A new way to get to work

This summer Tom has been working at the Green Garage Monday through Friday, 9-5. Ah, the retirement life! Anyway, he has developed a new way to get there that doesn't require a car. He heads out shortly after 7 AM and bikes down to Royal Oak, where he catches a bus to Detroit. He puts the bike on the front of the bus, and once down there, gets back on the bike for a short ride to the Green Garage. It takes about 45 minutes to get to Royal Oak, so the commute is a little longer than it would have been in a car. Also, because he has an extended work day and has to miss his usual exercise, this provides a good substitute. Some days he repeats the process coming home, but most of the time I'm down there so I bring him and his bike home (yes, you can fit a bike in a Prius). An added benefit: some quality time outdoors. I also bike every day to exercise, and can attest to the great benefits of biking in the cool summer morning air.

North Cass Community Garden

This is a new garden in downtown Detroit. It's called the North Cass Community Garden, located at Willis and Second. There are 60 plots altogether, each about 4x8. They rent for $25 a year, and this original group sold out immediately. The gardens are the work of Sue Mosey of the University Center Cultural Association in Detroit's midtown area. The lot used to be filled with weeds and other invasive plants, not to mention garbage and other assorted items. Now it's a beautiful spot for people to meet and tend their plots. Some members of the Green Garage are taking care of 2 of the plots, but we are not nearly as creative as the people who came up with this Eiffel Tower trellis for their tomato plants!

Vertical lasagna garden

Here is another idea for your lasagna garden. We moved our garden from the farthest corner of the yard recently and decided to place it up against a south wall closer to the house. That way we'll keep a better eye on it. In order to grow our climbing vegetables, Tom constructed this trellis from wood we found in the woods and some wire. It's attached to the house at the top. Right now we're growing peas up the trellis, and later we'll switch over to a later-summer crop.

Insights into DTE Energy's Green Current Program

The Winter 2009 edition of "From the Ground Up" the official publication of the Ecology Center of Ann Arbor, contained an article by Brigit Macomber about Detroit Edison's Green Currents program. The program is supposed to offer residential and business electric customers in Southeast Michigan, for an additional cost on their electric bill, the opportunity to choose that all or part of their electricity be produced from renewable resources.

In reality, 85% of the premiums are being spent on marketing and administration and the remaining 15% is used to buy "renewable energy certificates" which states that green energy was produced somewhere at a certain point in time.

Now it seems that the program is not generating enough money to cover the cost of the marketing so DTE is requesting that the Michigan Public Service Commission force all DTE customers to pay for the Green Currents program. To read an on-line article on this topic go to: GreenCurrents or GreenWash? or to send a message to the Michigan Public Service commission: Take Action.

Spring

First flower of the new year!

A new type of furniture polish

I knew that title would grab you. I mean, who doesn't want to read about furniture polish? Anyway, I do have a new idea that will allow you to reuse a product, keep you healthy, and save you money. What's not to like?

The bottle shown above is from a Bobbi Brown product that I use. I recently ran out of the product and was wondering what I could do with it. The bottle is actually quite nice - very heavy, solidly constructed - and I thought it was a shame to put it in the recycling bin. At about the same time, I was reading Home Safe Home by Debra Lynn Dadd, and she had many recipes for homemade cleaning products. One, for furniture polish, consisted of 2 parts olive oil and 1 part lemon juice. So I mixed it up and put it in the bottle. It worked quite well, and you don't need much to clean a few rooms. Regular furniture polish contains a surprising number of toxins, so I consider this a win-win-win.

Think about it next time you're throwing a nice container in your garbage or recycling bin - set it aside and see if you can find another use for it.

18-Year Mystery Solved

It's an adventure living with someone who is a) an engineer, and b) determined to make our home as energy efficient as humanly possible. The past couple of weeks the adventure has revolved around the shower. Tom has been turning down the heat on the hot water tank to save energy, and for the most part it has been a great idea. Our shower, however, has been cooler than I like, and so Tom has been tweaking the temp ever so slightly to determine the exact threshold that will satisfy my need for a warm shower and keep the dial turned low. Last week, after 4 days of goosebumps, I had a conversation with him, specifically asking him to run this experiment next summer. But once on a mission, he is hard to deter.

As the conversation progressed, I could see that Tom was puzzling over the fact that the shower temp seemed cooler than any other faucet/shower in the rest of the house. Of course, I said - it has always been this way. How long, he wondered? Why, since we owned the house - 18 years, I said. Apparently I had never communicated this fact to him, and since he never uses hot water in the sinks, he never knew this. I had assumed that this is just one of the mysteries of our house, one of those vague little things you never question, and just accept.

So Tom made a quick call and found out that shower heads, when installed, are set at a cool temperature to prevent scalding. When we turn our shower on, we are getting a mix of hot water from the tank and cold water to cool the water down. And, of course, we turn up the hot water in the tank to get it warm enough. Seems crazy.

So Tom adjusted the thermostatic mixing valve in our shower (5 minutes) and went downstairs to turn down the hot water tank. Success! Now we're not overheating our water, but have enough for a warm shower on a cold winter day.

And it only took 18 years.