Hot mess

Just picked up a very full bag of fresh messy coffee grounds for free. Can't wait to put them in my #compost pile and #organic garden! Thanks!  @Starbucks

Please don't walk on the coral

Snorkeling is one of my favorite things to do in the world. I can stay in the water for hours floating around looking at fish, corals, sponges and urchins.  Each place is different and special.  I hate it when I have to adjust my mask though - treading water, trying not to kick anything below, trying not to float away, not suck up water, and get the mask back on. What I hate even more though is seeing people STAND on the coral.  What they don't know won't kill them (usually) but it will kill the coral,  and lots of it. They don't know that this simple action on their part is destroying what took years to develop.  http://www.gomanzanillo.com/snorkeling/protect.htm has a great overview. When we travel we usually visit at least one science or history museum to find out more about where we are and know how to be responsible visitors there. On our trip to Bocas del Toro, Panama,  one of the first things we did was go to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute 

http://www.stri.si.edu/ what a great experience!  Our guide Marlon was passionate about sharing his knowledge with us and very patient with our many questions. We even got to hold spiny sea urchins in the touch tank. 

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Sustainable travel

Flying anywhere definitely increases your carbon diet but there are ways we can make positive choices when we travel. Choose the option of not replacing your towels everyday in the big hotels. Stay in small eco-friendly lodges like the Tinamou Cottages in Panama. 

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Eat local, organic and homegrown

Purple peppers from the local organic high school CSA, red bell pepper and yellow tomatoes from the front yard and citrus from a neighbor. Less petroleum involved, better health and beautiful flavors. 

Got it!!!

So it's 5 in the morning and I'm home alone and probably snoring away when I am awakened by a joyous sound - the rat trap! This little creature has been the bane of my existence for a few weeks now and I am so happy to have finally captured him/her. I turn the lights on to check it out and sure enough it's the rat! We live in the foothills so we have tons of critters but this little one was persistent and destructive - it had eaten through our screen door to have it's own little ratty door and freely came and went when we forgot to close the sliding door. Several avocados were obliterated and the dog food bag was regularly invaded with new cutouts giving the darn ants easy entrance as well. I borrowed a rat zapper from my co-worker but to no avail and to this little rat's fortune, it did not work and before I could try any more to get it to work, my husband convinced me that we could do something more humane - we live in their space anyway, right? (I think these are Norwegian rats, though) So, I got on Amazon and voila! a Havahart rat trap was at my door the next day. So after many days of trying I finally got it and drove it down the hill to the far end of the foothills where there is a big open natural canyon, with a lot of coyotes.

Water-wise (or not) drip system

So, I got the bright idea from somewhere, can't remember where now, to recycle my plastic mineral water bottles into drip systems for my potted plants. I punched 2-3 holes in the top of the lid with a push pin, filled them with water and then turned them upside down and put them in my big pots of cucumber, zucchini and tomato.  Worked well for the most part, but in some cases I needed to add more holes or re-punch the holes to widen them if they got clogged with the potting soil.  This produced a slow drip system for each pot that would water over 1-2 days. Genius! You can see something similar at yougrowgirl.com. Then when I showed my oldest daughter my new contraptions, she asked the question that had been nagging at the back of my brain, "What about BPA?" BPA is a substance in most plastic used for food and beverages and is considered safe in small doses per the FDA, but why take chances. Theoretically BPA could be released from the plastic by the sun's heat and then absorbed by the plants into the fruit we eat, which sounds pretty nasty. I'll switch to glass wine bottles with the screw caps and see if that works.

Ladybugs and praying mantes

(Had to look up the plural of mantis - could be mantises or mantes according to Merriam-Webster We try to use as few chemicals in and around our home as possible. In the garden I try not to use any chemicals that are not specifically for organic gardens. I've had a bad problem with snails in the past and have used Sluggo for organic gardens purchased at Armstrong nursery. It's an iron phosphate pellet that you sprinkle on the soil around the area where the snails are. It works great! Picking off the snails from my plants and chucking them into the ravine had been my previous method but they seemed to reproduce faster than I could find them. For aphids I spray a hard stream of water on my plants. If that doesn't do the trick, I purchase lady bugs or praying mantis and release them in the garden. There's a great article here on natural aphid control and it explains the part that ants play in the whole system. http://www.attainable-sustainable.net/aphid-control/