Building Bridges with Water

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink. “-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
70% of the Earth is covered in water, the majority of our bodies consist of it, and next to air and a decent environmental temperature our bodies need it more than anything else. Yet outside of glacial ice, only .2% of the water on Earth [...]

Don’t Know Why

Today was a good day. That’s fortunate because it started at about 12:30 am when some serious weather rolled thru and broke my REM. Sprout-our 4 year old, woke up screaming, but we were able to get him down. The next wave of thunderstorms was more severe, so at 2:30am both he and Bird, our [...]

If you build it, they will come

One of my favorite anecdotes in Gaia’s Garden was the Bullock home. In perhaps one of the most inspirational moments of his book, Hemingway chronicles how they revitalized a marsh and enjoyed several seasons of tasty cattail shoots from the wetland until one year a family of muskrats moved in and, being good little rodents, [...]

Victory!

I have outstanding news to share! This past Monday we had our Monthly Village Board meeting and the Green Committee was able to get some Big Ticket items onto the agenda late in the process in an attempt to ride the energy from last month’s presentation from our County Supervisor and Village Administrator on the [...]

Eco Yardening 3

So with the goal of minimizing the amount of lawn to a sustainable level, we have already seen the great amount of choices for simultaneously increasing beauty and utility, while reducing maintenance inputs of both labor and resources (water and fertilizer). The dual benefit of receiving more enjoyment and use from your yard, while also [...]

Eco Yardening 2

Running with abandon down the slight hill in our backyard with my 4 year old is easily worth half hour of mowing a week-but the amount of lawn it takes for that is about as much as I need for about the most space intensive outdoor activity I can think of-setting up a volleyball net [...]

Eco Yardening 1

Looking out my window today, across out our front perennial beds, I was again struck by the sheer volume of lawn in my subdivision. So I will be embarking on a brief series of posts about yards, their costs, and the beautiful solutions to the ‘traditional’ American lawn. First in the crosshairs will be the [...]

Permaculture…one to bind them all

About a decade ago I graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in Philosophy, and ever since I have kept up my reading as a hobby. As I left school I was experiencing a growing respect for the Existentialist’s, especially Sartre and Nietzsche, but eventually found them to be lacking in [...]

It is time.

Maybe it is the lack, until this week, of gardening to do (no planting, no harvesting) or the reading I have been doing of late, but my mind is all wrapped up with what kind of future we are leaving for our future generations in the next 50 years. Doom and Gloom stuff: Peak Oil [...]

The Flava

After just getting back from South Dakota, of course the first thing I did was run to the gardens. Sweet Jesus what 7 days of sun, rain and neglect can do to the weeds! I literally pulled 2 short wheel barrow loads from the ‘fall’ bed. So much for the Kale crop-1 survived the weeding. [...]