Blog – Page 171 – Ellis Hollow

NY Times: How Green Is My Garden?

In an op-ed in this morning’s New York Times, Thomas C. Cooper, garden designer and former Horticulture magazine editor, encourages gardeners to become ‘backyard biomass producers’ and feed their lawn waste into energy sector.

IF the government wants to reduce its dependency on imported oil and, in the words of the Department of Energy, â€œfoster the domestic biomass industry,â€ it has only to stop by my backyard with a pickup. The place is an unlikely but active biomass production center â€” especially at this season with countless autumn leaves eddying in every nook and cranny â€” and Iâ€™ll happily donate my production to the cause.

Is he serious?

I have two concerns with his reasoning:

The energy we collect and store in the biomass of our yards is tiny compared with what we burn.
That biomass is best usedÂ by being returned to the soils in our yards.

Cooper says he’s overwhelmed by how much biomass he produces. But do you know any other gardeners who complain about having too much compost? Sure, put your woody waste on the curb for local recycling. But for goodness sake, rake the rest onto your beds, around the base of your trees and shrubs, or put it in a modest-sized compost bin.

Improving your soil is a better use of that biomass than burning it.

So how do you really feel about Martha Stewart?

Lippanzer stallions and lawn fertilization on Martha Stewart via Huffington Post.

I’ll admit it: I have a friend who occasionally passes along Martha Stewart Living magazine. Everything in it is well done and there are always a few articles that I really enjoy.

Our new pond

Monday afternoon I broke through some brush at the edge of the yard to cut some cattails for a floral design class one of our grad students was teaching. Lo and behold, I discovered the pond thatÂ ElÂ andÂ I talked about putting in when we first moved here.

I knew the beavers were busy this summer. I could hear them at night plowing through the cattails back to the safety of water when I’d take the dogs out at night. But I had no idea how busy they were.

Their damn is probably 100 feet long and 4 or 5 feet tall at its highest point. It collects water from the small stream that runs behind our yard and the springs that also pop up in the area in and around the pond. There is a small lodge in the center.

From what I recall of beaver biology from my youth (hey, no snickers — I grew up near a small lake that had several beaver lodges), after a year of so, the young get kicked outÂ ofÂ establishedÂ lodges to go build their own. There are beavers in several areas of the wetland along the main creek. Guess it was getting crowded, so they moved up into our little branch.

I am planning to put some hardware cloth around the trunk of the willow tree down by the stream. Â Beaver like willows, poplars and other species that colonizeÂ the flooded areas they create.

Exploding pumpkin

Hat tip to Ann Raver who plugged this video in her article in today’s NY Times, In the Pumpkin Patch, an Orange Thumb, about growing and showing giant pumpkins.

Rep. Pete Stark (D – CA) from the House debate on the override vote on Bush’s veto of SCHIP:

But President Bush’s statements about children’s health shouldn’t be taken any more seriously than his lies about the war in Iraq. The truth is that Bush just likes to blow things up. In Iraq, in the United States and in Congress.

Who volunteers to captain the Titanic …

… after it’s hit the iceberg?

That’s how John Oliver summed up the possibility of Al Gore running for president on The Daily Show last night:

Actually, there are signs that Al Gore is already running for president. Check out these three very short videos of Gore on his on CurrentTV website since he awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

They are commercial-length, no-bullshit progressive views on the three top issues of the day. (Well three of the top four. We know where he stands on the fourth.)

They have all the production value of a dorm-room, videocam rant. Nothing you would see on TV. But just exactly the kind of thing that plays well in this new medium we call the Internet.

Thom Hartman speculated today that we are perhaps seeing the first candidacy that will rely on the Internet and bypass the mainstream media (MSM). Just as radio replaced print in campaigns decades ago, and later TV replaced radio, Gore again sees the future and is reaching out directly without having to go through the MSM filter.

It’s not like the MSM ever did him any favors with their coverage. See Going After Gore in the latest Vanity Fair for a great article on how the media got it all wrong on the ‘discovering the Love Canal’ and ‘inventing the Internet’ memes they created.

Through the Internet, he’s going to hoist the MSM on their own petard.