Rotten

“All are from the dust, and to dust all return.”                                                 ~ Ecclesiastes 3:20 Over the last week or so, I’ve been taking my compost pile apart to move it. Normally, I take it apart in the early spring to separate the good decomposed material in the center of the pile from the un-decomposed (composed?) […]

Urban Ecosystems

“Among the first to document the exuberance of urban ecosystems were casual observers and curious botanists in war-torn Europe in the 1940s. The rubble-strewn cities of World War II, to the astonishment of their inhabitants, very quickly brimmed with plant and animal life. The vegetation that emerged from the debris was totally unexpected, a cornucopia […]

Time and Nature

Edinburgh Castle rises above craggy heights in the middle of the city, part castle and part palace, the home of Scottish royalty. An ancient hill fort dating to before the seventh century, Edinburgh’s steep cliffs and rocky slopes preclude entry or attack from all but one side. Today the Royal Mile is filled with buildings […]

Lawn Order

Our house was built around 1872 and the surrounding neighborhood dates to a similar time. At the time, the town was becoming a bit of a commercial center due to its position at the mouth of a creek that penetrated the Front Range. The railroad down to Denver began here, only later replacing the wagon […]

Carbon

“Farmers are the heroes.”                                                 ~ Rhett Brian Burning is an age-old practice to clear the fields of the remains of last year’s crops, and it makes plowing and seeding much easier. However, poet and journalist Rhett Brian reports, “At roughly the same time each year, 2 million farmers across Punjab and Haryana set their […]

Glyphs

Think of the cave drawings that tell a story or capture a moment from some year BC. Someone meticulously scratched images on a rock wall to immortalize the event. Men with spears, mastodons, cave bears, big cats or buffalo tell the tale of a hunt and survival. Later, colors were added to better and more […]

Wild Things

“Wild thing (bam, bam bomp!) You make my heart sing (bam, bam bomp!) You make everything … groovy.”                                                 ~ The Troggs My sister reports from San Antonio that she has made friends with a neighborhood possum. She occasionally puts food out for it, mostly leftovers of some kind. Possums are omnivores, so they eat […]

The Compost Post

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark!”                                                 ~ Hamlet by William Shakespeare I’m not sure how I started composting. Maybe it was just a result of not wanting to have stinky things in the trash so I didn’t have to take it out so often. I also dislike the idea of raking up […]