Just uploaded a set of photos of our backyard garden. This is the first time (as an adult) I've grown corn, so I'm amazed to see the formation of the ears coming... and fascinated by the site of our first silks.
See the set here.
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Friday, June 29, 2007
woodland home in wales
Catching up on boingboing feeds today led me to this fantastic (in all senses of the word) web site detailing how a low-impact woodland home came into being.
I especially enjoy the "how" tab showing it rise from the meadow. If only there were a time-lapse of the build, I'd be in heaven.
I'm rather jealous of his skills, even though he professes not to have any:
Oh and by the way I am not a builder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverance and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.Perseverance indeed.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
growing upside-down tomatoes, day 75
We're 75 days into our upside-down tomato experiment (click the picture to get access to the set of photos documenting the growth so far).
Compared to the three plants that are in the ground, this thing's a monster... at least four times as voluminous as the others. My concern about this hanging plant is that it looks big and beautiful but it my not set fruit, even though it's flowering.
Granted, this isn't a controlled experiment between the hanging plant and the terrestrial plants: the watering schedule and volume are different (down below, they're on a timed drip irrigation system). Also, the ground itself isn't as rich and nutritious as what's in the hanging bucket.
The experiment isn't close to being over, however, and I have my fingers crossed we'll be plucking yellow pear tomatoes from underneath the hanging bucket for the entire month of July.
:UPDATE: I took a closer look at the plant last night and counted at least a dozen tomato fruits in various stage of development. We have fruit! w00t!
Compared to the three plants that are in the ground, this thing's a monster... at least four times as voluminous as the others. My concern about this hanging plant is that it looks big and beautiful but it my not set fruit, even though it's flowering.
Granted, this isn't a controlled experiment between the hanging plant and the terrestrial plants: the watering schedule and volume are different (down below, they're on a timed drip irrigation system). Also, the ground itself isn't as rich and nutritious as what's in the hanging bucket.
The experiment isn't close to being over, however, and I have my fingers crossed we'll be plucking yellow pear tomatoes from underneath the hanging bucket for the entire month of July.
:UPDATE: I took a closer look at the plant last night and counted at least a dozen tomato fruits in various stage of development. We have fruit! w00t!
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
new home for the chooks
The Eglu has arrived, and after a little more than an hour, I was able to put it together and move the girls in.
I was really impressed with the way the packaging was handled... the Omlet folks have done a splendid job with the product design. The only nits to pick are with the instructions on how to set things up, and the expectation for how long it'll take.
The instructions start with the sentence "Assembling the eglu and run - this shouldn't take much more than 20 minutes and is very simple."
Very simple? Yes.
20 minutes? No. Not even. Maybe if you've been putting these things together for years and are racing a fellow employee for bragging rights you can do it in 20 minutes, but for the average Joe (or Thomas as the case may be)... plan on an hour.
The handy "The Omlet Guide" included with the eglu was surprisingly informative and entertaining in addition to instructional regarding how to set up the 'glu.
In all, I'm very pleased with our purchase. But I already miss hearing the girls' cheep cheep as I type my blog. Hope they're sleeping safe and sound in their new eglu.
Note: this is a duplicate post of what's appearing over on my Urban Chickens blog. I inadvertently published it here straight from my Flickr account, but it's worth keeping here if for nothing but the cool technology that the eglu represents.
I was really impressed with the way the packaging was handled... the Omlet folks have done a splendid job with the product design. The only nits to pick are with the instructions on how to set things up, and the expectation for how long it'll take.
The instructions start with the sentence "Assembling the eglu and run - this shouldn't take much more than 20 minutes and is very simple."
Very simple? Yes.
20 minutes? No. Not even. Maybe if you've been putting these things together for years and are racing a fellow employee for bragging rights you can do it in 20 minutes, but for the average Joe (or Thomas as the case may be)... plan on an hour.
The handy "The Omlet Guide" included with the eglu was surprisingly informative and entertaining in addition to instructional regarding how to set up the 'glu.
In all, I'm very pleased with our purchase. But I already miss hearing the girls' cheep cheep as I type my blog. Hope they're sleeping safe and sound in their new eglu.
Note: this is a duplicate post of what's appearing over on my Urban Chickens blog. I inadvertently published it here straight from my Flickr account, but it's worth keeping here if for nothing but the cool technology that the eglu represents.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
cheep, cheep, meet the peep(s)
After much hemming and hawing and fence-sitting, we've finally got our chicks. Two Barred Rock pullets joined our family yesterday afternoon.
To spare regular readers all the bloggy details of raising chickens, I've started a new blog about them chicks here in my new blog Urban Chickens.
Only rarely will the chicken stuff bleed into this blog, and that'll only be when there's a technology or food angle to the post.
To spare regular readers all the bloggy details of raising chickens, I've started a new blog about them chicks here in my new blog Urban Chickens.
Only rarely will the chicken stuff bleed into this blog, and that'll only be when there's a technology or food angle to the post.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
earth day: living greener in 2007
As a way of celebrating Earth Day today, I've taken inventory of how much "greener" we, as a family, are this year compared to last.
The biggest greening has come from our moving into a new home that's only a mile from my office. Not only has my daily commute shrunk from 59 miles to 2 miles, with all the carbon emission reductions that come from not having to lug my butt those 285 miles to work each week, but the house we live in now is greener, too.
Our old house was in a nice sunny neighborhood in Campbell (outside San Jose), but there was no topography to speak of. We were in a flatlands surrounded by other houses/condos/businesses, and the micro-climate of our area meant we consistently ran temperatures 10 degrees warmer than other towns around us (love those Bay Area microclimates!). Lots of trees in our neighborhood, including two huge camphor trees in our front yard, but that didn't mean it was any less hot in the summers. To help cope with the heat in our old place, we had air conditioning installed when we replaced the ancient furnace with a new energy-efficient one. While we lived more comfortably, we paid for it in our energy bills. The Springs and Autumns were the cheapest since we didn't have to pay to heat or cool the place, but we got used to shelling out over $200 a month in energy costs.
Flash forward to this year in our new home. We now live on the slope of a hill overlooking downtown Redwood City which means we get gentle breezes every afternoon and can leave the windows open most of the spring and summer to enjoy the natural cooling. Not only is the location of our home more conducive to natural climate control, but we have solar panels on the roof and an electric meter that spins both ways: when the panels generate more energy than we use, we feed back into the grid. At night and on cloudy days, we pull from the grid since the panels aren't generating anything. These solar panels have had an amazing impact on our electricity bill. Since we moved in last August, we've consumed less than $200 TOTAL electricity (compared with $200 a month in the old place). Wow.
The house we're in now is about 1,100 square feet bigger than our old home, to boot, but thanks to a dual zone furnace, we only heat the upstairs floor (where we spend 95% of our time living) and leave the well-insulated downstairs floor to its own devices.
There are other things we can do to get greener by next Earth Day, like cutting water consumption, growing our own veggies and my walking/biking to work several days a week (oh, and raising chickens!), but we've made huge strides in the last year. Here's hoping more and more of us can have similar impacts in lessening our footprint on the earth.
Happy Earth Day!
The biggest greening has come from our moving into a new home that's only a mile from my office. Not only has my daily commute shrunk from 59 miles to 2 miles, with all the carbon emission reductions that come from not having to lug my butt those 285 miles to work each week, but the house we live in now is greener, too.
Our old house was in a nice sunny neighborhood in Campbell (outside San Jose), but there was no topography to speak of. We were in a flatlands surrounded by other houses/condos/businesses, and the micro-climate of our area meant we consistently ran temperatures 10 degrees warmer than other towns around us (love those Bay Area microclimates!). Lots of trees in our neighborhood, including two huge camphor trees in our front yard, but that didn't mean it was any less hot in the summers. To help cope with the heat in our old place, we had air conditioning installed when we replaced the ancient furnace with a new energy-efficient one. While we lived more comfortably, we paid for it in our energy bills. The Springs and Autumns were the cheapest since we didn't have to pay to heat or cool the place, but we got used to shelling out over $200 a month in energy costs.
Flash forward to this year in our new home. We now live on the slope of a hill overlooking downtown Redwood City which means we get gentle breezes every afternoon and can leave the windows open most of the spring and summer to enjoy the natural cooling. Not only is the location of our home more conducive to natural climate control, but we have solar panels on the roof and an electric meter that spins both ways: when the panels generate more energy than we use, we feed back into the grid. At night and on cloudy days, we pull from the grid since the panels aren't generating anything. These solar panels have had an amazing impact on our electricity bill. Since we moved in last August, we've consumed less than $200 TOTAL electricity (compared with $200 a month in the old place). Wow.
The house we're in now is about 1,100 square feet bigger than our old home, to boot, but thanks to a dual zone furnace, we only heat the upstairs floor (where we spend 95% of our time living) and leave the well-insulated downstairs floor to its own devices.
There are other things we can do to get greener by next Earth Day, like cutting water consumption, growing our own veggies and my walking/biking to work several days a week (oh, and raising chickens!), but we've made huge strides in the last year. Here's hoping more and more of us can have similar impacts in lessening our footprint on the earth.
Happy Earth Day!
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