San Francisco Participating in Earth Hour “Lights Out”

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: environment
• Date: Fri, Mar 28, 2008

More than 20 cities around the world will participate in the climate change awareness event, Earth Hour, March 29th 8-9 PM local time.

At the first Earth Hour last year in Sydney, Australia, power consumption dropped by more than 10 percent. But Earth Hour’s not just about cutting back for one hour. It’s about taking a stand and thinking ahead about what you, your neighbors and your city can do to slow climate change.

Seize the Earth Hour moment. Change some of your outdated energy-wasting light bulbs to new, efficient and inexpensive compact fluorescents. Think of other ways you can cut your energy usage and trim your electric bill after Earth Hour has passed.

We are beginning to witness dramatic impacts as a result of the amount of carbon we load into the atmosphere. Large sections of San Francisco are at risk from rising sea levels. In 2007, snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada was at 46 percent of its normal amounts. This snowpack is the source of 85 percent of San Francisco’s water supply.

To alter the current course of climate change we must act now.

• Tags: California, climate, environment, green(er) living, New World Order, San Francisco

1st CSA Pick Up

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: local eating
• Date: Wed, Mar 19, 2008

Today was our first CSA pick-up, just off the highway on the way home (had to go to Oaktown today, so it was all car all the way). Late last year, I had researched available CSAs at Local Harvest, and picked Two Small Farms since it had a nice selection of fresh, local croppage and a nearby pick-up location. Our first box contained: celery, green garlic, cabbage, carrots, butternut squarsh, parsnips, escarole, radishes.

Just yesterday, Ken and I had some errands to run in Downtown Campbell. Ken had driven through there a few weeks ago and noticed that the downtown was super cute, with little cafes and that Main Street revival feel that I love. We found bistro (”with a French flair”) and settled into a pretty corner of the outdoor patio. I ordered the roasted veggie sandwich on focaccia. OMG BEST SANDWICH EVER. Roasted veggies included carrots, eggplants, yams, zuchinni, and onions - all tossed with a bit of herbs de Provence. There was a light pesto mayo. And queso, I think Gruyère. So I shall be roasting up a portion of our veggies, trying to bake some rosemary focaccia, and seeing if I can dig up a suitable local shi-shi cheese for some “seriously good eats“.

Escarole, celery, and root veggies are screaming to be in a soup. We make us a mean veggie bean soup.

For the cabbage, I’ve been thinking I wanted to whip a coleslaw ever since we discovered the sour sweet coleslaw served at our favorite clam chowder and locally caught fish & chips haunt (Princeton Seafood Company in Half Moon Bay). It’s got just the slightest amount of mayo and a good dose of apple cider vinegar.

I don’t know that I eat radishes, but we shall see….

• Tags: California, CSA, green(er) living, local eating

CoolCalifornia - A California Specific Carbon Footprint Tool

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: environment
• Date: Tue, Mar 18, 2008

Californians can check out CoolCalifornia.org, a new web tool that provides folks with the information to calculate their California-specific carbon footprint, and ID actions to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. The carbon footprint calculator evaluates both direct and indirect emissions of GHGs from a variety of sources including the transportation choices we make, how we consume energy at home and at work, and which goods and services we choose.

Non-Californians can wish your state was as forward thinking as ours. ;-)

• Tags: California, carbon footprint, climate, environment, green(er) living

How to have a stressful first 15 minutes of your day: Make Yosemite Reservations

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: my life
• Date: Sat, Mar 15, 2008

How to have a stressful first 15 minutes of your day: Wake up early on a Saturday with the intent of making Yosemite reservations (for summer time reservations, the 15th marks the first day of reservations for the one-period 4 months ahead). Queue up your preferred site/date. At exactly 7 AM, click reserve. Watch Firefox “loading” for seemingly too long. Once connected, see your formerly “available” sites marked as “unavailable”. Feel a major sense of panic. Spend next 9 minutes trying to find ANY site. Really, ANY site. Ok, not the horse camp sites. Find ok enough site, but for just two days (but during waterfall time). Reserve it. Try to pay and realize you have javascript disabled. Reload page and try to pay again. When payment authorizes, rather than “Payment Authorized” screen you get “Your Cart is Empty $40″. Frantically try to determine if payment went through. Determine it did. It is 7:12 and you are stressed. But you have a reservation. Time to sit back and sip some chai and daydream about hiking in Yosemite…

• Tags: California, camping

haiku: winter melts to spring

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: haiku
• Date: Fri, Mar 7, 2008

• Tags: beautiful earth, California, haiku, seasons changing

Started the Seedlings (California Zone 10a) - The Growing Challenge

• by ~summer~
• Filed Under: gardening
• Date: Sun, Mar 2, 2008

Saturday afternoon, after spending a productive morning de-cluttering the casa, we headed down to LYNGSO to pick up some potting soil. LYNGSO sells bulk dirt, rock, bark, compost, flagstone, etc. and our three big bags of potting soil cost a whopping 5 bucks.

The seeds I had ordered last week arrived with the morning mail, just in time. When we got home from LYNGSO, I wrote out tags for each seedling I was planning on planting, thinking about how cilantro would go into recycled 6-pak pots, tomatoes into the 4″ fiber pots. With my seeds in order and my tags ready to stake their claim, I set out into the yard to get the garden beds back into shape. They had been quite neglected since the tomatoes petered out on me at the end of fall.

An hour or so later, the weeds pulled and the remnants of last year’s tomatoes and peppers yanked from the earth, it was time to seed. I like doing things assembly line style, very systematically. I set up a little seeding station atop a garden table: piles of seedling pots (including plastic pots saved from last year and a stack of fiber pots I bought new), my stack of markers, carefully categorized seed packets, bags of dirt.

I packed the dirt into the first little pot, poked the sharpie into the dirt to make a hole for the seed, and shook out the first broccoli seeds into my hand. And then the wind.

It was like the wind was saying “but I’m supposed to be casting the seeds!” I took it as challenge and kept on with my work, using my camera to hold down seed packs and big empty pots as “done” and “waiting” sorting bins. Another couple of hours: fill pot, poke hole, open seed pack, drop seeds, cover, label, move to garden bed, next…

By the end of the afternoon, with the sun dropping and the wind not yet abating, I had set out all the flats that I planned on: broccoli (2 varieties), peppers (x4), cucumbers (x2), tomatoes (x7!), cabbage, (x2), herbs (x5), squash (x2), melon, eggplant, and artichoke.

A TIP: I figure that starting this year I am going to carefully track and journal my gardening experience. In order to make a complete list of what I’m planting, I copied my seed orders (from the confirmation emails) and pasted the lists directly into Excel. I modified the names so that the crop type was first, for example: Broccoli, Di Cecco, then Broccoli, Waltham 29, and then I sorted it all so that like crops were grouped together. I added a column for “seed source”. I’ll be printing out the list with some extra columns for note taking and clipping it into my garden journal.

• Tags: California, garden, green(er) living, The Growing Challenge