FRUIT FLIES AND SLEEPING BEAUTY

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.

...(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/ephotion/207420746/

Those of us who make compost know these little creatures well, and while I do what I can to discourage an infestation on my kitchen, I actually like to see them rise up in a cloud from  the outside bin when I make my daily deposit.  If the sun hits them right, each tiny insect glows.  It’s almost like fireworks.

HOW TO FIND YOUR WATERSHED ADDRESS AND WHY

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.”

...(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazurite/3944157228/

But the idea that we are safe  from having someone else’s waste dumped on our heads is pure illusion.  Whenever we fertilize a field or flush a toilet, we are doing exactly that to people downstream.  And we, in turn, are the target of those people who live  upstream in our particular watershed.

TRAIN TREKKING DEEP INTO THE HEART OF TIFFANY WILDLIFE AREA

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 egrets, this area provides a wealth of habitats, that change character with every few-foot variation of elevation.

90 minutes north of LaCrosse, it is part of the Audubon Great River Birding Trail because it attracts nearly every species of bird found in Wisconsin.

A mere 3 miles wide and 14 miles long, this dense mix of woods, swamp, sloughs, winding water and flood plain flat land has been called The Everglades of the Midwest.  You won’t site any gators in there but you might see deer, turkey, the endangered  Massasauga Rattlesnake, the threatened Blanding’s Turtle , the Bald Eagle, a gray wolf, beaver, otter, muskrat, coyote or black bear.

Last Saturday, Wisconsin Wetlands Association arranged for 75 people to travel by antique open-air train eight miles along the river and deep into the Tiffany Wildlife Area’s environmental treasure trove.  I signed up months ago and  have been literally counting the days for this trip.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT VINTAGE GLASS

A scene viewed in reflection on the surface of water–even very still water– can be transformed  to something  more beautiful than the actual trees, sky and clouds above it.

...A sea loch situated on the western coast of Scotland, in the Highlands (photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootneck_1/2572932269/

I feel the same sense of wonder when I look at the world through vintage glass.

This week (yey!) we built the final three windows into the western wall of our barn.    We found these wonderful windows at DeConstruction,  a local salvage and recycling company that specializes in pre-1930 materials.  (See my post Old Window in a New Timber Frame Barn ).

HAULING MY WATER WITH A YOKE

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.

...The long and winding path to the pond.

By the time we build our house, we will dig a well.  By next spring, we hope to press our sleek metal barn roof into service filling an underground cistern.

CHILI PEPPERS IN HISTORY AND IN YOUR GARDEN

This has been a great summer for growing peppers in Wisconsin, and no one knows this better than Dr. David Baumler:  by day — a post-doctoral researcher at the Genome Center of Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and by night and weekend — a master pepper gardener.

...73 types of peppers from Dr. Baumler's garden

Dr. Baumler spoke on the history and evolution of peppers at Wednesday Nite @ the Lab, where UW researchers share their findings with the public.

Where did they come from?

BUCK THE BANKS AND BUILD IT GREEN

(photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/kliman/76754087/

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 house you want to live in without being bullied into un-necessary extras, but commenter Jon Brouchoud of  Crescendo Design raised this excellent point:

GREEN BUILDING? DON’T BANK ON IT

GUEST POST BY DELLA HANSMANN

Last Tuesday, Denise posted about how she and Doug are planning to apply the Goldilocks Principal to their building time line.

Rather than build their new home and move into it directly from their existing house in Madison, they are planning to sell their current house and seek  small interim shelter  through the construction phase before they move into their new home.

This is a great strategy for paring down the design to essentials, but it has another very important benefit.  By selling their house before they start to build, they will have the capital  for their eco-dream home without a bridge loan or mortgage.  I am an architect (in training) not a finance expert, but I do have  strong feelings about banks and the building industry.

...A typical American suburb (photo credit www.futureatlas.com/blog

Boring American Houses … available by the millions

McMansions  = banal design.

The company I work for, Whole Trees Architecture and Construction, recently hosted a young Italian architect.  Over a bottle of wine and a plate of pasta carbonara, he asked us why all American neighborhoods seem so generic.