The Green Garage

On December 31, the Brennans officially purchased a building in the Wayne State area of Detroit which we are calling the Green Garage. The original use of the building was as a showroom for cars with Model T chassis', so the building goes way back in the history of Detroit. In fact, it is on the Registry of Historic Buildings. Since its original use, the building has had many other uses. For a while in the 1960's, it housed a company called 'Kanners and Patrize,' which distributed sundry goods that were sold to stores like Hudson's. Most recently, the building served as a storehouse for neighborhood businesses.

Our idea for the building is to develop a space where people can work to develop environmental sustainability enterprise ideas and skills, and take them out into the city. Think of it as a Thomas Edison workshop circa 2008. First, however, the building will have to go through 2 remodeling phases. Initially, it has to become safe, secure and dry (read: new roof!). Next will come a combination historic/green renovation. We are currently considering ways to document the entire process, and will provide a link on this site once this is established. Click here to view a map of the location.

Using Craigslist

Many of you have basements full of the type of stuff in the picture above. We have been slowly but surely moving things out of our basement recently, some items going to the recycling center, some getting thrown out, some going to our kids, and surprisingly lots going to paper recycling. But we had another pile: the donation pile. Usually I just put these items in a bag, call Purple Heart or St. Vincent DePaul and have them taken away. This time, however, we had a wide variety of things to donate, not just clothing, and we wanted to come up with a way to get these items to those who could use them (reuse!). So we took photos of 4 items (a popcorner, an old VCR, a small coffeemaker and a Robocub) and put them on Craigslist, in their free section. Within 3 minutes I had at least 15 e-mails, and all of the items were taken. Today, between 3 and 4 PM, we arranged for all of it to be picked up. Many other items we had set out were taken also. So before you think of disposing of an unwanted item, consider this option!

A small point about the Prius

We all know that the Toyota Prius is a relatively small car - it is certainly not a van or SUV. Many people have told us that they would like to buy one, but they need a bigger car to haul stuff. In particular, I remember one conversation with someone who wondered where they would put their rocking chair, if it ever had to be moved. I wondered how often they had to pack up and move a rocking chair, but got the bigger point -- "I need a car big enough to move my stuff."

So Tom and I have owned this little Prius for a few years now, and we have found that, in addition to great mileage, it can haul more than you'd think at first inspection. We really tested its capacity this weekend when we arrived at the mall to pick up our new chair (and this one is full-sized, upholstered, not a little wooden chair). We had forgotten to drive our bigger car that does do most of our hauling (cause hey, we're just like you!), and decided to give the Prius a chance to make it into the hauling hall of fame. As you can see from the relatively un-artistic picture above, our baby pulled through for us.

Next, we're going to try moving our rocking chair - just for the heck of it.

Brennans Strike Gold!

It's leaf-gathering time again! Yes, I know most of you are raking up your leaves right now and putting them out on the curb to be picked up. And let me take the time to say: Thank you! We are taking advantage of your generosity and whisking away your bags soon after they hit the curb. The reason? Leaves are gold to us. A couple of years ago we bisected our backyard with a dry creek, and decided to convert half the yard to a woodlands. This way we'd have less grass to fertilize, cut and water. We covered the existing grass with wood chips and lots of leaves that first year, and each subsequent year we add at least 6 inches of additional leaves. That's why this time of the year is so exciting for us...free ground cover, packaged and waiting for us to come pick it up. We pilfered 41 bags from our unsuspecting neighbors this year, up from last year's count of 27.

Milkweed in November

Two seasons ago we planted a rain garden with tiny plants from the Native Plant Nursery in Ann Arbor. Greg sold us a rain garden kit, about 50 plants for about $35. These plants were about 1-2 inches - we were mostly buying roots. The first year they grew modestly, but the second year they just exploded in size, with many of the plants getting as high as 5-6 feet.

Last week we were outside doing some late fall gardening and Tom took this picture of one of our milkweed plants, just as the seeds were emerging from the pods. As we looked around the garden, we saw seeds scattered among our other plants as well. The milkweed is such a wonderful plant. It is a host plant for monarch butterflies and produces a beautiful flower mid-summer. As you can see, it has its own beauty in the fall as well.

Cork Flooring

At last week's Tuesday meeting, we heard Denny's somewhat depressing report about his search to find a place to recycle old carpeting. First, he could not find anyone who was willing to recycle his carpeting, and then, after doing a bit of research, he found out that carpeting that goes to landfills takes approximately 20,000 years to decompose! I would say that poses a problem - most of us will replace carpeting at least a couple of times in our lifetimes.

Tom and I were at that point this fall. We own a group of 6 condominiums in Longboat Key, Florida, and the carpets in the bedrooms were stained beyond repair and needed to be replaced. The problem for us was the fact that we have never had luck with carpets in rental units - they are stained within months of installation, and within 5 years or so they need to be replaced. We really didn't want to put more carpeting in, knowing that it would have to be replaced within a short period of time. So what to do? Most people like carpeting in their bedrooms.

We decided to follow the example of the IHM Motherhouse in Monroe and go with cork flooring. We knew, after walking on the floors at the Motherhouse, that cork was soft on the feet and quite beautiful, in addition to coming from a sustainable source [cork is considered a rapidly renewable product]. So the flooring was recently installed and the results are beyond our expectations! We love the look, the feel is soft on the feet, there is no echo-factor in the room. We didn't even feel the need to add scatter rugs. We have to see how they will wear, but for now we are quite pleased. By the way, we bought our flooring online at floormall.com, and the type we purchased was Valencia.

Composting

It has taken us a while, but we finally have our composting routine down, so I thought I would share it with you. The composting bucket, pictured above, is kept under the counter, and is pulled up when we're making meals. We toss any food scraps in it, with the exception of meat and dairy. While in Wales this summer, we also learned that you can put any paper towels or napkins in there too. Once a day, or once every other day, we empty this bucket into the bigger bucket in the garage (this one is just a reused kitty litter container with a snap lid). Then once a week we take the garage compost bucket out to our compost bin at the corner of our yard.

You'd be amazed at how much less garbage you take out every week if you compost and recycle paper and plastic. We are down to 2 bags a week. And somehow the compost doesn't smell...