait for all year long – The American Solar Energy Society (ASES) National Solar Tour . This great event happens every October, so put the first Saturday of October on your calendar for next year if you want to know more about what solar […]
You should have noticed the apple in the bottom of the fruit bowl was bruised. Now it’s underside is liquefied. How do you know without digging down to the glop? Jostle the bowl, and a cloud of Drosophila melanogaster will give you the rotting fruit alert. Those of us who […]
Remember the scene in movies set in pre-plumbing days where someone tosses the contents of a chamber pot out of an upstairs window onto pedestrians below? Ha! Ha! Aren’t we glad we live in “Modern Times.” But the idea that we are safe from having someone else’s waste dumped on […]
Tiffany Wildlife Area at the heart of the Lower Chippewa River Basin is a natural wonderland where sloughs and old river meanders create a soggy maze of ephemeral ponds and wetlands along the river. From soaring riverside bluffs where eagles nest to swampy deeps that harbor night herons, bitterns and […]
It is 139 steps from the growing beds in our little lean-to greenhouse to our catchment basin/pond. I counted them Sunday on my fourth (but not last) trip between the two, hauling water to start our fall crop of cold-hardy greens. By the time we build our house, we will […]
Guest Post by Della Hansmann Last Friday I wrote a guest post about green building suggesting that one benefit of building bank-free would be to delete those elements from the standard kit of home parts that don’t pertain specifically to your life. I think its very important to design the […]
Our bit of land is nestled into the eastern slope of a tiny bowl-shaped dip in the earth formed where two little valleys intersect, but it has a great big bowl of sky above it. Watching the night sky is easy forget in our hectic, well-lit world, but the perspective […]
This year’s harvest is in full swing, and it’s always a mixed bag of crops that surpass my wildest expectations and others that are a real bust. I’m hoping to improve my odds next year. I’ve decided to get the jump on New Year’s Resolutions and start planning for next […]
Though I think that the expanses of turf that constitute most lawns have all the classy appeal of Astroturf, and are an generally an environmental travesty, there are some things to be said for this stuff: Prevents erosion Slows down runoff Filters water Is better than a non-permeable surface So, […]
Digging in the Driftless 