Living Green in the Spring, My Favorite Time of the Year!

March 13, 2010
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One of my first post on this blog pointed out that the Canadian Geese were on the move and fall was on the way. Well, today I saw the Geese flying again, this time northbound. They picked a beautiful 70 degree sunny day to fly over and they were just beautiful.

I think everyone in the USA is looking forward to spring this year after all the snow, ice and storms of one kind or another. We are certainly ready for our normal warm spring weather in Central Alabama. It is near. I’ve been seeing robins and red-winged blackbirds already.

We are ready in other ways as well. Our gardens are tilled and we’re waiting for the last frost to come and go in order to set out the plants and plant the seeds. We have one garden just for corn and the other for all our other favorite vegetables. Last year the birds really helped out by enjoying the bugs and other insects on the plants. It seemed the change was welcomed from the winter’s seeds at the bird …

Great Backyard Bird Count of 2010 – At My House

February 19, 2010
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Red-Bellied Woodpecker

Red-Bellied Woodpecker

We had a great weekend for the annual backyard bird count from February 12th – 15th. The GBBC is a project that regular citizens participate by counting the birds at the feeders for four days. The report includes where the birds were counted, when, for how long, the specifics about the weather and of course the largest number of every species that were counted at any one time.

On February 12, 2010 it was snowing in Central Alabama. That ended up being a good thing because there was enough snow on the ground that the birds were very visible and easier to count. Also, the cold weather brought more birds out to get an easy meal at the feeders. The number of birds on that snowy day was probably twice what I usually see each day. Too tempting for a Sharp-shinned Hawk who decided to drop into the ‘feeder’ tree and stay for awhile, no doubt waiting on his easy meal. Luckily all the little birds quickly …

Chemicals, Humans and Daily Living

February 14, 2010
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The last blog post examined some ways that chemicals and particularly those in plastics harm animal life, both on land and in the sea. This post will examine how certain chemicals harm humans. During my reading on this subject in the last week or so, one thing became very clear to me. Human and animal health is directly linked to the health of the environment. That seems like such an obvious statement, but oftentimes humans would like to think of environmental problems as just nature or animal problems. But when chemicals are involved, what affects animals also many times directly or indirectly affects the health of humans as well.

I read several articles on the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” which went into more detail about how the effects of tons of garbage in the Pacific Ocean is poisoning or killing the wildlife. The really sad thing is that there seems to be no quick feasible way to clean it up because it involves several countries, is very far from land and just gets complicated. This will take a lot of …

Chemicals; the Good, the Bad, and the Harmful

January 24, 2010
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In the early 1900’s scientists from different backgrounds, labs and companies were experimenting on their various products. One would pick up on the compounds of another and add or take away a chemical or two and by the 1950’s the fantastic product that we know today as plastics had evolved and was on earth to stay. Plastic material was soon found in every type of industry around the globe.

Plastics in one form or another during its evolution have been and are still good for human use regarding the quality and comforts of life that it offers. I would not want medical professionals to still be sterilizing needles or washing glass syringes to give me a shot or to be examined by a dentist or doctor without gloves. I want new single use sterilized needles with plastic syringes and new gloves. There is too much room for error and too many new germs out there. Imagine taking medicine in a hospital setting without those little plastics disposable cups filled with clean water. What would we do without food storage and freezer …

“Is It Plugged In?” – A Case of Technology Overload?

January 15, 2010
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My three year old grandson was “playing” the piano this morning. He looked up and asked me, “Is it plugged in?” I laughed at first, but then my mind started wondering about how his little mind during all of his three years has been inundated with electronics. He has known little else. Even the guitar he asked for last Christmas when he was two, was electronic. This Christmas Santa brought him his first DS game system. Is this good, o.k., or not so good? What will life be like for his children regarding electronics and technology? I cannot even begin to imagine. Who knows, today’s media electronics may then be a thing of the past and a whole new language and technology may exist.

I am old enough to have witnessed the electronic world when it was an infant and watched it grow into the giant it now is in our society. New gadgets come out so frequently that I don’t have time to learn about one before a new one arrives on the scene. I feel I’m falling behind …

The Paperless Society, Are we There Yet?

December 31, 2009
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Not quite to the Star Wars era yet, but we are moving in that direction. With my recycling efforts, I’ve found I recycle paper and cardboard more than anything else, with plastics coming in second. So we have a long way to go yet before trees are not used for paper.

I have spent most of December working on re-formatting my children’s book, Friends in the Meadow-Birds, to fit the formatting for an ebook so that all those tens of thousands of people who got their Kindles for Christmas have access to my book as an ebook as well as others. But before I started that project, I looked into the whole thing, ebooks and ereaders. My question is not a simple one, but is this just another electronic gadget, here today, gone tomorrow? If I determined that it was an electronic fad, then I wasn’t going to bother, as aside from Christmas, this project had dominated the whole month. What I found was that authors and publishers are thinking that ebooks and ereaders will change the publishing business similar …

The Green Life of Grandpa and Grandma Examples We Can Use (Part 3 of 3)

November 27, 2009
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Waste Not, Want Not

Nothing went to waste at Grandpa’s and Grandma’s. Even ashes from the fireplace and wood stove were used for different purposes like making soap, using in the garden, around flower beds and other uses. With just a little research, we can find ways to still use ashes today. They help in composting and growing tomatoes, just to name a couple. In those days, ‘junk’ mail was rare but when it came it was reused somehow. The spare paper, especially postcards, was used to make quilt patterns or other patterns. Sometimes, the back of a letter was used to write new letters to family living away. There were usually few left-overs after a meal. But when there were, it became the main course for the next meal. Food scraps were given to the dogs or hogs when they had them to feed. When their clothing became too worn or not the right size, the buttons, zippers, lace, etc., were taken off for reuse and the material left was used to make quilt pieces. Sometimes Grandma could …

The Green Life of Grandpa and Grandma Examples We Can Use (Part 2 of 3)

November 25, 2009
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Clean Energy Sources

(Part 2 of 3)

My grandparent’s main source of energy was the fire wood that was grown and cut off the land they lived on. One fireplace warmed the whole house, or at least as far as the heat would go. The kids in the back bedroom learned to unwrap themselves from a stack of quilts (made by Grandma) and get up quickly, dress and rush to the fireplace to stay warm. The fireplace was in my grandparent’s bedroom which doubled as a living room. So everyone congregated there for physical and emotional warmth. Much fellowship with family and friends went on in that dual purpose room around that fireplace.

My Grandma cooked on a wood stove and canned many jars of vegetables, fruits, jams, jellies, peppers, soups and other foods every summer for use during the winter. Some of the best smelling and tasting foods came from that kitchen. Yet the only electricity she used in the kitchen was from the light string that was sometimes pulled to turn on the electric light bulb hanging from the …

The Green Life of Grandpa and Grandma – Examples We Can Use (Part 1 of 3)

November 19, 2009
 | by growgreenkids
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Simple Lifestyle

Having moved back to my rural childhood home eleven years ago, I’ve had plenty of time walking about the place to remember the lives of my grandparents. They were very kind and simple living people. Today we would call their lifestyle ‘green’.

Well in fact, they were living green before people even heard of living green and were doing it quiet well. Their carbon footprint while bringing up eleven children was very small. Both Grandma and Grandpa were hard working people. I guess when your livelihood depends on your quality, quantity, and production of goods and food, a strong work ethic just develops without much thinking about it, just doing.

At some point every day they found time during the daylight hours to sit beside their respective window and read the Good Book, the Bible, from which they learned their ways of living. From this book, they learned and became our example for loving God, family, our neighbor, and our country. Also our example for working, sharing, saving, reducing, reusing, and recycling. They were our example for learning …

FALL 2009 FEATURED AUTHORS – THE READING TUB

November 10, 2009
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MEET PEGGY WILLIAMS

Even in retirement, Peggy Williams sees herself as an educator. When she set upon her counseling career, her primary interest was to help children build self-esteem and to give parents ideas for positive parenting.

Early in her career Peggy set a goal to use the concepts she learned in her studies to create books that teach children needed social skills. She wanted to write easy-to-read stories that would engage a variety of audiences. Friends in the Meadow – Birds is her first attempt at this goal. She found that when both children and parents do things together, they have opportunities for sharing and bonding. According to Peggy, bird watching offers the benefit of building the child’s self-esteem and can help to form a closer parent-child relationship.

In recognition of her work for documenting local history, she received a community award as the author of Memories of Randolph Bibb County, Alabama.

Peggy and her husband Wayne are natives of Alabama. Peggy holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology and a Master of Arts degree …

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