One of the delights in my life is my morning ritual of sitting outside – barefoot – with pen and notebook – drinking my morning coffee – in the garden.
I can watch the sun change shadows from deep purple to gold to bright sunlight. I can hear the loons and gulls out in the channel. The cidada are humming away and the hummingbirds attack each other in territorial wars.
Life unfolds out there. Day by day, season by season and by paying attention, I get to know my world better. I conne
In happier times….
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It was noticed quite easy this morning there was a crisis in the back garden of garden writer Doug Green. Outraged birds from near and nearer clicked and twittered, buzzing with indignation at Doug while he was making his morning notes.
Green tried to explain to these very unhappy birds that this simply wasn’t his department but the hovering hordes weren’t having any of it.
In a statement to this reporter, Green said the birds were clearly irate and on the edge of losing control of their tail feathers. The o
Yesterday, New York City announced it finished installing 417,000 wireless water meters—half of its goal to install 834,000 by January 2012, all intended to end the use of estimated water bills and provide customers with more accurate records of their individual water use in real time.
The 417,000th unit went to Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn Borough President, and coincided with Brooklyn’s first day joining the online system that Mayor Bloomberg announced last month.
It is all part of a citywide conversion to an Automated Meter Reading system that will allow homeowners and businesses to track their water use and bills online, and help them identify ways to save money but also conserve water and detect leaks. T
Here’s a quick video on some good butterfly garden plants for the perennial flower garden. <
A hundred years ago, almost every house had a front porch; they served an important function in the world before air conditioning, when it provided a cooler place to sit. In the early 1980s, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk put front porches on the houses in Seaside, the iconic planned community that was the first big demonstration of New Urbanism (and where they filmed the Truman Show) They did it to reduce the need for air conditioning, but found other benefits as well, telling NPR:
“People would sit on the front porch instead of in the backyard because they could see people coming and going, say hello to their neighbors and have short conversations,” says Plater-Zyberk.
