News from the ‘hood May 29, 2009

The Parsons pad rests atop Seattle’s beautiful Phinney Ridge.  We love our neighborhood - with its diverse people, community organizations, boutique shops, coffee shops, restaurants (happy hour!) and an eclectic mix of homes.  We’ve raved about it before here.  We especially love it in the summertime, when everything (including the tree outside my desk window) is in bloom.  In case you need any more reason why the north end rocks, here is some news from the ‘hood:

• The Phinney Farmer’s Market opens today!  Time to get your fresh fruit and veggies, flowers, jam, pickles, cheese, hand-made pasta, baked goods, pizza and more in the parking lot of the Phinney Neighborhood Center – every Friday from 3-7pm through Oct. 2nd.  Today’s market features live music from 4-6pm.  There is always a white board out front detailing what’s fresh that week, but you can also sign up for a weekly “Ripe and Ready Report” from the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance.  Send an email to nfma@seattlefarmersmarkets.org to be added to the list.
• The PNA Home & Garden Tour is coming up on June 7th, 11am-5pm ($12 for PNA members; $15 for nonmembers – tickets available online).  The Phinney Neighborhood Association Home & Garden Tour provides the opportunity to visit five neighborhood homes that have been remodeled and five urban gardens to inspire your summer projects.
• Get your art on the 2nd Friday of each month from 6-9pm at the Greenwood-Phinney Artwalk.  Each month a map with updated listing will be available for art walk attendees to download from the Greenwood-Phinney Chamber website.  Cruise the neighborhood and check out cool artists – and be sure to stop by the Greenwood Collective when you’re out and about.  They are always up to something creative and inspiring.  Their space – tiki room and all – is available for party rentals too.
• The penguins are on the march!  In anticipation of the new penguin exhibit, the Woodland Park Zoo and the Greenwood Collective are coordinating the decoration and adoption of 62 penguins (a la Pigs on Parade).  Keep your eye out for these colorful creatures that will be dotting the Greenwood, Phinney, Ballard and Fremont neigbhorhoods at area businesses.
• And it’s not Phinney, but our neighbor Ballard was named one of the country’s best neighborhoods.  Get the scoop on the MyBallard blog.  Ballard has seen a revival in recent years, though it retains its funky flavor.  I hope the same will be true for Piper Village.

Do you know where your meat comes from? May 27, 2009

Every week, I help oversee our local high school Green Team meeting (which is composed of 20 girls and not a single boy!). During the last meeting, a graduating senior brought up the issue of meat production. She suggested to the group that they put the topic on their agenda for next school year since it’s such an important issue. So that got me thinking again about meat. I’m not a meat eater and haven’t been for decades, but I do understand that it’s a complex topic. The world is not going to suddenly stop eating meat. But if you eat meat, you should understand the issues surrounding its production. I have no doubt that once you start reading up on the facts, it will get you thinking about what kind of meat you buy and how often you eat it.

Here are a couple of articles to get you started: New York Times and Grist blog. 

Some of the statistics are mind-boggling: 

An estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation. 

As are these:

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period.

So here are some questions: Is there any place for meat in the human diet if you consider the effects on the the planet? What if you eat meat once in awhile. Is that sustainable? Is there really such a thing as sustainable meat production? And then there’s the safety issue, such as with the recent swine flu outbreak, where the genetic lineage of the virus was directly connected to a strain that emerged in 1998 in U.S. factory farms. 

It’s all just food for thought.

Fuel Efficiency and The American Driver May 22, 2009

Memorial Day weekend.  Beach and backyard BBQs.  A time when everything goes on sale and sunburns grace pale Seattle bodies.  It is also a weekend for car trips.  We go visit family, drive to the beach, go car-camping, drive to the mountains for a hike, or to the Gorge for Sasquatch.

On Tuesday, President Obama announced national emission limits for cars and trucks and a new fuel efficiency standard of 35.5 MPG by model year 2016.  This new standard requires all automakers to increase fleet fuel efficiency by 5% per year starting in 2012.  It is also expected to add $1,300 on average to the cost of vehicles, which, Obama said, consumers will make back within 3 years due to savings on gas.

It is said that these measures will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil through 2016 and would be the environmental equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road.  Yet there are some that wonder if you make cars less expensive operate, won’t that just drive people to, well, drive more?

Paul Kedrosky, senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, has some food for thought, which he shared on Thursday’s Marketplace.  Take two minutes and listen to his commentary here.

He makes a really good point.  But, as the New York Times says, kudos to Obama!  And there are more much-needed regulations to come.  The auto industry is at the front end of a wave of changes driven by Obama’s determination to put the US on a fossil fuel diet.   When all is said and done, these measures may create markets for fuel-efficient cars, change how Americans heat and light their homes and, ultimately, decide what industries will rise and fall.

Your Very Own All-You-Can-Eat Salad Bar May 16, 2009

this is not what we're talkin' 'bout here. EE-GADS!

Remember Sizzler? It was basically the highlight of my suburban California childhood. How cool were those postcard-perfect all-you-can-eat buffets with the mountains of heart attack snacks. Was it really coincidence that the chocolate jello-pudding and popcorn shrimp were strategically placed right next to the kin-of-cardboard vegetables? I think not my friends, I think not. From behind the bread batter, the shrimp seemed to wiggle with life whispering, “Sure you could eat some of those tasteless vegetable-wannabes, but then again you could dip me in the pudding. Follow your heart kid.” OH the temptation! Well I grew up, a guilty conscious finally trumped my heart’s desire for self destruction and I eventually indulged in the salad bar. But the shrimp were right, you needed a whole lot of dressing to make those veggies worth eating. And let me tell you.

Sizzler Italian? Yeah, it doesn’t hold a candle to chocolate pudding.

The thing about salad bars, and not just Sizzler salad bars, is that they’re great in theory, but it’s impossible to find flavorful, let alone fresh (let alone organic) produce occupying the bins. So here’s one solution. Bring the salad bar to your home. Build a three foot tall 10’x 3’ raised bed with reused materials and plant it with your favorite salad veggies. Or do two salad bars: one for salad greens and shade loving edibles and another for the heat lovers. The height of the “bar” makes for easy maintenance, reduces chances of slug damage, and helps with ripening because (at least for the heat lovers) the large raised bed acts as a thermal mass, which translates to warmer soil for the plant roots, quicker ripening, and nearly a month of extended season.

Okay, so you still need a sneeze guard because, really, what salad bar is complete with out one? (see pic) By using thin bamboo poles (instead of PVC) as supports build your self a little hoop house. Viola! Multipurpose sneeze guard! In the mid to late winter use the bamboo ribs to cover your veggies with transparent plastic for season extension or even germinating the starts that will later occupy your more established beds. Then move to using agricultural cloth to protect from those early spring frost nips. And once summer hits cover your shade needy plants with a shade clothe and use your bamboo supports to hang misters to keep those greens nice and succulent. Trellises can go up the back to support cucumbers, peas, snap beans and indeterminate tomatoes. Nastursiums and squash plants can flop over the side to provide edible blossoms. If you really want to push the limits of salad bar sanity, build the sides out of 2” x 2” stainless 1/8” hog wire and stuff it with compost with a layer of sphagnum peat moss nearest the hog wire then plant it with a patchwork of ever-bearing strawberries. I guarantee you’ve never had a better salad.

Eat your cardboard-artichoke heart out Sizzler!

Carbon offsets are hot news for travelers May 10, 2009

  

 

 

The Climate Trust

Carbon offset programs are cropping up everywhere in the travel industry and companies are making it so easy to participate! (For a helpful explanation about carbon offsets, visit The Climate Trust.) Take the year-old program, Keys to Green, offered by Alamo Rent A Car, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and National Car rental (all owned by the Taylor family of St. Louis). At the time of rental, customers can opt to pay $1.25 to fund certified offset projects managed by TerraPass that help remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Including the company match, the program has raised $440,000, which has offset 42,000 metric tons of carbon. What’s that mean? According to the EPA, it’s equivalent to saving 4.8 million gallons of gasoline. Pretty impressive! Many airlines are getting on the carbon offset bandwagon too. Continental, Delta, United, and Virgin Atlantic all offer carbon offsets. American Airlines has gone a step further by offering additional award miles if frequent flyer members offset their air travel. The whole topic isn’t without controversy though. Critics say travelers should reduce their impact by first cutting back on flying or driving before buying offsets. Apparently, it’s also difficult to substantiate the benefit of some offset programs. What should you do? Be sensible. Before you buy an offset, eliminate unnecessary travel. Telecommute, if you can. Then, if you must fly or drive, purchase a carbon offset from a reputable company before you leave home.

Water-Wise Gardeners Water Wisely May 2, 2009

My young neighbor pointing out the water instantly evaporating. "Where'd da wata go to?" Oh the futility!

Oh, we’re so close! Six more weeks of Seattle rainy-day potential and we’ll all be hydrating ourselves bloated, whilst tanning our pasty hides to resemble riding saddles well through the end of September (unless, of course you’re as freaked about skin cancer as I am, in which case you’ll do just about anything to nurse that translucent, attractive-only-in-feudal-Japan / how’d’ya-guess-I’m-from-Seattle skin tone). While we over-achieving primates have a choice on how to handle the brutal, double-edge beauty of the Sun and its impending days of glorious drought-doom, our co-dependant botanical better-halves have no choice. We all think that plants and people under go the same silly hydration logic which goes, “I am thirsty. In an heretofore proven effort to remain alive, I will drink something to quench my thirst.” But, nay nay, in all reality plants and humans don’t use the same logic at all. I know, shocking! While we humans can rejuvenate with some over-priced bottled sweat (i.e. electrolytes) in the middle of the day and call it good, plants don’t quite work the same way we do. Actually, they do as little work as possible.

See, plants are pure Zen. Plants do most all of their growing at night. Yep, they sure do. They draw upon moisture in the soil at night when they actually use it. This is partially why watering plants in the middle of the day just doesn’t work. Especially with a sprinkler or a hose. During the day-time hours plants are mostly dormant doing little else than photosynthesizing. Much more than that would take too much effort. So when the sun goes down they drink…

Okay, I take that back, plants and people do use the same logic. Minor digression.

By the time they get around to drinking later that night the water has mostly evaporated. To be most effective, water at earliest around dusk and soak the little suckers thoroughly. A light over-head sprinkle on a daily basis, even on a timer in the middle of the night, keeps the roots of your plants near the surface reinforcing your plants dependency on supplemental water. Overhead watering during the day doesn’t do anything but add moisture to the air. In fact, by using one over-head watering system or another during the day only 10-20% of the water that you apply actually gets to the roots of plants. That means you have to water five to ten times as much to water effectively. With Seattle Public Utility water rates the way they are, do I really need any other reason to convince you to water after dusk? Okay, fine, how about the planet?!

To really be effective make sure you have adequate organic matter in your soil. This will act as a sponge and store water. Then when you do water, breach the dam. A good soak every few days on an irregular schedule will push your plant’s roots to search for water reserves deeper in the soil. The best time to do this is in the middle of the night when the soil has cooled, which of course works best if you have a timer and a drip system. Because really, who’s gonna go out at 12:30 every morning to thoroughly soak their plants every couple of odd days? Not I for one. Trust me. Water wisely. Invest in a drip-irrigation system and a timer and leave your personal summer drinking schedule undisturbed.