Green Living Home

Having vented my fill yesterday  (and everyone else’s) about how hard I found it simply to get to the class at all, much less with the right chapter under my belt, I shall turn to the far more trivial matter of what actually went on in this class, and what I learned.

The class reviewed the components of good soil—minerals in various sizes (sand, silt, and clay) organic matter, air, and water. I was familiar with this, and with the importance of soil aggregates (clumps) that leave spaces within which air, water, and roots can move. For many people the shocker is that organic matter should comprise only 5-10% of the soil.

But for me it was the graph quite indicated that in an ideal soil fully half the volume is taken up by air and water. That’s right: 25% each. If I’d

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You can always count on West Elm for the best and newest design trends with an affordable tag price. This Long arm sconce is no different! This architectural metal sconce from West elms Spring Collection has a swiveling arm and rotating head to direct light where you need it most. Plays nicely in a den or in pairs framing a bed. and the best part is that it sells for only $149.

I dedicate this one to all my gardening fellows who know they’ve planted something in the wrong place, or to all those who have lost track of a seed or two: it could be worse. If you don’t believe me, try this 1938 headline

“Lad grows corn in nostril; Dad plows it under.”

Yes, it’s true. You can read all about it here.

My local paper, the Bozeman Chronicle, turns a respectable 100 this year. To celebrate this momentous occasion, every day it reprints several short articles drawn from its archives for that date. That was one of today’s.

My husband suggested I call this “A Nose for Gardening.” Or perhaps, “S’not what it used to be.”

Me, I keep thinking that the story gives a whole new meaning to “In your face!”

missoulian.com Tue. Mar. 8, 2011

That thing in the picture above is a piece of oil refinery machinery. It’s one of two mega-loads that made their slow and sorry way over the continental Divide on a two-lane road this winter. That is, when they weren’t stuck on one pullout or another waiting for the weather to clear.

Those loads were headed for a ConocoPhillips refinery in Billings, Montana, but Exxon Mobile is eager to follow their lead—part of the way. It plans to haul 207 such loads along scenic two-lane roads through Idaho and Montana on their way north to the oil sands atrocity—er, operations— in Alberta.

(See map at right–from a NYTimes article by Tom Zeller Jr., “Oil Sands Effort Turns on a Fight Over a Road,” from Oct. 21, 2010.

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  —and determined to stay here this time.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my post about my dad’s death; I appreciate hearing from each of you.

My prolonged absence from the blog this time (sigh) has been due in part to my having come down a week ago with a wicked cold, the sort that makes you sleep eighteen hours a day and wish you could sleep twenty-four. But there’s another, more cheerful reason: I’ve started another blog, which has been taking most of my writing time: writinglandscapes.com.

Landscapes is the name of a novel I’ve been working on intermittently for a couple of decades now. (Okay, over a decade.) You know how I disappear from the blog for weeks, even months? Well, that’s nothing. I’ve dropped the novel for years at a time. As far as I co

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