Sacrificing Roses

I'll be honest, last year I sprayed the roses every two weeks to deter fungus and hungry bugs. Luckily, the can was empty at the end of the summer, or I'm guessing I would have caved this summer, too. Midspring, I found my rose leaves disappearing as fast as they could grow. It took a while to figure out what was going on, but after much research, I discovered the culprit: sawfly larvae. The little green worms curl up in a ball under the leaf, and when I'm not looking, they devoured the leaves. I googled every option: organic, green, eco-friendly...and every link told me the same thing. The earth-friendly way to get rid of them is to pick them off by hand and squish 'em. Sigh...I love my roses, and I'll pick the stupid worms off every couple days, but I just can't commit to daily worm pickings. So, some of my leaves will be sacrificed to the sawfly. Luckily, the roses are blossoming beautifully, just ignore the leaves please.

Way to Go Rothsay School!

...for participating in their Community Energy Challenge!

Check out their call to action at Make the Change.

Clothing Exchange

Do your friends have fantastic clothes? A great way to clean out your closet for spring cleaning and avoid shopping when you get the new season itch is to hold a clothing exchange. It's simple, really. Just invite all your friends to bring bags of stuff they find when cleaning out their closets. Provide some mimosas, and start shopping!

The best part is that after everyone has happily found new items for their clothing racks, the rest gets packed up and donated.

Drip irrigation

The sun has been shining so I've been spending much of my time preparing my garden and lawn, planting, stirring compost, raking...

But today I had to share the highlight. Part of the reason our lawn is a mixture of weeds and dead spots is because we don't like using water. Our sprinklers use several gallons to water the lawn or garden. In light of the new vegetable garden, which will require we give in and use water, we've invested in a system that should help limit some of the waste.

In a mastery of physics, we've elevated our rain barrel and hooked up a drip soaker hose, using the pressure of gravity alone to drip rain water into our garden. Since Nate also demands tools in his life run automatically, we also bought a timer which will help to ensure we don't leave the system dripping away precious rain water.

The major environmental impact of drip irrigation is water conservation. This happens for several reasons:

• Only roots are watered, which is where the water needs to go.
• Ground is more evenly watered.
• Water is not lost to evaporation by being sprayed in the air.
• Slower rate of application prevents a build up of water, and therefore reduces evaporation.

Hopefully our vegetables will agree that the new system is a valuable investment! 

Ready for Earth Hour?

Saturday, March 27th, people all over the globe will be participating in Earth Hour, when millions of people around the world will turn out their lights for one hour as a testimony against climate change. Beautiful symbolism--people working together to stand for a greater goal. 


Earth Hour is scheduled from 8:30 to 9:30 in your local time zone.