Adam’s bike shop

Well, necessity has bred even more creativity around here. Adam has spent most evenings the past couple months teaching himself how to put bikes together. My 1980 Schwinn Worldsport keeps breaking down in one way or another, so he’s been slowly replacing components on that while at the same time building me a [...]

Another rain barrel platform option

A little over a month ago, we installed a new rain barrel on the SW corner of our house.  We’ve had one on the SE corner for a few years, but we had never gotten around to building a platform for it.  Adam was doing some backyard cleanup today and decided to make a platform [...]

How to install a rain barrel

We got a second rain barrel Saturday morning at a special discounted sale for Hennepin County residents (got our first one two years ago at a similar event).  Eventually I would like to have about 8 of them, but with my budget, I’ll have to build up slowly.  Here’s how we installed it:

First of all, [...]

Going without the AC

I just saw this article in the NY Times: “The Unchilled Life: Breezing through the recession without air-conditioning.”  It made me laugh because we unwittingly joined these people this summer.  Our central AC died right in the middle of a heat wave in mid-June, and we couldn’t afford  to fix/replace it.
We have been very fortunate [...]

Book review: Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

Authors: Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew
This book is full of ideas for really hardcore people who want to practice radical sustainability and preferably live in a mild climate.  The whole time I was reading it I kept picturing the people on the high bikes in the Minneapolis MayDay parade, and what they must do in [...]

Pervious Concrete

Shoreview, a northern suburb of St. Paul, is adding a stretch of pervious concrete!  Exciting, no?  I am very curious to see how it works out.
Things that are cool about it:
1. Rainwater filters through soil underneath the concrete instead of rushing through a storm sewer and into our rivers and lakes (carrying salt, sand, and [...]

Garden update

Everything is sprouted!  Well, pretty much.  The soaker hoses are down, and we are ready to go into long-term maintenance and serious weed-pulling mode.  Here are each of my “double rows” or “guilds” in the the garden as they stand today, from east to west:
Green bush beans.  They’re so fun to grow because they are [...]

A green remodel

Story in today’s Star Tribune about a home remodel right in my neighborhood.  I walk past this house quite frequently and have been wondering how it looked on the inside.  I wish they had more pictures of the yard; the rain garden is really cool.  Money quote from the homeowner (who did much of the [...]

making it easy

I’ve been rather lazy about posting lately; my beloved Grandma died (at the age of 102) and then we had our usual holiday marathon with Easter.  This is all I’m going to say about that:  when you are used to a mostly plant-based diet, going back to a solid meat & potatoes (and we’re talking [...]