If You Can’t Stand the Heat…

It’s uncomfortably hot … everywhere. According to meteorologist and journalist Bob Henson, “… the Climate Reanalyzer website shows that July 3, 2023, was the warmest single day on record — only to be toppled by July 4, tied on July 5, and broken again on July 6 … these were the warmest globally averaged days in centuries, […]

When I’m Seventy-four!

Will you still need me, will you still feed meWhen I’m sixty-four?                                                 ~ The Beatles I remember when I thought that the idea of being sixty-four was outrageous. It was soooo old … Well, this week, I turned seventy-four and I’m beginning to see what old really means and feels like. I can visualize […]

If A Tree Falls

“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”                                                                                                                 ~ Unattributed We’re installing new fences around our back yard. The existing ones, probably put in before the 1940’s, are wire mesh strung on two-inch metal posts set in concrete. They have grown interwoven […]

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?) […]

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 […]

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 […]

Bees in Trees

They are scattered around town in vacant lots or overgrown, undeveloped tracts: The characteristic white box, about three feet square and maybe somewhat taller, is spotted where there’s plenty of sage or other floral shrubs. I never know whose hives they are, but most seem to be well tended. A couple of times over the […]

Agrivoltaics

“The idea behind agrivoltaics is simple: use the ‘empty’ space beneath solar panels to grow stuff.”                                                 ~ Gabe Allen and Tyler Hickman On the hills above my town, there are some solar panels placed in the grassland. I’ve noticed that in spite of the panels, the shaded areas are full of vegetation that periodically require mowing. […]