The Beatle Gardener

Looking forward to Scorsese's new film about George. Loved the article in Newsweek:

Equal to his passion for music, and his diverse and close friendships was George’s overwhelming desire to get back to earth—literally so, to dig, to plant trees, to surround himself with flowers that he himself had grown.

A gardener is inevitably someone with humility, who sees that these trees will eventually outlive him; the gardener is generous, optimistic, nurturing, taking pleasure in the planting but also making something beautiful for others. In George’s case, the gardens he made gave him the sense that he was living in isolation, on an island of his own making. “It’s great when I’m in my garden,” he is quoted as saying in the book of the film, a family album of extraordinary intimacy, edited by Olivia, “but the minute I go out the gate I think, what the hell am I doing here?”

Of George’s passion for gardening, well documented in Scorsese’s film, Olivia has said that his interest began with his father in his vegetable lot in Liverpool. But he went so much further. The most obvious characteristic of the houses that he built, or bought and fixed up in the course of his life, are the gardens he planned and planted.

“It’s fascinating to me that it manifested itself as hope, and nurturing,” Scorsese said. “Whatever problems he had, he was still out there, doing the gardening himself. Maybe it’s meditation. It helped to cut away the madness of the world around him. It fascinates me to think that he creates music like this and … he gardens! And he does everything in between. It gives him a different way of looking at life. The reality of it is that it’s a way of finding some peace with yourself.”

Another reason to protest

Why the Food Market Will Be the Next Bubble to Burst

Residential real estate may be slumping, but ag land is booming. In Iowa, farmland prices have never been higher, having increased a whopping 34 percent in the past year, according to The Des Moines Register. The boom is driven in part by agribusiness expansion, but also by a new player in the agriculture game: private investment firms. Both are bidding up land values for the same reason: the price of food.
They're betting on hunger, and their reasoning, unfortunately, is sound. This is bad news for would-be small farmers who can't afford land, and much worse news for the world's hungriest people, who already spend 80 percent of their income on food.
Agricultural commodities markets were created so that traders of food could hedge their positions against big swings in prices. If you're sitting on a warehouse full of corn, it's worth making a significant bet that the price will go down, just in case it does, and makes your corn worthless. That way at least you make money on the bet. Derivatives can add leverage to your bet, so you don't need to bet the entire value of your corn in order to protect it.
Derivatives, it turns out, are also really cool if you want to make a ton of money by betting just a little. And if you can bet a lot, even better, as long as you keep winning. The golden years of commodities trading lasted from 2002 to 2008, when prices moved steadily, but not manically, upward. Then they crashed. And then they rose even higher than before. This is the kind of volatility, except worse, that commodities trading was created to prevent.

Money over lives - the mantra of the past few decades!

Scum!!!!

Alternative Heat from Pond Scum

This year our pond has produced an overabundance of algae, and instead of simply trying to do something about the pond scum, I'm trying to figure out how to do something with the pond scum. In addition to using it in the compost bin, I'm making bricks for our wood stove. To do this, I made a brick mold and filled it with muck that I scooped up out of the pond, slopped it into the wooden mold, then let the algae dry into lightweight bricks. Watch the video of "the burning of the algae." Not the most flammable substance, but I think I'm on the right track. I'm hoping someone here knows how I can tweak the recipe for these alternative heating bricks so all this pond scum doesn't go to waste. Thanks

Love this idea.  Now if my pond would only have an overabundance of algae.  On second thought - I'll just keep burning wood.  Too much work to pull out the algae from the pond.

Malinowy Sok

At least that is how my father (who was polish) wrote it on his bottles.  It was simply a red raspberry juice with a flavor  like Chambord.  The recipe is simple and I have been making (and enjoying) for years.  It simply is berries topped with white sugar.  Those berries will release their juice and start bubbling away.  I assume it is some wild yeasts entering into the mix.  Then simply strain and squeeze out the great juice - bottle and then enjoy after a few weeks (even better a few years later).

So this year it is a new adventure.  Using the same process I am using some wild grapes (too sour to eat) and some crabapples picked off my tree.  The birds and deer are clearly upset but...  Have to see how these turn out.

After making and surviving the experiments in malinowy sok, dandelion wine, ginger beer and even some "jailhouse wine" concoction I figure what is the worst that can happen to me.  

Well if my posts stop in a few weeks - I guess the worst will have happened.  But if  it works - juice "wine" all winter long!

Passing of a Green Hero

A Passing: Wangari Maathai

Maathai is best known for creating the Green Belt Movement, which has planted tens of millions of trees around Kenya, but she also personified a positive strain of environmentalism that stands out in a world where “woe is me” messages dominate.
Maathai’s genius is in recognizing the interrelation of local and global problems, and the fact that they can only be addressed when citizens find the voice and courage to act. Maathai saw in the Green Belt Movement both a good in itself, and a way in which women could discover they were not powerless in the face of autocratic husbands, village chiefs and a ruthless president. Through creating their own tree nurseries – at least 6,000 throughout Kenya – and planting trees, women began to control the supply of their own firewood, an enormous power shift that also freed up time for other pursuits.

Let's find our voices and courage to act to honor her.

The Pirate Party

Are the Pirates Walking Green Planks?

As the rest of the world was celebrating talk like a pirate day, the Pirate Party won its first seats in the Berlin state elections. In Germany, any party winning more than 5% of the votes is entitled to a share in government. With 8.9%, the Pirate party lands 15 seats in the state government, among them 19 year old Susanne Graf (pictured above), who will be the youngest representative when session opens in October. Is this the beginning of a new kind of politics? And will it be green?
First and foremost, the Pirate Party campaign program (pdf, German) promises transparency and to give citizens more voice in government. As a young, technologically oriented party, this could auger a change (which some believe is inevitable) in the way we govern ourselves, a move away from representative government to net-based referendums. While not itself green, many believe this strategy could help take big money out of government, bringing balance back to the human aspect of decision making.
Although the word "pirate" has come to be associated with, well let us just say, the uncompensated use of certain digital properties, the official program of the Pirate Party focuses on equal access to information that is in the public domain, and equal opportunity use of internet technology as well as improved educational opportunity for the youth. The greenest angle on this approach to equal access in public domains is the call to keep natural areas available for everyone, such as maintaining open access to river banks.
The Pirate program offers much more than "open access." It turns the clock back on post-9/11 state controls, fighting against surveillance of citizens and demanding improvements in accountability for police forces. The platform contains planks designed to open borders, fighting on several fronts against anti-immigrant feelings. Perhaps most controversially, the Pirate platform also demands a change from drug abuse penalization to educational and social supports designed to reduce dependence on harmful drugs. Walking this plank includes the legalization of marijuana, on the grounds that illegal cannabis handlers pose a health risk by selling contaminated products.
Nations around the globe are finding politics as usual unsatisfying in the face of global economic crisis. Sustainability fans know that things cannot go on as they are. The question that now arises in Berlin is: will this youth movement earn respect for a new path forward, a post-capitalist, post-industrial, social-network based politics? Can politics survive transparency? And can it work for a party named "Pirates"?

This nation needs a viable alternative to the corporate financed Repub/Dems. But can a third party thrive? With so little MSM attention to Occupy Wall Street, their fascination with Hollywood and tabloid stories - I doubt that they can have a meaningful and truthful coverage of any party/group/individual rocking their boat filled with corporate cash.

It is all connected!

Why Environmentalists Should Care About the Occupy Wall Street Protest

The pages of TreeHugger are filled with examples of lobbyists for the corporate polluting class subverting the democratic process in the United States. From the activities of the Koch brothers lobbying octopus in opposing any environmental constraints on business, to the vast subsidies the oil industry maintains even as profits are at record levels, to dirty tricks lobbying against meaningful climate action.
The government of the United States in 2011 is fully in the hands of corporations, at times bordering on the unification of corporate and government interests embodied in fascism--at least in spirit if not every single platform point as outlined three quarters of a century ago.
Besides the destructive environmental consequences of war, the United States outspends the entire world in its militarism. And it is bankrupting this nation. If this nation's military spending was just cut back to doubling its nearest rival, China, it would free up funding for domestic environmental programs, job creation programs, and programs to directly help people at home.
From another angle, if the US wasn't so utterly dependent on fossil fuels it would not have to spend so much money supporting the national and corporate goals of ensuring that the oil keeps flowing, in the process supporting despotic regimes, even supporting friendly governments trying to peddle their environmentally destructive oil as a better alternative to those regimes, and de facto supporting rampant environment destruction in some of the world's poorest regions.
Clean energy may not bring an end to war, or an end to international economic conflict, but it will end the need to protect oil and natural gas fields around the world.

Everything is connected. Environmental justice, social justice - it is all the same fight.
If we do not fight now, we can face the same as is happening in China...

LA Times has a report about how organic produce is sold in China, providing a glimpse into what life might eventually be like, here in the USA, if House Republicans fully codify their Libertarian beliefs (which assumes they would put an end to funding USDA Organic registration).
As things stand, US citizens have a choice: if they want to eat factory farm produce and dairy they can do that; or, they can spend a little more for USDA-certified organic food. In China, on the other hand, the good stuff is saved "...for officials only. They produce organic vegetables, peppers, onions, beans, cauliflowers, but they don't sell to the public," said Li Xiuqin, 68, a lifelong Shunyi village resident who lives directly across the street from the farm but has never been inside. "Ordinary people can't go in there."

Come to think of it, with some prices, especially with restaurants, we are already there.   Cheaper to eat the crap in McD's rather than fresh veggies from a farmer's market.

Where's the media?

Where are the "major" news companies and their coverage of Occupy Wall Street?
Where is their reporting when it comes to Internet and Cell Phone shutdowns?

Several activists are reporting that internet signals and access are being blocked at the “Occupy Wall Street” protest in New York. This same tactic has recently been employed at Bay Area Rapid Transit protests on the opposite side of the continent in San Francisco to shut down cell phone service. See a trend?

Well what should i expect. We see how the media deals with climate change.

Arrghhh!

The Critical Relationship Between Pirates and Climate Change

Every year we be trottin' out Wellington Grey's seminal research on the in'erse statistical relationship between the number of pirates in the world and the climbin' temperatures.

We need more pirates. I am doing my part - what about you?

Raise your glasses

Whisky for the Environment

Whisky fuels lots of things—rebellions, country and western songs, and Shane MacGowan, to name just a few. Now it’s going to power 9,000 homes in Scotland.
More specifically, whisky byproducts are going to power the homes, in the distillery-rich region of Speyside, by helping to fuel a local biomass energy plant.
“Waste products from around 16 of the area’s 50 distilleries will be used at the site, including well-known brands such as Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, Macallan, and Famous Grouse,” the Guardian reports.
Spent grains from the whisky distilling process, known as draff, will be burned along with wood to create electricity at the combined heat and power (CHP) plant. Another byproduct, a high-protein liquid residue called pot ale, will be made into a syrup for animal feed—which will be conveniently made at a plant next door.
The Scots aren’t the only whisky makers who are seriously thinking green. On this side of the pond (where we spell it with an “e,” thank you), fine bourbon whiskey distiller Maker’s Mark has made waves with its sustainability initiatives, which according to Inhabitat include biogas reuse, aggressive waste reduction, an on-site nature preserve, and a mostly local, no-GMO grain supply chain.

Need another reason to have a drink this weekend?
Well, it makes me smile knowing the White House has their own brew.

Former Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer had requested to share a beer with the president before the ceremony, CBS reports.
The Honey Ale is the first beer brewed in the White House, but Obama is not the first president to take on the hobby, according to historians.
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were brewing aficionados, but Jefferson never made beer at the White House, and Washington, of course, never lived there, White House curator Bill Allman told NPR.

Those are both enough reasons for me to raise my glass and have a drink.  Okay, so the weekend helps too.

Sustainable Eating

7 Ways to Cook Up a Sustainable Diet

...seven tips for happier (and healthier) eating, wherever you are planted.
1. Savor your food without distractions. Chew it not for "good digestion" but to enjoy the flavors. Don't read or write emails or watch a movie. You may actually notice when you are full and stop. Savoring alone could lead us to eat, spend, and waste less.
2. Cook with what's at hand. If it is in your fridge or on your shelves, count it as local. How much food do we waste simply because we forget we have it?
3. Become competent in your kitchen. Using hand tools rather than a food processor saves energy and sharpens new skills.
4. Adopt one farmer and stock up. Local food means that specific human beings did a lot of hard work with much love to bring good food to their communities. Pick someone who sells at the farmers market or to your local co-op or grocer. Go to their farm and buy food for your No Impact Week experiment. It's fun.
5. Invite someone to dinner. When we eat alone, we tend to wolf down our food. And families are so busy and distracted they often don't think to invite someone over for a meal. I learned that eating is an act of belonging, and we are not meant to be as anti-social as many of us have become. Cook a nice meal from your local supplies and enjoy conviviality.
6. Read the labels at your grocery store. Where do the 25 foods you most often buy originate? Is your olive oil simply distributed in California, or are those California-grown olives? Is your Napa wine really made with Napa grapes, or is it a blend? Is there information about the people who grew the food, packaged, or shipped it?
7. Start some alfalfa seed sprouts on your windowsill on day one. By the last day of the week, eat them.
Local tools, local farmers, local company, local sprouts--it's all part of your local food system.

One change I would make to this list...Instead of "Adopt one farmer" - become a farmer/gardener and grow your own.

Happy Birthday

Stress Free Gardens

A More Natural and Greener Way to Garden – Slow Gardening

In the pursuit of the perfect lawn and manicured, sometimes uniform shrubs and annuals, not to mention vegetables, could something be getting lost? Could we be gardening in an overly intense or pressured way? Diane Brandon is joined this week by Felder Rushing, a decades-long gardener who writes and speaks about gardening, who is also the author of Slow Gardening – A No-Stress Philosophy for All Senses and Seasons. Mr. Rushing’s approach could allow you to get the health benefits from contact with the earth, as well as the rewards of gardening, without feeling pressured. It should feed your enjoyment of gardening as well!

Listen to the broadcast here.

Fall Garden

It's Not Too Late to Plant a Fall Garden! What to Plant in Your Region Now

Northeast

• Arugula

• Carrots

• Lettuce

• Mache

• Mustard Greens

• Radishes

• Spinach

• Turnips

Check, check....all except the mache.
And mustn't forget the beets, chard, kale and tomatillos that are going to be feeding me for a while.

I can slow down on weeding?

Why Encouraging Weeds May Be Good Farming

When I posted an awesome tour of my old permaculture teacher's urban allotment, I was reminded of his seemingly chaotic yet decidedly sensible approach to weeding. Rather than seeking to eradicate weeds from his site—an objective that was at best incredibly labor or chemical intensive, if not downright impossible—he instead chose to encourage weeds that had some beneficial properties. Those might be wild edibles, or they may be nitrogen fixers, or plants with particular benefits in terms of biodiversity. The idea, then, was to edit rather than control—and to encourage a community of plants that was both productive and more-or-less self sustaining.
This video is a classic example of that approach. By observing her fields and the life-cycles of both the main farm crops, and the weeds that inevitably accompany them, Helen Atthowe of Veganic Permaculture is able to identify penny cress as a plant that does not compete with her main crops, and also attracts beneficial insects. So while she weeds selectively and takes out plants that cause more disruption, she lets penny cress thrive and spread—in the hope that it will crowd out some of the competition and ultimately reduce the need for weeding or other interventions.

I knew there was a raeson that I am so remiss in weeding the garden. I knew I wanted the purslane growing because of my salads but now I have a great reason to let more of those weeds grow on and on and on...

Chuck being Green

Prince Charles Warns of Human Extinction

In his first speech as the head of the Worldwide Wildlife Fund UK, Prince Charles warned of a mass human extinction if dramatic steps aren't taken to reduce the world's consumption of natural resources. According to an article in The Telegraph, the Prince of Wales said, somewhat jokingly, that he too was an endangered species.
The Telegraph reports that Prince Charles didn't mince words when describing the state of the environment and how the planet as we know it is entering a mass extinction that could only be matched but that of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
He also commented that the triple threat of climate change, rainforest destruction, and dwindling fish stocks make this a "crucial moment" for the organization and the movement.

High fives to the Prince for his stand. He is the butt of so many jokes but the guy is okay by me. From this speech to his organic garden he is leading the way. Wonder what Queen Mum thinks about climate change?

This guy is leading the pack?

Rick Perry: Just because global warming is a ‘fact’ doesn’t mean it’s real

In last night's debate, Perry offered the following extremely convincing argument against global warming: Not all scientists believe in it, I am pretty sure. I can't name any scientist who doesn't, but then, I can't name any scientists at all. Even if they do say it's a fact, that doesn't mean it's true. Because Galileo. Hey, Galileo! He's a scientist who probably didn't believe in global warming! QED.

THIS IS BARELY EVEN AN EXAGGERATION. Here's an actual quote: "The idea that we would put American's economy at jeopardy [sic] based on scientific theory that's not settled yet [sic] to me is just, is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists that's stood up and said 'here is the fact,' Galileo got outvoted for a spell." See, my way was much easier to understand!

Scary isn't it?   In a sick way I hope he wins the Repub nomination.  Need some laughs during the next election.

The Koch Boys are at it again

Koch brothers compare Obama to Saddam Hussein, declare 2012 will be ‘war’

A complete audio transcript of the Koch brothers' annual super-secret gathering of hard-right bazillionaires just leaked, and it's full of all the usual invective you'd expect to hear out of America's favorite pro-business libertarian climate change deniers.
The Koch brothers are apparently really getting into their supervillain roles. Not only did they lay out their evil plan to their minions (sort of), but they had all kinds of elaborate security in their lair. Measures taken to prevent a leak like this were almost comically over-the-top, including outward-facing speakers blasting static in order to fool remote eavesdroppers.
Charles Koch opened the meeting by comparing president Obama to Saddam Hussein, and then asserted that the 2012 elections will be "the mother of all wars."
One of the biggest applause lines of the evening came from Fox News analyst and retired New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, who said that the second amendment was created to ensure "the right to shoot at the government if it is taken over by tyrants."
So, there you have it: Obama is a tyrant, and the constitution preserves our right to shoot at tyrannical governments. Nothing to see here.

You know, this makes O's cave-ins not so bad.  If the boys despise him so much, how mad can I really be at O?

It's all a punishment from above

Hurricane, Earthquake Comments 'A Metaphor'

Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Sunday changed her explanation for her controversial statement about Hurricane Irene and the earthquake that rocked the East Coast.
Last week, Bachmann seemed to suggest to a crowd in Florida that the natural disasters were messages from God warning politicians to take heed of small-government conservatives.
"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?'" Bachmann told the crowd.
Bachmann dismissed the controversy over the remark the next day, calling her line a joke. "Of course, I was being humorous when I said that. It would be absurd to think it was anything else," she said.
When asked about the statement in an interview on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, however, Bachmann shifted her tone somewhat, calling the statement a "metaphor."
"Obviously, I was speaking metaphorically," she told host Bob Schieffer. "That was clear to the audience. It was clear to me."

Wonder if she thinks the Texas wildfires are from the gods.
Wait - if the intensity of the weather is being increased by climate change - and intense weather is from god - and man is a cause of climate change - then man is God!!

Tell Your Boss - Part Deux

Obama halts tighter smog rule, citing 'regulatory burdens'

Citing the financial burden in a struggling economy and after Republican protests, President Barack Obama on Friday ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to shelve a proposal to tighten smog standards.

Well I guess Joe hadn't spoken to the Boss - or Boss just didn't care.

Shades of Atwood

Image via WikipediaLab Grown Meat Just 6 Months Away, Scientists Say

It's long been an electrifying possibility: Red meat without the environmental drawbacks. Meat without animal cruelty. Meat without industrial scale cattle ranches, without the vast drain on resources required to raise millions of cows. Meat without the forestland razed for grazing room, without the methane emissions.
In an attempt to bring about such a world, researchers have been diligently pursuing laboratory-grown meat for years. Supermarkets are in line to sell it. And evidently, a breakthrough is near: some scientists speculate that we might see the first lab-grown sausage arrive in just six months. Six months after that, a lab-burger.
And that claim is being made by of the field's leading researchers, including Mark Post, of Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The New Scientist reports that "Post has experimented mainly with pig cells and has recently developed a way to grow muscle under lab conditions - by feeding pig stem cells with horse fetal serum. He has produced muscle-like strips, each 2.5 centimetres long and 0.7 centimetres wide."

Yum?  I don't think so.

Tell Your Boss

Biden Warns Against Abandoning Clean Energy

The United States can't lead the world in the 21st century with its current energy policy, Vice President Joe Biden told alternative technology supporters Tuesday at a clean energy summit in Las Vegas.


The nation is already trailing China and Germany in green technology, Biden said. It will trade its dependence on foreign oil for a dependence on foreign clean energy technology if its leaders don't act to help fledging green researchers and businesses, he said.

Joe, tell you boss to not compromise and back down.

Praise the Tater

Potatoes, especially purple, may help lower blood pressure

A small, pilot study suggests that a couple of servings of potatoes per day can lower blood pressure as much as oatmeal without causing weight gain, researchers said. Joe Vinson, a professor of chemistry at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, analyzed 18 patients who ate six to eight small purple potatoes twice daily for a month and found their systolic and diastolic blood pressures (the top and bottom numbers in a blood pressure reading) dropped by 3.5 and 4.3 percent, respectively.

Vinson pointed out that potatoes can be a healthy food when they're not in the form of French fries or chips, or covered in high-fat toppings such as cheese and sour cream. Purple ones, in particular, have high amounts of antioxidants, although red-skinned or white potatoes may have similar effects, he said.

I knew there were more reasons why I planted taters besides great taste.