The Holdfast Seeker

First milk jug greenhouse salad of the year

2011-05-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

The milk jug greenhouses Lizzie and I planted back in early March are finally ready for their first hair cut. The black seeded Stimpson lettuce has been growing for about 6 weeks now and I just harvested these two jugs for our first salad. This is a full six weeks before salad greens start coming in from our local farm CSA share.

These are so easy to do and care for, for directions see this this earlier post. If you have a toddler who drinks two gallons of milk a week you pretty much have everything you need to get started. I wish I knew about these last fall so we could have been eating home grown salad all winter long. From what I've read, you can leave them out in the snow on a sunny day. Mine stayed on an unheated, but glassed-in, porch even on nights with temps in the teens and the salad grew just fine. I've also grown spinach, collards and a leaf lettuce mix. Can't wait for dinner time!

Lizzie's new and improved chickadee house

2011-04-07T12:10:00.001-07:00

A lot of people land on this blog because they google "should I clean out a chickadee nest box". The short answer is: yes.

Last year, when I cleaned out Lizzie's chickadee house, I took out a really cool nest made mostly of the neighbor's dog's hair. You can see the picture by clicking here. This year, when I cleaned it out a few weeks ago, it was entirely different.

The nest was almost entirely twigs and feathers. I never got a really good look at the bird going in and out but I know for certain it was either a marsh wren or a house wren and not a chickadee. Who knows who will nest in it this year but the little old bird house has competition with a new house on the block. I bought Lizzie a paint-your-own bird house kit and this is what she made:
Your guess is as good as mine as to what bird will decide this is its dream home. All I know is there's a two-and-a-half-year-old eagerly awaiting move-in day.

Milk Jug Greenhouse

2011-03-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Want home grown salad in winter? Live where your garden is under four feet of snow until April? Have a child obsessed with starting seeds? Yes, yes and yes! So we started milk-jug salad greenhouses!

My little girl demands to plant seeds everyday and I'm running out of flat surfaces on which to start them. Luckily, last week I heard about milk jug greenhouses!

Of course you don't have to be a kid to make these. It's a great way to start cold hardy plants if you have a sunny glassed-in porch, as I do, that still drops below freezing at night but can hit up to 90 degrees during the day. You could also keep these indoors if, unlike me, you have sunny surfaces not already taken over by flats of non cold-hardy seeds.

It's easy:
-take an empty gallon milk jug.
-poke a few holes in the bottom.
-cut almost all the way around it about three inches from the bottom (see photo above). Leave a few inches still attached so it stays together but so you can open it up to get the plants out later.
-add a few inches of dirt and your seeds.
-tape it back up.
-you can also cut the very top off (as I have in this example above) so it's easier for a little face to peer inside every half hour to see if the seeds have sprouted. If you do this put some clear tape or plastic wrap over it to keep the heat in.

Had I stumbled upon this idea in the late fall we'd be eating milk-jug salad by now. But, sadly, I just planted our first one on March 15th. So far we only have these little black-seeded Stimpson sprouts to the right but they came up in four days even with the porch getting down to 20 degrees at night.

Hopefully we'll be able to eat our greenhouse greens long before I'm able to plant seeds right in Lizzie's Organic Garden. It's just emerged from the glacier that was my backyard so it will be some time before she can demand seed planting out there. I already have plans to build another raised veggie bed before she stomps her little feet when I tell her we've run out of room and can't plant anymore. Luckily for me she likes to weed!

Teaching your toddler to love learning

2011-02-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

My kids will be nerds, they kinda have no choice. Their dad is a computer/surfing/road bike/barefoot running nerd and their mom is a nature/science/bird watching/aquarium nerd. Basically, both my girls will end up going nuts over something. Right now my toddler is into birds as well as Thomas the Train, insects, seeds and anything that she can check on every two minutes to see if it grew or changed in anyway.

I heard a sad sad fact on our local NPR station last week that an alarming number of five-year-olds are starting kindergarten not even knowing the parts of their own body. I can't imagine if my two-year-old couldn't name her own nose or feet! NPR claimed it all comes down to parents not reading with their kids or spending enough time teaching their kids and planting them in front of the TV instead.

Sure my kids like Thomas and Super Why! and a number of other PBS cartoons (it's been a LONG and snowy winter), but I try to limit what they watch. I could have turned on the TV all morning today but instead I got out my laptop, downloaded pictures of the birds we've been seeing in our backyard and made a chart with my toddler (click photo to enlarge). OK, she did the gluing and I helped her figure out which column to put each bird in, but at two and five months she can already identify a chickadee, squirrel, crow, hawk, owl, loon and a junco. And that's not because she's super smart but because I took the time to teach them to her, and I was excited about it, and excitement is contagious.

I know parents who claim they don't have time to do activities like this with their kids, but every minute of the day is a minute you could be teaching your kids something. Even if it's just the parts of their face, or in my kid's case more bird species than most adults can recognize. As soon as they wake up from their naps I must go out and buy a bigger piece of poster board since we've run out of room and it's not even bird migration season yet!

'Volcanic' Winter

2011-02-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

Blame Iceland. Yes, Iceland. To anyone experiencing crazy weather this winter there is a theory that it's all because of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano that erupted in Iceland last spring, spewing ash all over northern Europe and causing air travel to grind to a halt. While this eruption might not have been big enough to cause a true 'volcanic winter', our local weather guy reported the other day that the ash in the northern atmosphere pushes the cold air down from Canada giving us more snow.

Who knows if he's right but we sure have had A LOT of snow. Here in New England we have received almost record amounts (I think it was over 71" at last count by the Boston Globe) where a lot of that would have been rain if the temps would actually get out of the 20s.

A true volcanic winter is caused by a really really big eruption, where the ash in the atmosphere actually obscures the sun causing a global dip in temps. You can read a list of the past volcanic winters here, many of them causing famines that lasted up to three years.

Here's what got my attention today: latest news out of Iceland is another big volcano is acting up, and this one is big enough to cause a volcanic winter. The Telegraph reports that the Bárdarbunga volcano is showing signs of increased activity. This volcano dwarfs Eyjafjallajokull and what's really cool is this as reported by The Telegraph:

"The last recorded eruption of Bárdarbunga was in 1910, although volcanologists believe its last major eruption occurred in 1477 when it produced a large ash and pumice fallout. It also produced the largest known lava flow during the past 10,000 years on earth."

Wow, this news was cool enough to snap me out of my blogging break (caused by two very energetic little girls) and find the time to research this more. Hopefully if Bárdarbunga blows it won't cause a planetary mess, but it will at least remind us that humans are most definitely NOT in charge. I was planning a return visit to Iceland in the next year or so, perhaps I wait and see....in the meantime I think I'll work on expanding my garden and storing emergency "volcano food".

A quick thank you to all my followers who have contacted me to see how I'm doing since I've been "off the air". I'm doing very well, just busy with two kids that are a handful, luckily a very happy and giggly handful, but still a handful.

Lizzie's toad house

2010-08-29T09:38:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Lizzie and I found a little American toad hopping around in our grass. Never having seen a real live toad Lizzie was pretty excited, and so was I! We immediately caught it up and transferred it to the carrot patch where I've seen numerous garden snails and other pests that make tasty toad-treats. I was hoping the toad would make a home of my organic garden, and sure enough he was still there this morning.

"Let's make a toad house!" I said to Lizzie and "YEAH!" was her immediate enthusiastic reply. I rummaged through a pile of old clay pots, found a hammer and we smashed a side off each pot and had instant toad homes.

You can buy toad homes online and spend around $20 for each house. Or you can knock a small opening in the side of a clay pot, or even stack a few bricks to make a small shelter. Toads will be attracted to the shelter, use it during the day and claim it as their territory coming back year after year. Each night one toad can eat up to 100 slugs, grubs, grasshoppers, tomato beetles, cutworms...anything you don't want eating your garden. The tadpoles also eat mosquito larvae! And the average adult toad can live for nearly a decade, that's a nice family pet you don't have to feed or take for walks.

So give your toads some houses and enjoy their stay in your garden. Lizzie's already moved the houses around three times this morning and can't go a minute without looking to see if anyone moved in. I'm trying to explain to her that she should leave them alone so the toads don't get afraid and move out. But you try explaining that to a curious two-year-old.

And all is right with my world

2010-08-25T16:15:00.000-07:00

Well, almost. I wish I had a little more time with two free hands to do things like blog, clean my house, and take a nice bubble bath. But, I really can't complain. I had another beautiful little girl on June 27th and we call her Poppy, short for Penelope Rose. My two-year-old daughter Lizzie just adores her.

We're very lucky since a lot of my friend's older children don't even acknowledge their newborn siblings let alone try to play with them. It's not unusual for Lizzie to pile Poppy under all her favorite stuffies, including Bear-Bear (in the dirt above) her most prized bear of all. Poppy doesn't really like to be piled under four or five bears but she'll learn someday that her older sister is being very sweet. It melts my heart to see them together. I wanted nothing more than two little girls and I got them! How lucky am I?!

Lizzie's garden (formerly the Michelle Obama rocks, Monsanto sucks, honorary organic garden) is flourishing. Lizzie took it over by moving her lawn chair in there one morning and saying "I LIKE MOMMY'S GARDEN!" and then proceeded to eat a carrot right out of the ground, dirt and all (luckily dirt makes your smarter.) So I've had to rename my little six foot by fourteen foot patch after my older daughter since she's apparently claimed it. And if I can grow it she'll eat it. I've had other mommy-friends look on in wonderment as she devours homegrown carrots, green beans and cucumbers but leaves her mac and cheese untouched.

Last year I posted a running tally of everything that I grew in my tiny 6'x14' patch and I will again soon. Tomatoes are just coming in now and we can barely keep up with cukes. More than one neighbor has come home to a cucumber or two on their front steps :) I'm already coming up with expansion plans for next year since Poppy will want in on those homegrown carrots and green beans by then and I want some too!

I've been a lot more successful than last year due to the hot weather and a better layout, tucking over-zealous zucchini in a back corner and not right out front where they shaded everything. So far we've also been spared late blight which destroyed my tomatoes last year. There's a late blight warning for the western part of Massachusetts but no word of it on the North Shore yet. I keep knocking on wood though.

The Ipswich River is also running again, finally. We're currently experiencing our third day in a row of rain and I am ecstatic! The USGS gauge went from 0.88 cubic feet per second on Sunday to 75 cfs today! I know it won't stay up there forever but a three day soak is just what the watershed needed to last the rest of the summer. Happy fish!

I will sign off now and hope my state of contentment sticks with you. It helps that my full-term baby is already pulling eight hour stretches overnight so I'm getting a lot more sleep than with my preemie first-born (where I was up every hour and a half for the first two months!) I hope to visit all my follower's blogs soon, but even though life is good it is super super busy. Plus it's summer so we're outside getting dirty as much as we can!

Ipswich River Drought

2010-08-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

It has been a very busy six weeks up here in Ipswich. As of late June I now have two little girls vying for my attention. But, I wanted to bring everyone some dramatic photos from our little dam, which is always causing trouble. This was the dam yesterday. But where's the water?

Some of you may remember a mere four months ago when my town seemed to be underwater. I published some very dramatic photos and video. The river was running at a record 4,000 cubic feet of water per second then:

This morning it was running at 1.8 cfs. Yes, 1 point 8. That's the lowest recorded number for this date in the 70 years the US Geologic Survey gauge has been keeping track. This was the fish ladder (below) with no water running through it. So fish are basically stuck below the dam preventing them from using the entire upper part of the river.

This was the same view in March. Hard to believe we ran out of water:

So if you live in the Ipswich River watershed area please please turn off those sprinklers and let your lawn die. The grass with come back to life but the fish can't.

Dirt can make you smarter

2010-06-08T08:45:00.000-07:00

I have always prescribed to what I like to call the Eat Dirt method of parenting. If my toddler hasn't gone through at least three outfits by the end of the day and has clean hands then we haven't spent enough time outside. I encourage her to play in the mud, sand, even the compost pile. She's been known to dip her crackers in the sand at the beach and eat them and I don't freak out like a lot of other mothers we often hang out with. Purell is most definitely not allowed in my house.

Why? Well, I've always known that a challenged immune system is a happy immune system. Too many antibiotics and not enough bacteria can cause one's immune system to go haywire. It actually needs something to do or it gets out of balance. And now, there's new research showing that playing in the dirt exposes humans to the bacteria Micobacterium vaccae, which not only decreases anxiety but stimulates brain function, making you smarter. From Science Daily:

"This research suggests that M. vaccae may play a role in anxiety and learning in mammals," says Matthews. "It is interesting to speculate that creating learning environments in schools that include time in the outdoors where M. vaccae is present may decrease anxiety and improve the ability to learn new tasks."

As I rapidly near the birth of my second child (the reason I have not been blogging lately, thank you everyone who has contacted me in concern, I am fine, just tired :) this only reminds me more and more that it is so important for kids to get out and play in the dirt.

I am blessed with a child who is far more happy being outside than watching TV. In fact just the other day my husband gave her the very rare opportunity to watch ten minutes of TV by asking her "Do you want to play in the backyard or watch Elmo?" and "BACKYARD!" was her enthusiastic response. Which is the best answer we could have received. So if you have children in your lives show them your love and let them eat dirt.

Volcanology is cool

2010-04-22T08:00:00.000-07:00

A quick apology for being off the air for a month. When I'm not chasing a toddler I'm sleeping as I near my due date with my second child. But recent geologic events in Iceland have grabbed enough of my attention to get me off the couch, back online and reminded me on this Earth Day that Mother Nature really is in charge.

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while you know I'm a science geek. Nothing is cooler than an erupting volcano. Especially an erupting volcano that I've been to! In April of 2001 a friend and I took a long weekend adventure to Iceland, and it was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. Now that the ash is clearing, and air traffic resumes to this magical land, I recommend everyone to go visit. You won't be disappointed.

My friend and I spent a day driving all over southwestern Iceland which brought us right past the Myrdalsjokull and Eyjafjallajokull glaciers on our way to Vik, a beautiful black sand beach at the southern tip of the island. The only picture I have of the volcano area is of the Myrdalsjokull glacier (below), which on the map above looks like it's the same piece of ice as Eyjafjallajokull.

And under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier is the current erupting volcano.

There's a million things you can find online about this volcano, besides of course the air traffic disruptions (ironically the ash from Eyjafjallajokull kept my Icelandic travel partner from returning from Boston to her teaching job in Russia, she just made it back today, five days late). But there are a few fascinating things I've learned about this eruption:

The first is that it could go on for a year or more. And when Eyjafjallajokull erupts if often sets off the neighboring volcano of Katla, which is three times bigger. So if you're planning any air travel to or from Europe anytime soon you may want to buy travel insurance.

Secondly, as the glacier melts from the volcanic activity it releases pressure on the earth's crust which usually results in more volcanic activity. Scientists are predicting that with global warming we'll see more volcanoes. The Times UK reports that "...the eruption may be only a taste of the future if climate change causes ice sheets to melt further. As the last ice age ended, volcanic activity in Iceland increased 30-fold because of reduced pressure on the earth’s mantle."

And third, the volcano is probably releasing enormous amounts of fluoride, which could possibly poison livestock that might drink from glacial melt water. Wikipedia reports "In 1783, 79 per cent of the Icelandic sheep stock were killed, probably as a result of fluorosis caused by the eruption of Laki. The effect also spread beyond Iceland. Ash from the current Eyjafjallajökull eruption contains one third the concentration typical in Hekla eruptions, with a mean value of 104 milligrams of fluoride per kilogram of ash." That toxic ash that is currently spreading all over Europe.

So for those of you who just thought a little ash was affecting air travel and nothing else, this volcano is doing a lot more than even I realized.

I'll leave you with a few photos snapped back in 2001 with, believe it or not, print film. Luckily I have a scanner.

To the left is Skogafoss, one of the most amazing waterfalls I have ever seen and very close to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano. To fully see its size that's me below in front of it.

This photo below was taken literally standing in the zone between the American and European techtonic plates. All those sea stacks are old volcanoes. If you look out to sea from this spot old volcanoes dot the horizon all the way south.

Video of the Ipswich River Flood 2010

2010-03-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Again, as promised, here's a video of the flooding at the EBSCO/Sylvania dam in downtown Ipswich, MA. The first half is from the west bank and the second is from the east bank looking right back at where I shot the first half. The photos I put up yesterday are OK, but to really feel the power of nearly 4,000 cubic feet per second of water rushing past you really need to see, and hear, the river in motion:

For those of you not familiar with this spot, the Ipswich River is usually a peaceful river winding through the North Shore at about 200-400 cfs. This dam is a drop of at least six feet if not more and at late summer low-flow I've seen kids actually walking across it. Not something you'd want to attempt right now.

According to the USGS gauge the water seems to have crested about 6 AM this morning, which is good. A lot of my neighbors in the "alley" are pumping out their basements, but we seem to have been spared :)

Ipswich River Flood 2010 Photos

2010-03-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

As promised in last night's post, I took a walk around town today and can now bring you some photos of the flooding. According to the USGS gauge at 6 PM this evening the river was at 9.85 feet and running at 3,840 cubic feet per second. That's a lot of water. "Normal" stream flow for March is 300 cfs. Click any photo to enlarge.

For comparison purposes, the photo to the left is of the herring ladder right at the EBSCO dam. It was taken last March 18th at "normal" flow. The photo to the right was taken today. I just hope the water recedes before herring counts start on April 1st! Notice the approximate six feet of clearance from the water surface to the bottom of the foot bridge at the top of the photo on the left, and the lack of clearance on the right.

Looking towards EBCSO Publishing right at the dam. The dam starts at the end of the causeway on the left.

Standing on the footbridge looking right at the dam, there should be a significant drop where now there's just a wave.

Standing on the Choate Bridge

Standing on the west bank looking downstream at the footbridge.

The parking lot behind Zumi's. The river's normal channel runs at least 20 feet behind that shed.

Playing in the flooded parking lot

Another one of EBSCO's buildings just before the dam, the water isn't usually right up to the bricks.

I shot some great videos which I'll download later tonight and get up for you. You can't really feel the power of the river until you see if in motion and hear the sound. Luckily our basement is still dry even though we're only 100 feet from the river. The last time our house got soggy the water level went over 10 feet, hopefully we'll just squeak by with this flood....

Ipswich River Flood Stage

2010-03-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

In May of 2006 the Ipswich River north of Boston, MA, reached a flow of 4520 cubic feet per second, higher than any gauge reading since records have been kept. Most of downtown Ipswich went underwater, including our basement. It was a unique situation where an already saturated water table was then hit with a week of solid rain.

In this photo, taken by my husband during the 2006 flood, there should be a dam with a significant drop. You can see the "bump" to the left where the water is going over the dam. The EBSCO publishing building in the background had about five feet of water in it and old copies of periodicals floating all around.

A similar scenario happened again this past weekend. Anyone living in New England went through a massive nor'easter at the end of February. Winds topped 80 miles and hour and damage was comparable to a category two hurricane. There was a lot of rain but rivers stayed within their banks, although the Ipswich River did hit its seven foot flood stage, topping off at 7.09 feet (you can see the peak from February 28th/29th to the right, click graph for the most recent USGS data).

Then this past Saturday it started to rain, again. More than four inches were predicted. This morning I heard on New England Cable News that Topsfield, MA, (one town upstream from mine) received ten inches of rain in the past two days. TEN INCHES! There was no way the Ipswich River was not going to flood.

I'm headed off to bed in a minute with my sump pump plugged in, float switch ready to trigger it on if needed. The sump pit is full of water but the gravel floor is dry...for now. The river is at 8.5 feet, you can see it in the graph above updated by the US Geologic Survey at 6 PM tonight. The river went over ten feet in the 2006 floods, so we'll see what morning brings.

On the bright side, the sun is supposed to come out tomorrow and all this rain gave Lizzie and me an excuse to wear our matching ladybug boots. A big promise to bring you all photos of the flooding tomorrow, hopefully the sun will be out and the light will be good...and we'll still be high enough and dry.

Lizzie's chickadee nest box

2010-03-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

When I moved up to Ipswich, MA, four years ago there was a bird nest box already hanging from the neighbor's Eastern Red Cedar. My husband can't quite remember who put it there, possibly his old roommate, but either way the box hung on our side of the fence and I have adopted it.

In the four springs I've lived here I've never bothered to clean it out, which I know is an important thing to do if you want to have healthy birds nesting in it. Last year was the first year I really paid attention to the box and I caught an adult chickadee exiting it many times. I knew someone must be using it, but I never looked inside, not wanting to disturb a potential nest.

A few days ago my toddler and I were doing a yard clean up (well, I was raking and she was sprawled on her stomach, completely covered in dirt, digging in my veggie raised bed with her bare hands, she totally takes after me) and I noticed the box had fallen in the wind storm the New England coast went through a few weeks ago. Meteorologists say we had winds up to 80 miles an hour and damage equivalent to a category two hurricane.

I picked up the box, located the chain buried in last year's leaves and carefully pulled off the bottom sliding piece of wood. Inside was a wondrous site, click to enlarge:

The old nest fell out in two pieces. The bottom half was soft sphagnum moss most likely collected from a few houses away where my neighbor has a patch of it along the river. The moss layer was an inch thick. Did it start as a tiny piece and grow in there? Four years of not cleaning it out could I suppose grow moss that thick.

The top layer was the nest, a little cup mostly made of animal hair. The neighbors who own the cedar tree have an enormous, friendly, shaggy, golden retriever named Baker. I have a feeling a lot of that hair is his.

I pointed out all the parts of the nest to my 17-month-old who has far too many words for her own good. As I hung the box back up in the cedar tree she ran around in circles screaming "BIRD NEST BIRD NEST BIRD NEST!!!"

Just this morning over her sippy cup of milk and my mug of coffee, which we always drink in a big chair looking out at our bird feeder and the nest box, we saw a chickadee going into the box. I'm not sure she could see it so I told her a chickadee went in her nest box. An hour later we went outside to play and she ran over and said "Chick-chee bird nest?" "I sure hope so, and you can take care of it" I told her, and she laughed. Having one's own little nature pupil is the best thing in the world.

Where is your milk from?

2010-03-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

A friend showed me a very cool website yesterday, whereismymilkfrom.com. For any of you in the US who are trying to purchase more locally produced food, or who are just curious about where the cows who made your milk are from, this website is for you!

It's super easy. All you have to do is find the code on the side of your milk (or yogurt, cheese, cream, ice cream, etc.) container and enter it into the milk box on the website. Most codes are easy to find, they're usually right next to the sell-by date. The one on my box of The Organic Cow milk reads 36-4016. So I entered 36 4016 (no dash) into the site and it spit this factory out at me:

The code for New York, the site tells me, is 36, the first two numbers in the series on the box. I'm a little disappointed since The Organic Cow claims to be "New England's Original Organic Milk" it says so right on the carton. But, last time I checked, Elma, NY, was not in New England. In fact it's about 482 miles away by truck from Ipswich, MA!

My family doesn't follow a strict 100 mile diet but we do like to try to buy food from New England, since it's a pretty small area of the country and is a good limit to focus on.

This doesn't mean I'm going to stop buying the Organic Cow all together, but I'll definitely be entering codes from other organic milk products I can find into whereismymilkfrom.com to help me make better decisions when I shop. A little code cheat sheet for fellow New Englanders out there:

25 = Massachusetts
23= Maine
44=Rhode Island
09=Connecticut
50=Vermont
33= New Hampshire

I'm going to try to stick with those numbers!

Health care hypocrisy: Sarah Palin went to Canada for treatment

2010-03-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while you know I have my share of health issues, the biggest of which is Crohn's Disease. Over the years I have spent an insane amount of out-of-pocket money for uncovered expenses like copays, acupuncture and experimental drugs. In 1990 my parents even imported an FDA unapproved drug from Canada at a dollar a pill. They also paid for my COBRA for two years after I got too old for their insurance but didn't have my own yet. COBRA alone was nearly $300 a month alone, the pills...I don't even want to know.

I just opened an email from my husband with a link to the Huffington Post informing me that Sarah Palin, one of the most outspoken opponents to government run health care, and who has openly criticized Canada for its single-payer system, recently admitted she actually went to Canada when she was younger for her health care. Sarah, you should keep your mouth shut.

I'll leave you with reading their article but this quote makes my stomach turn more than usual, "'We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada,' Palin said.... The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada's health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and 'death-panel'-like rationing."

So go ahead Sarah and not be ashamed to have used Canada's system where no one goes without coverage and having to worry about how they're going to pay for their medications, treatment and emergency care. But don't let us have any of it. Oh, and that reminds me, I owe Beverly Hospital a $100 copay for the six stitches I received from their ER on New Year's Day after falling on the ice. I'm just glad I have insurance, but still, $100!!? If my family were one of the millions without health coverage in this country I'd probably have slapped a Bandaid on it and have an even worse scar on my forehead. Maybe I should send Sarah Palin the bill....

Science is cool: Chilean quake moves earth's axis by 3 inches

2010-03-02T03:00:00.000-08:00

While most of us last weekend were watching the tragic scene unfold in Chile, or waiting to see if a tsunami was charging towards Hawaii, scientists were discovering that the 8.8 quake in Chile last week not only shifted the earth's axis but it also shortened our day. Yes. Seriously.

According to businessweek.com , “The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second)...” and “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).” And, if you already didn't know, the massive 9.1 Sumatran quake in 2004 "...shortened the day by 6.8 microseconds and shifted the axis by about 2.3 milliarcseconds..." So I guess this happens all the time.

To most of you this tiny three-inch shift in the earth's axis might not seem like a whole lot, but when you think about it from a scientific point of view I'm sure it really throws off a lot of calculations. I can imagine a bunch of physicists and geologists are now doing long, complicated, equations trying to reset clocks and change known data points.

I find this really really cool - what can I say, I'm a science geek. I grew up with a dad (he reads this and will back me up) who instead of reciting us traditional bedtime stories would show us books on plate tectonics and volcanoes. I was probably the only seven-year-old who understood that Hawaii was drifting northwest and a new island was forming way below the ocean surface. My older sister, no surprise, majored in geology.

A mere 1.26 microseconds probably won't change a thing in your daily lives. So don't worry, you were only 1.26 microseconds late for work or school this morning, no one will notice. And there's no need to reset your watch, well, unless of course you're NASA.

For a cool map of the tsunami waves a Chilean quake sends out check out Astray in a Latin World.

Eat yogurt = offset carbon

2010-02-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

OK, I know that title sounds kinda silly. Yogurt is produced from milk produced from cows that spew a whole lot of carbon into our atmosphere. But Stonyfield Organic Yogurt, based right near me in Londonderry, NH, has started a rewards program where you can save up points from their containers and redeem them for things like more yogurt, snacks and even carbon offsets.

So I redeemed 25 points just now and offset 1/4 ton of carbon via Native Energy, enough to offset 500 miles of driving, which pretty much covers last weekend's trip to see grandma and grandpa in Westchester, NY. But wait, we still drove about 450 miles, our car producing CO2 the whole way. So what does this mean? According to the Native Energy website a renewable energy offset is explained thus:

For every kilowatt hour of electricity a renewable generator generates, it also generates a one-kilowatt hour renewable energy credit. The generator can sell both commodities together as "renewable electricity" or sell the electricity as "generic" electricity to one buyer and the RECs to other buyers. Legally, it's all about who owns the RECs

The way I see it my redeeming this renewable energy credit is supporting a wind farm, a farm methane gas generator, solar plant or other kind of renewable energy source. Kinda makes me feel good. Think my toddler and I will go eat more yogurt! One more container and I'll have enough points to offset another quarter ton of carbon!!

A maple flavored Valentine: maple cookies

2010-02-14T11:07:00.001-08:00

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while you might know I have a sensitivity to cane sugar which exacerbates my Crohn's Disease. What you might not know is that I also detest chocolate. I know, I must have some sort of rare recessive gene. What woman hates chocolate? It actually makes me gag. I swear. So no heart-shaped box of chocolates for me on Valentine's Day!

I've had a little too many store-bought cookies and Swedish Fish over the past few weeks and it set off a nasty week-long Crohn's disease spell. Considering I'm 20 weeks pregnant I have my growing baby to think about now, so back to cane sugar-free eating for me. Which isn't as hard as you might think. Yes, cane sugar seems to make its way into just about every product on the shelves. But a little internet research, and a lot of home cooking and baking, and you can have your sweets and eat them too!

So on this Valentine's Day in lieu of nasty, sugary chocolate (Yuck!) I've made myself a sweet treat of my favorite maple cookies. Next to vanilla, maple is by far my favorite flavor. A warning: these are in no way a "diet" cookie. Just because they don't contain cane sugar, they do contain a whole cup of butter, YUM!

This recipe comes off an excellent website full of cookies and treats with cane sugar alternatives, I altered it slightly by using only one cup of maple sugar and replacing the extra half cup with maple syrup since it's slightly cheaper than maple sugar. Enjoy!

Debra Lynn Dadd

Maple Cookies

As autumn leaves fall, I love to make these maple cookies cut out with leaf-shaped cookie cutters. They are crisp and crunchy like an autumn leaf and are flavored and sweetened with maple syrup, which, as you know, is the sap of a tree.

They can also be used instead of graham crackers to make a flavorful cookie-crumb pie crust.

Makes about 4 dozen medium-sized cookies

NOTE: Dough needs to chill at least four hours, so don't make these at the last minute for a party. Make the dough ahead of time and store it in the refrigerator. My dough was delicious after chilling for a week, and seems to improve with time.

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated maple sugar or unrefined cane sugar (such as Sucanat or Rapadura)*
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon maple extract
1/4 cup maple syrup
4 cups unbleached white flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

In a medium bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer.

Gradually add the sugar while you continue to beat.

Add the eggs, vanilla extract, maple extract, and maple syrup, and beat until light and fluffy.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.

Mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture.

Bring the dough into a ball, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

Chill at least four hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Roll the dough out 1/4-inch thick. Cut out cookies and transfer them to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silpat.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes.

* Granulated maple sugar is more expensive and hard to find, but would result in an all-maple cookie. unrefined cane sugar (such as Sucanat or Rapadura) is less expensive, available in most natural food stores, and has the added benefit of causing less blood sugar rise.

BACK TO RECIPE INDEX

BACK TO DEBRA'S LIST: Sweeteners

If a tree falls, would a hawk notice?

2010-02-04T15:00:00.000-08:00

If an old, dead tree along the highway was cut down would anyone notice? Well, I did, and I wonder about the red tailed hawk pair who used it as their perch.

On the north bound side of Route 95 in Danvers, MA - just north of the Center Street overpass and before route 62 - there was an old, dead tree that stood twice as tall as anything around it. I doubt anyone would have taken notice of this tree unless you were a birder or had an inclination towards the natural world. Most people probably drove past it everyday while on their cell phones or sipping their lattes and never knew it was there. But I knew it, and every time I passed I'd look to see if the hawks were there. And they almost always were.

Sometime this past fall it was suddenly gone, just a clean-cut stump and a hole in the space it occupied in the sky. I assume State highway workers removed it to prevent it falling over in a storm and blocking one of the most traveled routes through northern Massachusetts. I can see their reasoning, but did they think of the hawks?

I thought about the tree again this morning, as I always do, when I drive past the stump. And I thought about it even more because I saw both of the hawks, perched a few hundred yards apart, one on a highway sign and one in another not-so-nice dead tree. Do they miss their old tree? Do they even remember it? Do they fly towards it expecting it to reappear as mysteriously and suddenly as it disappeared?

If I could be another species for just five minutes I've always wanted to be a hawk or an eagle -I know, you're surprised not a dolphin or a whale? It's true. I would love to see through their amazing eyes, feel what it would feel like to fly, and find out if they miss their tree. What sets humans apart from most other animals is our ability to feel empathy for others. And I feel sad for these hawks even though I'd like to think that they don't mind their tree being gone and have found other perches that suit them just as well. Perhaps I'm anthropomorphizing a bit too much, but I am only human.

A promise to bake more bread

2010-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

There is something very simple one can do in the kitchen that I'm going to make a very good effort to do more of: bake my own bread.

We go through a lot of whole wheat bread in this house. I love toast, my toddler loves to share my toast, I love to make French toast and my husband loves an evening snack of bread and butter and hummus (especially if I make his snack FOR him :) We usually go through two loaves a week.

I did a quick calculation and that's about $250 to $300 a year in bread, if not more. If I make it at home it would only be about $50 a year in ingredients. Not to mention by making it here I can control what goes in it, substituting local honey for the processed cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup and a myriad of preservatives I can't pronounce. I always believed that a simple loaf of bread should only consist of flour, yeast, water, milk, honey, salt and butter. Maybe some oats on top to make it look pretty.

So while my bread is rising (hopefully, I can't seem to find a warm spot in the house on this cold New England day) I thought I'd write a little bit about why I love the process of making bread. The yeasty smell of the sponge, the warm sticky dough in your hands, the whir of my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer (without which I'd probably have stronger arms but would make less bread), that fun moment when you get to punch the dough, and finally the amazingly rich and comforting odor of it baking after all the rising and shaping and kneading. There's nothing quite like it....

And, now four hours later, I wish I could send you all some of the final product through the interweb but you'll have to settle for the picture above of it cooling on my counter and imagine the sensation of eating a warm piece with melted butter. Yum. I will most definitely do this more often! I'm going to have to since we ate half of one of the loaves already!

A happy, happy, happy walk around Ipswich

2010-01-26T07:00:00.000-08:00

After all of last week's political gloom and doom, and then cold and snow, this morning dawned a balmy 38 degrees. I was determined to take my toddler for an early morning walk around town to cheer us up, banish the cabin fever we've both been feeling and hopefully spot the bald eagle I saw near the town wharf a few weeks ago (when I sadly did not have a camera). One thing I love about my town is that I can step out my front door, walk five minutes down the street and be along the river walk.

I told my daughter that it won't be long before the chimney swifts are back to nest in the round holes in the foundation of the long building on the right (click to enlarge). They fill the sky over the river in the summer chasing insects.

It was still a bit icy and with yesterday's rain there was a lot of water coming over the dam. This dam has been here for centuries but there's a movement starting in town to have it removed to make fish passage easier and hopefully restore our anadromous fish run. Studies show there's bedrock just upstream of the dam and without the impediment there would be a nice rapid right through town. Our house is just around the bend upstream, we could literally walk to the end of our street, jump in our kayaks and paddle the three miles out to sea. I told my daughter that I hope we can all do that someday, she smiled.

She was even more happy when I let her out of the stroller to walk up and down the foot bridge. This is the first time she's been able to do this since she learned to walk as there's been so much snow and ice. I swear she let out a twenty second rapid jumble of words as soon as she ran up to the bars and pressed her little face closer to the falls. I recognized "happy", "water" and "walk" in there. "Happy" was repeated over and over. It's her new favorite word.

She fell asleep somewhere along the lower river near the town wharf so she missed the beautiful shapes the melting ice takes when the current slows.

But when she woke up in Zumi's, our local fair trade coffee shop, she babbled "happy" again and again. I think we both feel better. Walks and January thaws (and a decaf caramel cloud latte for me:) definitely make us both "happy". Perhaps when she wakes up from her nap we'll go to the beach!

Asian Carp invades Great Lakes

2010-01-22T06:00:00.000-08:00

I just got this form letter (below) from the Michigan Attorney General in an email from a former Aquarium colleague. It is sad news indeed: the Asian Carp has been found in the Great Lakes. These guys get HUGE as you can see in the photo to the right. What's even more sad is US federal authorities knew about it and have done nothing to stop them. The future of the Great Lakes hangs in the balance, although I have a bad feeling the Lakes will never be the same again. For a full article from the Huffington Post click here.

Please read the letter below and if you have a minute stop by StopAsianCarp.com to sign the petition that will be sent to Washington:

Can You Help? Tell your friends about StopAsianCarp.com
Thank you for signing the online petition to protect hundreds of thousands of jobs and the Great Lakes at StopAsianCarp.com. Your efforts are helping me make our case to President Obama and Congress that residents of the Great Lakes region will not stand by silently as federal officials allow Asian carp to destroy our Lakes.

TELL FIVE PEOPLE: STOPASIANCARP.COM

Now you can do even more. Please forward this email to five friends or family members, one for each of the Great Lakes , asking them to sign the petition at StopAsianCarp.com.

We need to act because the U.S. Supreme Court declined this week to close the locks in Chicago that can stop Asian carp from entering the Lakes, ignoring Michigan 's pleas and those of Ohio , Minnesota , Wisconsin , Pennsylvania , New York and Ontario .

Making things worse, it was revealed federal authorities knew of new DNA evidence of Asian carp IN LAKE MICHIGAN but did not make the Court aware before it made its decision.

The front door to Lake Michigan remains wide open even as these waterborne aliens threaten to devastate the Lakes' $7 billion fishery and hundreds of thousands of jobs connected to the health of the Lakes. The need for each of us to act has never been greater.

TELL FIVE PEOPLE: STOPASIANCARP.COM

Please forward this email right now to five friends or family members, asking them to visit StopAsianCarp.com and sign the petition demanding authorities in Washington D.C. and Illinois act today.

That's telling one friend about www.StopAsianCarp.com for each of the Great Lakes . Please help us sound this critical alarm.

Thank you,

Mike Cox
Michigan Attorney General

Mass Backwards

2010-01-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

I could write a lengthy blog about my disappointment at my state's election results. But instead I will leave you with this link to Jon Stewart's Monday night clip: Mass Backwards. It kind of sums up how I feel, and it's at least giving me a good laugh, which I need right now as I think of all the uninsured people, and children, that are out there in this country. I am glad to live in a Commonwealth that takes care of its citizens by providing affordable health care. Many of my friends use Mass Health and are very grateful for the program.

So I hope you enjoy a laugh and that you aren't one of the thousands who worry about how they're going to pay for their health care. And I hope, for the rest of the country who stands with me on this issue, that next time Massachusetts can put forth a better Democratic candidate that will get the job done.

Myopia sled dog races!!

2010-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

YES! Sled dog racing on the north shore of Massachusetts! Last month, when my husband and I saw the sign hanging across the entrance to the Myopia Hunt Club (more well-known for their summer polo matches) we almost jumped out of our seats. How cool would it be to see a real dog sled race!

This past Saturday the day came, we packed Lizzie up in warm clothes and headed to neighboring Hamilton for the Myopia Sled Dog Races. The first thing I noticed is that a lot of the dogs weren't your typical Alaskan Sled Dog, huskies or malamutes. Most of them looked more like this adorable guy:

But there were more typical sled dogs, some of them already linked together waiting for their race: Unfortunately, our toddler only lasted an hour so we only got to see the Skijoring. Skijoring? Yup, that's the sport where a cross country skier is pulled by one or two dogs. Sounds odd, but when my husband saw the first racer enter the final stretch he said, "that's the BEST sport EVER!" And it did look pretty cool.

I think our toddler didn't last long because she wore herself out running around. She was excited because the club bulldozed the snow away from the viewing area and it was the first time she was able to walk around outside (without being caught in a snowdrift) since she learned to walk last month.

So we never got to see the 4 and 8 dog professional races head out. But it was a beautiful day, you could wander around and get up close to all the racing dogs, everyone was friendly - especially the people that Lizzie ran into when she was running around in circles.

And thanks to the New England Sled Dog Club for making it a free event! We hope it comes back to Massachusetts next year, you might just see my husband skijoring, now if we only had a trained sled dog...

Beware of sneaky ingredient changes in your favorite foods

2010-01-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

I realized something this week that first made me enormously angry, and then just really sad. I have been buying Cascadian Farm's organic Purely O's cereal for my toddler for about four months now. I chose this brand over Cheerios and Trader Joe's O cereal because it was organic AND only had fruit juice as the sweetener. In an age where everything seems to have added cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup I was very happy to find Purely O's.

Then something happened a few days ago. I noticed the Os in new box I purchased were a slightly lighter color, so I tasted one. It was REALLY sweet. Upon looking at the label I saw that for some reason there's now sugar, tapioca syrup and molasses. WHAT! Now they have three times the sugar as Cheerios! And no warning on the label that there's now added sugar to Lizzie's favorite formerly healthful snack.

So I wrote the company explaining the reasons I stated above for choosing their product and my confusion at the new ingredients. This was their response:

Thank you for contacting Cascadian Farm regarding your dissatisfaction with the recent reformulation of Cascadian Farm organic Purely O's cereal.

Our goal is to give consumers quality products at a good value. Prior to introducing any product, extensive consumer testing is done. We conduct market research and product testing continuously to obtain consumer reaction to existing products and to changes being considered. Only when we feel confident that a product change will broaden its appeal will we alter a product’s formulation. We are sorry that you do not agree that the recent change in Cascadian Farm organic Purely O's cereal was for the better.

We appreciate your loyalty to General Mills and hope you continue to choose our products.

Sincerely,

Katie Gafler
Consumer Services

I do believe that in a taste test the average American would choose the sweeter product, we are so programmed to expect sugar that I don't blame the taste testers. But what about those of us who don't WANT the sugar! I'm not the only mom who noticed and is a bit pissed off. On Urban Baby. com there are quite a few complaints. I'm glad it's not just me.

Now I'm just sad that the one more product has fallen victim to the sugar mentality. And I'm sad that because of childhood obesity Lizzie's generation is the first predicted to have a shorter life expectancy than my generation. How can we keep our kids healthy and slim if everything they eat is loaded with sugar? I'll keep looking and shopping around and hopefully I can find another organic and cane sugar-free version of Cheerios.

Genetically modified food proven to cause organ and endocrine damage

2010-01-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

Finally, actual physical proof that genetically modified food causes organ damage. In an elegant recent French data analysis, three GM corn strains were shown to cause damage to rats fed the corn for 90 days. I won't go into too many specifics, the article in the International Journal of Biological Sciences can be read in full here. But for those of you not willing to wade through the medical terms and experimental facts, figures and graphs I will sum up as best I can.

Rats were fed three genetically modified corn strains (interestingly two of them were developed by Monsanto, my most hated large agro-conglomerate).
All three of these GM crops have genes in them that either tolerate mass exposure to the herbicide Roundup (therefore having Roundup residue in them) or manufacture their own pesticides. To quote the article "Therefore, all these three GM maize contain novel pesticide residues that will be present in food and feed."
Detrimental health effects were different for male and females, which is not surprising as pesticides and herbicides can interfere with endocrine functions.
"Effects were mostly concentrated in kidney and liver function, the two major diet detoxification organs, but in detail differed with each GM type. In addition, some effects on heart, adrenal, spleen and blood cells were also frequently noted."

The authors stress that this study was only conducted over a 90 day period and long term studies are necessary. If you think about it, we've all been eating GM food since they were introduced in the early 1990s. What really scares me is children who are exposed to GM food from infancy. Unless you buy organic the cereals, french fries, corn chips and cookies your kids are eating are mostly likely made from GM grains.

Even baby formula made from cow's milk is manufactured from cow's most likely fed GM corn. One more reason to buy organic! I shudder to think what this is doing to their little endocrine systems. I am lucky that we can afford organic formula and now milk. But, a lot of parents either can't afford it or don't think it's necessary.

The most interesting fact about this study is it wasn't conducted by the French authors. These data were actually collected by Monsanto or on behalf of Monsanto. The authors actually had to go to court to obtain the results as stated in this paragraph below:

"The raw biochemical data, necessary to allow a statistical re-evaluation, should be made publically available according to European Union Directive CE/2001/18 but unfortunately this is not always the case in practice. On this occasion, the data we required for this analysis were obtained either through court actions (lost by Monsanto) to obtain the MON 863 feeding study material (June 2005), or by courtesy of governments or Greenpeace lawyers. We thank the Swedish Board of Agriculture, May 30, 2006 for making public the NK 603 data upon request from Greenpeace Denmark and lawyers from Greenpeace Germany, November 8, 2006 for MON 810 material. This allowed us to conduct for the first time a precise and direct side-by-side comparison of these data from the three feeding trials with these GMOs."

New Year's Resolution: fix that leaky faucet!

2010-01-07T08:00:00.000-08:00

With the new year some people resolve to lose weight, get in shape, be a better person...sure I'd like to do all of that. But first I must fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom. For nearly two years it's been dripping, most recently at about one drip every three seconds. I discovered it's just the hot water, so when we're not around I've been shutting off the hot water feed. But the rest of the time it drips, wasting 9 ounces per hour or 1.69 gallons a day. Over the course of the year that's about 620 gallons. In a town where our river sometimes has low water flow issues even 620 gallons a year makes a difference.

I've never fixed a faucet before, which might be surprising since in my former career I built plumbing systems at a large Aquarium. Here's me doing some extreme plumbing in one of the older 11,000 gallon saltwater reservoirs. Yet, if I messed something up at work I could always beg one of the professional plumbers who care for the really big exhibits to come bail me out. I get really nervous working on plumbing at home, there's no one but an expensive private plumber to bail my butt out.

But this morning I took the plunge. I shut off the hot water feed line and popped the top off the hot water faucet. I undid the screws and took off all the metal gaskets, but then I ran into trouble. The plastic plumbing underneath looked nothing like the picture of the brass "pressure faucet" in my Home Depot fix-everything book.

So what am I going to do? Keep the hot water shut off and wait for my husband to get home for moral support. He may not know what to do any more than I, but at least he can laugh with me if I break the faucet. When I do finally get that plastic housing off I'll be able to tell what kind of rubber gasket needs to be replaced and then good bye leaky faucet!

Replacing a leaky faucet shouldn't be that hard, mine's just being slightly extra challenging. So, if you have one leaking in your house get it fixed. A faucet dripping at one drop per second can waste up to 20 gallons a day. I'm lucky mine was only wasting less than two gallons a day!

Happy New Year everyone!

A recycled posting for my 100th post: natural cleaning products revisited

2009-12-16T05:36:00.000-08:00

I just noticed this morning that I have written 99 posts. So I thought in the true spirit of an ecologically focused blog I would recycle my most popular blog post. This was originally written in early April when I only had a handful of followers. Since then, Small at Reduce Footprints has Stumbled the following post and sometimes it alone receives a dozen direct hits a day. The day it was Stumbled it it nearly crashed my site, a new visitor logging in almost every second!

It always makes me happy to see someone showing interest in removing the chemical cleaning products from their home. So for my newer followers who haven't seen this yet I challenge you to give some of these recipes a shot. They're easy, very cheap and your body will thank you for it. Now I must go unclog the bathroom sink with baking soda and vinegar....

Kate reveals her all-natural cleaning product secrets,
originally posted April 3, 2009

The spring peepers are calling like mad in my neighborhood, the herring have been sighted in the fish ladder and my forsythia is about to burst. Spring has arrived on the north shore of Massachusetts and the two days I've been able to open my windows wide has made me itch to do a big spring cleaning. As I round up favorite four (and my ONLY four) cleaning products I thought I'd share my secrets with the world. All you need are these, I'm serious:

Grab some empty spray bottles, a rag or newspapers (ditch the paper towels, a rag works great and you can throw it in the wash and newspaper is a great window cleaner) and you're ready for a toxin-free cleaning!

All-purpose cleaner: one part vinegar, four parts water and a splash of lemon juice, put in a spray bottle. This is the first thing I grab for cleaning counters, windows, sinks, sticky mystery messes my husband leaves on the kitchen table....

Safe scrub: baking soda, plain and simple. I get the biggest box the supermarket has and sprinkle it in my ceramic kitchen sink, my bath tub, my bathroom sink. Just moisten a bit and scrub. Everything is pearly-white in no time.

Floor cleaner: Equal mix of white vinegar and warm water. Add a splash of lemon juice for a yummy scent. For wood floors add a splash of baby oil. I admit, I loved my Pine-Sol. But it always left a chemically odor that I didn't want my newborn inhaling. All the ammonia is not only bad for her sensitive mucous membranes (not to mention mine) but unnecessary.

Drain de-clogger: pour a half cup of baking soda down the drain followed by a half cup of vinegar. Don't be alarmed when it foams up! That's how it works it de-gunking magic. Fifteen minutes later pour hot water down the drain to wash it all away. DON'T do this if you've already used a chemical cleaner, the vinegar will react with it and release toxic fumes. Best bet, start with baking soda and vinegar in the first place.

Mold remover: spray it with hydrogen peroxide. One part hydrogen peroxide three parts water.

And my favorite, courtesy of my chemist father-in-law (which I haven't actually tried yet but I'm itching to do because I love a good basic chemical reaction.):

All natural-magical-silver polish: Line a saucepan with aluminum foil and fill with water. Add a teaspoon of salt and baking soda and bring to a boil. Once it's boiling add your silver and let it sit for a minute or two then take it out. Voila! Tarnish-free AND far easier than doing all that polishing! Let me know if you try it and how it works out, my mother-in-law says this is the coolest thing ever and is mad that my father-in-law didn't show her this trick years ago!

What you're never going to need to clean your house:
ammonia: causes damage to mucous membranes and potential burns.
bleach: causes chronic respiratory damage and heart conditions.
antibacterial soap: a whole mess of health problems including antibiotic resistance for you and the creation of super-germs, just don't go there. Get them out of your life for good.

One of the best benefits of getting the scary chemicals above out of my house is I don't have to worry about my almost-crawling baby getting her grubby hands on toxic products and swallowing them.

Happy spring and happy toxin-free cleaning!! -kate

Playing farmer

2009-12-14T18:37:00.001-08:00

Friends of ours in a neighboring town occasionally go away and ask us to pet sit. Except their pets include a lot more than their three friendly cats. They also have a goat, two sheep, a dozen chickens, a half dozen peacocks, a flock of guinea fowl, two geese, and a couple of turkeys (I might be forgetting something?)

I have a blast doing this! I've never lived on a farm. I've never taken care of "farm" animals, even though I did aquatic animal care for twelve years, this is much different. My husband and I only own 0.06 acres so unless we move we'll never be able to own more than a few chickens and never a goat or sheep and especially peacocks as they are very loud.

I think it's a great deal: we take care of their animals, get to play farmer for a few days and can take home all the fresh eggs we want. If you've never eaten an egg straight out of the nest box you are missing out. The yolks are impossibly yellow and the flavor is out of this world!

So I will stop typing and share some fun pictures. This is the goat, he eats everything and tried to eat my camera:

I think this turkey is just beautiful. At first they seem quite ugly but just look at those colors! As soon as you walk by them they puff out all their feathers and put on quite a display:

This photo isn't great since it was cold and my hands were shaky, but these are some of the guinea fowl (they keep them for tick control) and there's one of the big male peacocks in the rear center. Have you ever seen a peacock fly? He flew clear across the paddock to perch in a tree and it was very impressive:

This is the last clutch of eggs we got. The brown ones are from the chickens, our friends say the big white ones are also chickens since the geese shouldn't be laying until next year but I'm not sure. They are HUGE! Twice the size if not more than the chicken eggs:

I'm sure we'll get a call again soon for some more pet sitting. Which is fine with me. Ever since I left my job at the Aquarium I do miss taking care of animals. Hopefully some day I'll be able to keep chickens, it will be a great learning experience for my daughter when she's old enough to help with the care. She loves going to the "farm" now, although in the recent cold weather I've had to bundle her up pretty tight. But, I can still hear the giggles through all the layers as she imitates the animals.

The Most Hilarious Santa Arrival. EVER.

2009-12-09T15:00:00.000-08:00

Before I get to the point, I apologize for letting a month go by without blogging. An explanation (trust me, it's good) at the end of this post.

I live in a quirky seaside town. And I love it. But, the way Ipswich, Massachusetts has Santa arrive is about the quirkiest I have ever seen. This was the first year my husband, our little girl, and I made our way down to the town wharf to see the action and we were not disappointed.

I've seen Santa arrive by fire truck, by sleigh and on a horse. But, in our town, he arrives by fire rescue boat. He motors up the Ipswich River to the town wharf. Then, an awaiting fire truck with a boat trailer picks up the rescue boat and the whole town, I swear the WHOLE town, follows Santa, still in the boat, about a mile upriver to the downtown area.

I'm not finished. There's also a jailed Grinch in the back of the police department's pick up truck. They make him pull up the rear of the Santa parade, I guess since he's in jail he shouldn't be up front in the place of honor with Santa.

I'm not sure what my daughter made of all this. She's only fourteen months so the crowd of mostly older kids was probably more interesting to her than Santa or the Grinch. But I think she really enjoyed the mile walk, the bells her Aunt Bev bought her along the way, and the lights from the fire truck. LIGHTS is now her favorite word, which she has to scream on the top of her lungs. Every time I turn on the Christmas lights in the living room I hear her shrill little voice cry out "LIGHTS! WOW!"

What I've learned in the past few days from the Santa parade, a very unexpected jailed Grinch, a new favorite word and the look of pure yumminess on my little girl's face when she ate a gingerbread cookie is the Holidays are so much more fun with a child. How on earth did I find them fun before? I have no idea. But all the wonderment and magic I felt as a child waiting for Santa is quickly rushing back. You might just find me creeping down the stairs at 3 AM Christmas morning to see if Santa drank the milk and ate the cookies we'll leave out.

I am so thankful for a child to share this holiday season with. And the reason why I've taken a little blogging break is we have another one on the way. I'm ending my first trimester and I'm hoping the nausea and exhaustion will start to fade like it did at about this point with Lizzie. If my kid is napping than so am I, hence the lack of online activity. So I think I'll go have another ginger cookie and go to bed!

Why I hate the end of daylight savings

2009-11-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

Changing the clocks back by one hour is a cruel joke on parents with small children. I apologize for the profanity in this photo but it's pretty much exactly how I feel at this moment. Having a one-year-old wake up at 4:30 for six days straight just takes all the fun out of that promised extra hour of sleep that people without kids get to enjoy every fall.

It wasn't just my child. Facebook friends from all over the world lamented with me, their kids getting up, like mine, three hours early. You'd think a 6:30 AM wake up would simply go to 5:30 AM, but no. Something in their little brains was thrown way way off and they were all getting up, ready to play, sometime between 3:45 AM and 4:30 AM.

This past Saturday we had our first 6:00 AM wake up, which was the biggest gift ever to parents who had been sleeping an average of 5 hours a night. "Why don't you go to bed earlier?" you might ask. Well, it can sometimes take an hour or so to clean up the mess that that very same one-year-old creates during the day. By the time the toys and books are picked up, the sippy cups washed and the bananas scraped off the kitchen floor it's usually at least 8:30 PM and this parent needs another hour or more of mental downtime before my brain is calm enough to fall asleep.

So if you haven't seen me online much lately you know why. This is one of the first times in the past seven days I haven't napped while my child is napping. I should be but my to-do list has doubled in length since daylight savings time ended.

If you also have a small child and have been walking around like a zombie for the past ten days I know exactly how you feel. It really is a cruel trick played on us. And on top of that it gets dark by 5:00 PM so we can't even go to the playground after dinner. Just not fair. Who's with me to keep daylight savings time all year? It's dark when the kids are getting up anyway so what's one more hour of darkness? Sounds like a plan to me!

The most excellent news! Mass. DEP rescinds safe yield decision!

2009-11-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

A very very big thank you to all of you who signed the petition to alert Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick to the idiotic decision of MassDEP setting safe yield water withdrawal levels at a point where many of Massachusetts' rivers could get pumped dry. Initially I thought Gov. Patrick was behind this horrible decision, but when I heard the whole story apparently he was very upset and was able to take action to reverse it.

Just yesterday Mass DEP posted this on their website:

"MassDEP suspends the safe yield interpretation and determinations that were announced in October 2009. MassDEP clarifies and explains that its interpretation of the term safe yield under the Water Management Act includes environmental protection factors, including ecological health of river systems, as well as hydrologic factors. MassDEP will work with stakeholders to quickly develop interim safe yield determinations based on this interpretation that will be used in WMA permitting on a short term basis."

Basically that legal jibberish means that they have to determine safe yield based on many factors including environmental ones, which they claimed last month were no longer a factor. In the Water Managment Act they themselves wrote, which was upheld in court a few years ago, environmental factors were listed in their safe yield policy. So they were caught red-faced to say the least.

What will happen in the meantime? According to the Ipswich River Watershed website :

"DEP will re-determine the safe yields of all the river basins in Massachusetts within a year, and will include aquatic habitat protection factors in the evaluation. DEP will also work with the other state agencies and stakeholders to develop a sustainable allocation methodology that will include standards for more effective protection of ecological values"

I will keep you updated, but again a big thanks for reading, signing and your concern. The governor received a record number of signatures on this issue. This means fish won't die and the recovering herring run will be allowed to recover. And, hopefully this will mean that next summer the river that flows a few feet from my house will look like this:

and not like this:

Drive smart = save gas = save planet

2009-11-01T14:00:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to write a post about how considerate and careful driving can actually save the planet. Yes, it actually can. You know those idiots who have to gun the gas to go one block and then slam on the breaks? They are burning quite a lot of unnecessary fuel. I was stuck in a car last spring with a woman who did this just from one side of my small town to the other. She must have hit 45 miles an hour in the busy downtown area where the speed limit is 25, and she didn't get me home any faster. Not to mention I find driving like that very disrespectful to the passenger. Especially when that passenger is me.

I recommend visiting fueleconomy.gov for some very helpful tips on how to save gas that go beyond the obvious making sure your tires are properly inflated. To save you time and sum up the site the rules are pretty simple:

Drive sensibly: Our government reminds you that "Aggressive driving - speeding, rapid acceleration and braking wastes gas. It can lower your gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town." I believe it. I love when I see a Prius speeding and weaving down the highway. That is the truest form of hypocrisy I can think of.

Remove excess weight: This is one I am always guilty of. The back of my car currently contains a jogging stroller, a 22 pound SCUBA weight belt I've been too lazy to take out, a beach chair, various beach toys and a 1 gallon jug of windshield washer fluid. I estimate that's about 40 pounds of unnecessary weight.

Don't idle: There are actually laws about this which you can check by state here. In Massachusetts you can't idle for more than 5 minutes or you will be fined not less than $100.

Don't speed: This graph says it all. As tempting as it is to fly down the interstate at 80 miles an hour it is actually extremely inefficient. Highest fuel economy is around 55 and drops fast after 65 miles an hour.

I hope I have convinced you to take a deep breathe and calmly depress your accelerator the next time you take off after a green light. You'll be doing our planet a favor. A big thanks to Small at Reduce Footprints for reminding me that I've been meaning to write about this for some time now. Sensible driving and taking care of your car is the theme of this week's Change the World Wednesday Challenge.

Happy Halloween: My grandmother's pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

2009-10-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

This year's Jack-O-Lantern creation, even pumpkins love to eat pumpkins!

This is a very special recipe passed down from my grandmother on my father's side. We made dozens and dozens of these every October and I even won a cooking contest with them back in college. I hope you enjoy!

Grandma's Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies:

Mix together the following:
1 cup pumpkin (canned is fine, fresh baked from the oven is better)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 egg

Dissolve 1 tsp baking soda in 1 tsp milk. Add to pumpkin mix.
Mix well with above ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chocolate chips

Drop on greased cookie sheet (about 1/2 tsp size)
Bake 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Enjoy! And Happy Halloween!

A busy week, a gift from Kansas and an eagerly awaited vaccine

2009-10-28T06:22:00.000-07:00

Who would have though that by quitting one's job and staying home full time with a one-year-old would give you less time? I actually did expect this. Even with the one-year-old still napping twice a day I still barely have time to come up and breathe. I've been so busy that I actually forgot today was my anniversary! My mother had to remind me this morning.

It has been a good week though. I received a very happy package from deborah all the way from Kansas. It was the two pen and ink drawings I won from her blog contest. It was really cool to hear the thump on my porch as the package arrived from a woman I've never met or even spoken with. They were even better in real life than in photographs (close-up to the right). I can't wait to hang them once I have a chance (might take a few weeks at this rate). She will have a little thank you from the seashore heading her way soon....

Other amazing things have happened too, which didn't escape my very busy notice. A rogue giant red poppy bloomed in the garden yesterday beating all temperature odds and a fall snowstorm. I'd take a photo of it but it's already been ruined by today's rain. I made the best pumpkin soup straight out of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle, and I received word from my child's pediatrician that they just had a shipment of H1N1 shots for kids under two and we're all set to go get one tomorrow.

That was probably the best news I've had all week. I'm in no way a germaphobe. I don't use hand sanitizer, I willing let my kid chew on the handle of shopping carts, pet's tails and random kid's toys hoping it will make her immune system stronger. But, this swine flu is getting to the core of my motherly instincts. I still let her chew on the shopping cart yesterday, I sent her to her little in-home day care center today so I can clean the house (and catch my breath!), but I've kept her out of the YMCA day care room until she gets the vaccine. There's just way too many kids that go through there everyday and the flu has hit our town's schools in force. I can put off my workouts one more day.

I hope every one's families are healthy and to those that have already been hit I hope you've recovered with minimal damage. A big thank you to everyone who signed the petition to keep our rivers flowing. Rumor is the governor has received more petitions about this issue than any other environmental issue in recent memory. It has captured his notice and we're expecting a turn around on policy any day! If you haven't it and would like to the link is at the top of my sidebar.

Petition to protect the Ipswich River is ready for signing

2009-10-21T05:25:00.000-07:00

As promised, I'm posting the link to a very important petition to protect Massachusetts' rivers and streams. As I mentioned in a (bit angry) previous post our Governor, Deval Patrick, has allowed the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection to roll back critical "safe yield" water withdrawal levels.

What is "safe yield"? Simply put, that's the maximum amount of water that can be pumped out of a river system without damaging the river: i.e. pumping it dry. In previous summers when my local river, the Ipswich River, ran dry withdrawals were at 28 to 32 million gallons a day. The DEP was sued and levels were dropped. The past three summers the river has flowed, wildlife has flourished and the herring are starting to return to spawn.

Just when I was starting to relax and jumping for joy over this recovery the DEP has decided that the new "safe yield" for the Ipswich River will be 55.5 million gallons a day. YES: 55.5 MILLION gallons a day. That's almost twice the levels that pumped the river dry.

What will happen? All the fish will die and the river will look like this. I'm fairly sure those are dead fish in that puddle in the foreground. So no fishing, no kayaking, no working beaver dams, and most definitely no herring fry getting out of the river to grow up in the ocean.

Please visit the Conservation Law Foundation's website to sign a petition to rescind this action. I signed it yesterday and immediately received the following reply from the governor's office:

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with Governor Patrick. The Governor values your opinions and enjoys hearing from people across the Commonwealth. Please know that your views are always welcome in this administration.

The Governor and his staff strive to review every piece of correspondence in a timely manner. If appropriate, we will forward your message to the appropriate staff member, department or the state agency that can best address your concerns.

If you need an immediate response, please call the Governor's Office at 617-725-4005 to speak with a Constituent Services Aide. Again, thank you for taking the time to share your ideas with Governor Patrick. Stay involved and engaged...this is your government!

I'd like to think this is positive, but I'm not very hopeful. Thank you everyone for caring about the little ecosystem at the end of my road. The Ipswich River was listed as one of the country's top ten most endangered rivers, how is it ever going to recover if this policy goes into action?

Final organic garden tally and lessons learned from the backyard garden

2009-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

The Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden is done for the season. We've had our first below freezing night here in northern Massachusetts and I doubt the few remaining zucchini blossoms will come to much. My sunflowers by the front door are no longer blooming, this photo was taken two weeks ago. I'm just waiting for migrating birds to pick them clean. But, even though the garden is closed down, I have a lot to reflect over. Most of which were lessons I learned after my first large organic vegetable undertaking.

Lesson #1: Read and follow the planting instructions on the seed packets. I got a little carried away and squeezed six zucchini plants into a space that could really only accommodate two. They sort of took over the string beans. oops!

Lesson #2: When late blight hits the entire state of Massachusetts' tomato crop don't get complacent and follow the quarantine protocols you set in place (i.e.: only wear your garden clogs in the tomato patch and not your flip flops which flip and flop all over the New England area....)

Lesson #3: Get your seeds in earlier. This was mostly my fault since I had two yards of soil to move, a needy six month old back in the spring, and a job. It took a bit longer than I though to build the bed and move the dirt. The first seeds didn't get in until late May.

Lesson #4: Be patient with your carrot crop. It was the first time I grew carrots, it was exciting and I couldn't wait to pull them up. Had I waited another month they would have been twice as big. But, they were still super tasty!

Lesson #5: Order your praying mantids before aphids take over.

There are many things I did right though. I went organic. I planted crops I knew I would eat. I picked a good spot in the yard for the raised bed. I never ran out of irrigation water since I added a second rain barrel this year. All in all it was a success!

So, for the final garden tally. Here's what I grew in a mere 6 by 14 foot piece of soil:

blueberries: 42
strawberries: 35
salads: 5 large
zucchini: 13
cilantro: 5 large bunches
green beans: 313 (about 3.5 pounds)
carrots: 136
basil: more than I can count!
tomatoes: 14
cucumbers: 9

I hope if you're on the fence to start your own little garden patch then my journey of this past summer has inspired you to try next year. It was super fun, and I'm looking forward to learning from my mistakes to make next summer's harvest twice as big!

Massachusetts governor drops the ball on river restoration

2009-10-15T11:54:00.001-07:00

I don't like to write when I'm angry, there's too big a risk of me saying something I will regret. But, at the same time, anger often drives my motivation to get people's attention. I just heard the most angering news that our governor, Deval Patrick (who I actually voted for since he made some great promises) just reversed a very key river policy which set water withdrawal limits and protected the Ipswich River from running dry in the summer. If he gets his way, and this policy goes into action, summer kayak trips, like this one above which I lead this past August, will look more like the one below.

The full article with details is here, but some key points are the following:

"...under the state's new safe yield calculation, 165 million gallons could be drawn daily from the Charles River - nearly four times the current limit of 46 million gallons per day"

"Under the new policy...the state could draw an extra 22 million gallons per day from the Ipswich River basin."

The governor should be calling for more water conservation, not more consumption. I am baffled and irate at this decision. The Ipswich River Watershed Association will be posting a petition on their website soon. Please sign it, even if you live far far away, it will mean thousands of aquatic species won't die in order to water someone's enormous lawn.

To learn more about herring and water conservation in the Ipswich River please visit my earlier posts:

And to Governor Patrick who is running for reelection: you just lost my vote.

Goodbye hilarious little mandarin fish

2009-10-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

I want to introduce you to another animal that I will most definitely miss when I leave my aquarium job in a few days to become a full time mother. For years and years these little guys have been on the top of my favorite list. This is a male mandarin fish, Synchiropus splendidus, and he's splendid indeed! This is one hilarious fish. Once he sees you lurking outside his tank he will follow your finger all over the glass if you put it out for him to follow.

When he's showing off he'll lift that amazingly colored dorsal fin as tall as it can get as if to say, "this is MY territory!" It's believed that the colors are there as a warning, as these fish give off a foul-tasting mucus if you attempt to eat them. Not that I would, they are way too much fun and far too beautiful.

We keep this species for two reasons. First, they're simply just a pretty little fish and the public loves them. And second, they love to eat flatworms which can plague salt water reef aquaria.

I will really miss them during my morning check-ins when I make sure all the animals are OK, their life support is running, and there's no major floods anywhere. This particular individual is always hanging out right in front of the glass and always lets me "play" with him for a few minutes while I'm scrubbing the nose, hand and face prints off the windows from the previous day's visitors.

While playing around with my camera a few years back I attempted to capture them. It's tough. They rarely sit still long enough.

But I did get these photos and if you play around with i photo some of the colors really turn into art. These are close-ups of that amazing dorsal fin. The first one is just a crop of the real thing. Nature sure is the best artist.

This one was altered by iphoto, even more amazing when you boost the colors!

Starting the goodbyes - goodbye cute little lumpfish!

2009-10-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

I have three days left of work. If you've read this blog before you'll know that my job is a huge part of who I am. I've been working at a public aquarium for over twelve years and have taken care of many of its animals for over ten years now. I can't even begin to go into how much I'm going to miss my coworkers, they are a second family to me. It's hard not to get close to someone when you work with them often wearing nothing more than a thin wetsuit!

I'm comforted knowing that my human friends are a quick email, phone call or visit away. But the animals are a different story. Will they know I'm gone? Probably not. The birds might react to me during a visit with familiarity but they won't mope like a dog missing its human companion. Yet, I will miss the animals immensely.

I really love bratty animals. The more personality the better. I've cared for jellyfish for about five years now and, despite their beauty, they bore me. The shorebirds and a few fish species are another matter. One of my favorite fish is a lumpfish, and I've been very fortunate to have worked with dozens over the years. I mean, look at this fish, don't you just want to squeeze her?
Ok, so I'm a bit of a fish-geek. The average reader might be thinking, "no, I definitely do NOT want to squeeze a fish!" But trust me when I say most of my coworkers and interns think we should sell stuffed animal versions of lumpfish in our gift shop. Once you work with them and see their cute little personalities you will most assuredly want to cuddle with one.

They have a modified ventral fin that's evolved into a suction cup so they can stick to rocks and kelp in the intertidal zone, keeping them stable in the surge. Believe it or not they seem like a happy puppy to me. You can pick them up with your bare hands and place them on your palm and they just sit there, mouthing the air, looking for food. You can actually train them too as one of our marine mammal trainers did last winter. They will eat out of your hands and come over, I swear wagging their tails, when they see a staff member approaching in our ubiquitous green uniform shirts.

I will introduce you to more of my favorite animals over the weeks to come as a form of therapy for me while I adjust to full time mommyhood. It will be a joy to go through my iphoto files and reminisce over the fun aquatic personalities I have known over the years.

If you're interested in learning more about what I do you can read my shorebirds blog at neaq.org.

My lucky day

2009-10-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today is October 1st, my daughter's first birthday. It was a lucky day a year ago when she came a month early, yet with no complications from being a preemie. And it is a lucky day again this year because I have won a pair of drawings from deborah at A Muse in Kansas that I was really hoping to win!

Deborah is a fantastic artist, I especially love her interpretations of Kansas and Vermont landscapes. She ran a contest last month and the winner received these, two original pen and ink drawings that I admired the minute she posted them a few months ago. I'm very excited and can't wait to frame them! If you have a minute check out her art, you won't be disappointed.

Farmer's Market Challenge: local apple crisp

2009-09-27T03:00:00.000-07:00

Almost any farmer's market in the northeast this weekend will most assuredly be selling local apples. We have a great pick-our-own orchard down the road, but I haven't been yet although I am planning on going soon. And when I do I will definitely be making many many pies and, even better: apple crisp!!

To finish up my weekend of Squirrel Queen's Farmer's Market Challenge I bring you another cane sugar-free sweet recipe, this time adapted from Carrie Davis' The Naturally Sweet Baker. (To see yesterday's Honey Cornmeal Muffin recipe, and why I bake without processed cane sugar click here).

Apple Crisp (with no cane sugar!), adapted from The Naturally Sweet Baker by Carrie Davis
Fruit Filling:
6 large baking apples (I use granny smiths or galas or whatever the market has)
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 unsweetened apple juice
1 tbsp unsalted butter

Topping:
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/4 cup brown rice syrup
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350. Butter a 1 quart shallow baking dish.
Peel, core, and slice the apples into 1/4 inch thick wedges and put in large bowl. Toss the apples with cornstarch and cinnamon. Put the apples in the prepared baking dish. Pour in the juice and dot with 1 tablespoon of butter.

In a medium bowl, mix together the oats, flour, baking soda and salt.

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Remove from heat. Stir in the brown rice syrup and vanilla in to the butter. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until blended. Spoon batter evenly over the apples.

Bake about 50 minutes. The juices from the apples should be bubbling. If the top begins to brown before the apples are done cover the dish with aluminum foil pierced with a fork to let the steam escape.

Enjoy!

Farmer's Market Challenge: honey cornmeal muffins

2009-09-26T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I am stuck at work this Saturday and am missing our local farmer's market. Because I love to participate in Squirrel Queen's Monthly Farmer's Market Challenge I will bring you two recipes this weekend made with local products. Today, one made with yummy local honey and, tomorrow, one made with equally yummy local apples.

I bought a jar of local honey from Marshview Apiary at our Ipswich, MA, farmer's market back in June. I use honey mainly in winter baking, and since there's a frost warning for this weekend I'm getting ready to fire up the oven and pull out my trusty Kitchen Aid stand mixer. Before I had a baby last fall my mixer would be making is lovely whirring noise almost every night as I baked up yet another cane sugar-free delight, now I am often too tired to bake!

When I found out a few years ago I was sensitive to cane sugar, and that it triggers my Crohn's Disease, my husband and I went on a search to find sweet things - without the processed white stuff - that could satisfy my incurable sweet tooth. I ordered two cookbooks that are now lovingly dog-eared and sticky: Joy with Honey by Doris Mech and The Naturally Sweet Baker by Carrie Davis. After doing more research it turns out that everyone should avoid processed cane sugar, our digestive tracts just aren't cut out for it, and neither are our waist lines.

Honey Cornmeal Muffins - adapted from Joy with Honey by Doris Mech
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup whole wheat flour (Doris calls for pastry flour but regular wheat flour works fine)
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey (local if you can find it!)
2 large eggs, beaten
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter (Doris calls for 1 1/4 cup buttermilk in lieu of the milk and butter but I never have any on hand so I altered the recipe)

Sometimes I toss in local blueberries if they're in season or I have frozen ones left over from July's farmer's market.

In a large bowl mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder and soda. In another bowl combine the honey, oil, eggs and milk and butter. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the honey batter. Stir gently until moist. Spoon batter into buttered muffin tins. Bake in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until lightly browned. Makes about 12 muffins.

Raising kids to be stewards of the earth: GO OUTSIDE!

2009-09-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

Reduce Footprints has issued another great Change the World Wednesday Challenge. This week it's all about raising kids to be green. Just because my little girl is a week away from her first birthday doesn't mean she's too little to do eco-friendly activities with. Don't forget: children love to mimic their parents. So at her age it's all about what I do, everything of which she sees and stores in her little developing brain.

So just in this week alone Lizzie and I have:

picked up our local farm share from Green Meadows, and while there we said hello to the pigs, chickens and her favorite, the turkeys.
eaten homemade organic food as a family (all of us, she rarely eats store-bought jar food and we rarely eat take-out).
left the car at home many times and walked to the post office, bank, library, and local coffee shop.
picked produce from our organic garden, ok, I picked produce and Lizzie tried to eat the grass.
but most importantly: we went outside.

It's this last one that I feel will leave the biggest impression on her. Before she was born my husband and I already spent most of our free time outside. I hope Lizzie will grow up to be the same. There are alarming data showing kids these days are actually vitamin D deficient because they spend too much time inside watching TV. How are they going to learn to appreciate nature if they only see it on television? Show them a real frog, butterfly, turtle, piping plover or beaver and watch their faces light up.

Every morning Lizzie and I walk the 100 feet to the end of the street and look for birds and frogs along the river. Then every afternoon we walk to the park and play on the swings and look for grasshoppers. If I'm lucky and there's enough time between morning nap and lunch we go for a real adventure. This morning we went to Crane's Beach, a short drive to the other side of town and one of the most beautiful stretches of sand for miles.

We picked up lots of soft shelled clams and I explained how the holes in their shells were made by the drilling, toothed tongue (radula) of the moon snail. They drill the hole, injected the clam with hydrochloric acid, and then suck the dissolved meat out through the hole. COOL HUH?! I know she probably didn't understand a word of what I said but someday she will.

And then we found a real live moon snail buried in the sand waiting for the incoming tide, its foot all tucked up into its shell as far as it will go. We touched the slimy foot and had a few giggles at the texture.Then we found a nice wet puddle left behind by the tide and put the moon snail back, only to find another one already sitting in the puddle! So we waved them around a bit, got all wet and sandy, and then let them be.

So go ahead and send your kids outside and let them get dirty. And don't be too quick to pull out the Purell every time they touch something. I neither own hand sanitizer nor allow it to be used on my child. Let her eat dirt, it's good for her immune system and will lower the chances of her having allergies. And the more they play in the dirt the less they will fear nature and the outdoors. If you freak out every time they get mud on their faces they will learn to be afraid as well. Touch shells and acorns and frogs and slugs and bark and even slimy moon snails. Your kids will grow up to love and appreciate them and they will become stewards of our beautiful world.

Visit Reduce Footprints for more Change the World Wednesday challenges.

Vote with your fork: the Michael Pollan interview

2009-09-20T18:38:00.000-07:00

A short note from me before I send you on a field trip to NPR's "Living on Earth" where they interviewed Michael Pollan this week, author of In Defense of Food, on his views of health care reform. The main point he makes is that until we, as a country, eat better we will continue to see rising medical costs.

"Michael Pollan says if we want to cut health care costs and help save the planet it's time to stop subsidizing the industrial production of junk food."

Most scary is the skyrocketing rate of type II diabetes, which is entirely preventable.

"...you've got adolescents in this country that are on average getting 15 percent of their calories today from soda. Most of the experts that have looked at the question say that if you could reduce soda consumption – and not just soda, but all sweetened beverages: ice tea, Gatorade, all those products – you would help with that problem, and you would save an awful lot of money because every case of type-II diabetes costs on average about more than about $7,000 a year to treat, to maintain. And the mystery is why don't we talk more about this as we're debating our health care system?"

So vote with your fork, as Michael Pollan urges. Take back your diet. Eat less meat, less corn and soy (subsidized by our government therefore making junk food cheaper than vegetables).

Click on the icon below to read the whole interview, it's short and very worth it! Enjoy your trip!

In search of quiet

2009-09-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I set out on the trails of Appleton Farms in neighboring Hamilton to seek out some migrating song birds and some quiet. When you have a one-year-old, the sounds of crashing books, musical toys and even squeals of delight can sometime overload your senses. I put Lizzie in the jogging stroller and went in search of the Appleton cow herd.

We did see lots of cows and learned a new word: "caa-ow" (until now cows were "dogg--oo", which I guess makes sense since they do look like large dogs). But more importantly I had an hour of quiet and sunshine.

I want you to study this photo taken on the farm as I looked up into one of its majestic old oak trees. Imagine what you might hear if it had a sound track. Now imagine what you can't hear: no cars, no farm equipment, no airplanes or church bells or sirens. No human created sound of any kind.

All I could hear was the sound of the wind in the leaves and the crickets in the grass. Even Lizzie was quiet, taking in the smells of the cows and the feel of sunshine on her little face.

Perhaps I shall walk there again today.

Late blight hits my organic tomato patch!

2009-09-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite parts of coming home from vacation is seeing the magic that happened in my garden while I was away. This homecoming, however, only gave me disappointment.

The day I left for Cape Cod started with me finding my beautiful and healthy tomato patch (to the right) stricken with late blight, the fungus that caused the famous Irish Potato Famine.

It literally happened overnight. One day the plants were beautiful and green and the next half the stems were black and the leaves were starting to wilt. I harvested the few fruits that were ripe enough, packed the car, drove to the Cape and crossed my fingers. Some farmers would spray with chemicals, but being organic I can not. It was a risky bet I chose to take to protect my family's health. And I lost.

When I returned a week later the tomato patch looked even worse. There was barely a single green leaf left.

Peering out from my back window I thought the fruits could at least be salvaged, but on closer inspection it was a total loss:

So now my tomato patch looks like this, the tangled, dead branches in a pile waiting to be carted off to the town's leaf dump. And I have only myself to blame. I've been hearing the news of the devastation for two months now and I've been very careful with my own garden quarantine. Usually I only wear my garden clogs from the front door to the tomato patch. But I slipped up a few weeks ago and lazily wore my flip flops in there to do some extra staking. That's when I must have tracked the deadly spores in.

So the fruit are in a sad pile waiting to be composted. I couldn't bear to count how many tomatoes I could have had, I'm sure it would have been at least fifty if you count the fourteen I managed to harvest before the blight hit.

From what I hear late blight has completely ruined all of Massachusetts' organic tomato crop with the exception of a few farms. Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, where we get our farm share, was spared but not without a fight. They managed to run a strict quarantine and we received a few tomatoes every week, but not the usual two to three pounds I'm used to from previous years.

I need to do some research to figure out if I should throw out the stakes I used, disinfect them, or let them over-winter outside hoping the cold kills the fungus. I hope throwing the decaying fruits in the compost pile doesn't infect the compost for next year. If anyone has any advice on this it would be much appreciated! And I promise next year to be more careful....

Great white sharks take a bite out of our surfing vacation

2009-09-13T09:13:00.001-07:00

Every summer for the last few years a great white shark has been spotted off of Chatham, MA, drawn by the growing grey seal population. The sharks have mainly stayed out around Monomy Island and haven't ventured too near the popular swimming and surfing beaches. Both my husband and I have still paddled out every September at our favorite spot in Eastham, which is at least fifteen miles from a shark sighting. Until this year. (photos are from the MA DMF website)

Almost two weeks ago at least five great whites were seen around the mouth of Chatham harbor, still fairly far from Eastham's Nauset Light Beach. My husband paddled out last Sunday and Monday and attempted to on Wednesday but it was too messy to ride. I chose to hang back. Like I said in my previous post: I'll risk one great white but not five. Personally, I think my husband was a little nuts to surf, but the reports were still saying the sharks were miles away where the big seal colony is. Until Wednesday.

That evening we drove out to Chatham again to see the seals in the harbor. The previous Friday there were a few tourists checking them out, but overall it was pretty quiet. This time there was a Channel 5 satellite truck in the parking lot and about 30 people with telephoto lenses and binoculars. They were mostly ignoring the 500 pound pinnipeds cruising within feet of them. All lenses were aimed off shore. Sharkapalooza had begun.

Apparently that afternoon at least twelve great whites were spotted in the area and, according to the Boston Globe, one of them hunted a diver who had gone in to retrieve video equipment that was used while DMF was affixing satellite tags to one of the sharks. The diver was tethered and pulled out when the shark was 100 feet away. And even more scary was the report from the spotter plane claiming a great white had come to within 100 yards of a surfer that had luckily rode a wave in and got out of the water, not even knowing the shark was there. That surfer was on a beach only a few miles from our surfing spot. The next day we left Cape Cod to return home and the shark-free northern waters near us in Gloucester, MA and Hampton, NH.

Greg Skomal, a senior biologist with the Mass Division of Marine Fisheries, did a great interview on the Today Show. It includes excellent footage of the taggings. And to read more about that amazing effort and to view even more amazing photos visit the Mass Division of Marine Fisheries website. The satellite tags will pop off in January revealing much needed data on where these guys spend their time.

Great white sharks, as well as their prey the grey seals, are protected under federal law. Therefore they can not be hunted. I have a feeling with the exploding seal population (to the left) we'll be seeing a lot more of these amazing hunters in years to come. It's important to remember that sharks have a key role in the health of the ocean. They are the wolves of the sea. Without them seal populations could spiral out of control much like deer populations in many wooded areas of the US. I like to remind myself of that every time I launch into the waves with my surfboard. But it doesn't exactly make me feel any safer....

Private Beach: no trespassing

2009-09-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

A few blocks from my mother's summer home in Dennisport, MA is an appalling number of private areas. Not only are there private roads, private neighborhoods, but there are private beaches. Come on, this isn't a beautiful stretch of undisturbed South Pacific paradise. This is the south side of Cape Cod where the beaches are only a dozen yards wide and there's a breakwater every hundred feet. Not exactly Tahiti.

We came home early from vacation last night due to the rain and a now reported TWELVE great white sharks hunting off our favorite surfing spots (a fun update on that hopefully tomorrow!). In the rush to come home I have unfortunately left the cord to my camera at the beach house so I can't download pictures for now. But trust me when I say there's one road with three signs all telling you it's private and so is their beach.

There's also one stretch of town beach that's only about 15 feet wide with chain link fence right down to the high tide line on either side. Signs of course are affixed to the fence declaring "PRIVATE - NO TRESPASSING."

I've never understood the private beach. I'd almost rather sit next to a different person every day then suffer the same potentially annoying neighbor every day. I mean, what if the person owning million dollar summer home next to yours is just plain obnoxious. If all the beaches were public then you have at least a few other people between you and your neighbor.

OK, so I don't have a million dollar summer home. I borrow my mother's far from million dollar summer cottage. And I usually don't even go to the beach at the end of her road because I'm offended by the chain link fence that runs from the sea wall right down to the high tide line keeping us riff-raff off the beach of the time-share next door.

In Massachusetts you are allowed to own a beach right down to the high tide line. Meaning that your everyday commoner can walk below the high tide line in front of your property. But don't expect to be treated kindly by the homeowner owning property you're walking in front of. My husband was doing just that once while on Nantucket and was chased away by the famous person (who shall remain unnamed) who owned the property. Technically my husband was obeying the law.

If you own property like this and allow us commoners to use it then thank you. If not then shame on you for hoarding all the beautiful views. I hope someday I can afford a stretch of private beach so I can deed it to the public. Like Mr. Crane did up in our hometown of Ipswich, MA when he left one of the east coast's most beautiful stretches of sand (to the right) to the town and the Trustees of Reservations. Thank you Mr. Crane! Now everyone can enjoy your beautiful view.

Grey seal circus and a great white shark sighting

2009-09-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

The first evening of our Cape Cod vacation we all piled in the car for the 20 minute drive east to Chatham where my mother claimed you could see dozens of seals as they followed the fishing boats back into port. I believed her since that seems like something a seal would quickly catch on to, and she was right. When we got out of the car and walked to the dock to where the Sea Dancer was unloading her catch of flounder there they were, about six large grey seals lazily circling around the back to the boat waiting for scraps to be tossed overboard.

This one was even monopolizing the drain hole at the back so he or she could lap up every last bit of fish. If you click and enlarge you can even see a scrap about to fall right into the awaiting seal's mouth:

They were incredibly unphased by the ten humans on the dock right above them. And didn't even flinch when the truck that was receiving the catch started its diesel engine and pulled away with a rumble.

Thousands of grey seals live on the sand bars that form around Monomy Island at what's referred to as the elbow of Cape Cod.

View Larger Map

If you enlarge this photo you can see a whole colony of them right off the dock where I took the other photos. They're the black lumps on the sand bar in the center of the photo, past the bow of the boat.
Seals have made such a successful rebound in the last few years that every summer, around Labor Day, there's another great white shark sighting. Yesterday five were spotted off of Chatham and many of the popular surfing beaches have been closed. Two of the sharks have been tagged with satellite tags so scientists can track their movements. I'm sure more info will be released in the next 24 hours. I will keep you posted. The last phone call I recieved from my husband today while I'm stuck at work was to tell me he was heading towards Chatham to go surfing. I, however, think I will stay off my surfboard during this vacation, I just know too much about shark behavior to feel comfortable with five prowling great whites out there. One perhaps....but not five.

Going offline

2009-09-03T02:38:00.000-07:00

Later tonight I'm heading to Cape Cod with my family for two weeks of hanging out at the beach, napping, doing a little bit of surfing, and most definitely allowing my husband to do A LOT of surfing. Unfortunately, my vacation will be interrupted by three days of work I have committed to over the Labor Day holiday and the following weekend. But it's OK, I only have twelve days of work left and then I'll be having what could be a five year long vacation. It's more important that my over-worked husband gets the time off to be with his daughter and go surfing. Both are equally important for his good mental health.

While at my mother's Cape house we borrow our neighbor, Bob's, Wi-Fi. This is a known arrangement. The only problem is Bob unplugs everything Sunday evenings when he goes back to his year-round home near Boston. I approve of this unplugging practice since his Wi-Fi router would be using energy even if no one was online. However, it means I will be without the Internet during the week.

I'm actually looking forward to this. There's something very liberating about not knowing what's going on in the world unless I turn on the radio or TV. Yes, it means I will have lots of catching up on email and blogging next Friday when Bob turns back on his router, unless I can sneak in an email break while at work. Although I have a feeling I'll leave my lap top off anyway until we're back home. This is because I get a little obsessive about watching my blog traffic tune in from around the world (because isn't it so cool to see how small the world can be?) it will be nice to be forced to give my family 100% of my attention.

And speaking of that family, the smallest member is currently destroying my kitchen so I had better log off and go tickle her. So please send storm swell vibes our way. The surf report looks flat through this weekend....but there's a new tropical storm, Erika, making waves in the Caribbean, hopefully that swell will reach us!

A resignation

2009-09-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I put in my resignation at the Aquarium. For all of those who read my post "Tools of my Aquarist trade" you might be surprised. This is a job I love and have wanted since I was about three years old. I mean, where else can you get paid to play with jellyfish? Go SCUBA diving on work time? Care for endangered shorebirds? Be a superstar to little kids as they see you swim with sharks and barracudas?

You can imagine it was one of the hardest decisions of my entire life. I have worked there for twelve years, the animals I feed I care about almost as much as my dear cat. My coworkers are my second family. When our Head Vet heard the news of my resignation he approvingly made this cartoon for me and emailed it to the entire institution. The other "creatures" are my fellow West Wing Gallery co-workers.

There are many many reasons why I am leaving my career. Each one of them I could probably deal with and manage to work through. But when you add them all up anyone would say "wait, WHY are you working?"

The biggest reason is I work Sundays and I want them back. My husband, my little girl and I have one day all together, Saturday, and that's just not enough. Then there's the issue that we want to give Lizzie a sibling, and soon. She was a preemie and my pregnancies are high risk because I have Crohn's Disease, my doctors have gently suggested that I don't work through a second pregnancy. And then there's the issue that I work for a non-profit. Basically I'd be working just to cover day care.

The obvious solution is to take some time off from my career and be a mom, which is a noble profession in itself. And, I can tell you, a day at home with Lizzie is much more exhausting than spending a day hauling gravel in and out of the bird exhibit and carrying large animals up and down the stairs.

A funny side note is what happened when I told my bosses. Before I even managed to tell them why they both immediately went into a discussion of how they can keep me on payroll as a per diem worker. Then I could come back if I changed my mind, or temp a day here and there. I am flattered, but come on, can't I just quit? I mean, look at this face, this alone should be my one and only reason:

I would much rather spend my Sundays teaching my child about the ocean world that I love so much.

They grow so fast, there will be time one day to go back to work and pick up where I left off.

A rained out farmers market, tomato hornworms and an organic garden tally

2009-08-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

Considering the east coast is supposed to get a predicted three to five inches of rain today it's not surprising that the parking lot of the farmers market is empty. So, I unfortunately can not bring you a glimpse of local Ipswich, MA produce for the Farmers Market Challenge. I can, however, put on a big batch of Farm Share Soup, bring you a few pictures of a fascinating garden pest and update everyone on what they can do with a mere 6 foot by 14 foot veggie bed.

I want to introduce you all to an adorable beastie I met in the tomato patch yesterday while doing some emergency staking in preparation for Tropical Storm Danny. This is a tomato hornworm, which is actually a bad thing to find in one's tomato patch since if they get out of control they will do a lot of damage. I do remember seeing the moth that must have laid this larvae a months ago feeding on some of my flowers. But, have no fear, I also saw a second hornworm that looked like this below:

This guy has been parasitized by the small braconid wasp so he won't live long. Those white things on the worm's body are the wasp's eggs. Neat huh? You're more likely to see the damage these guys do than the worms themselves as they are so cryptic. I've been seeing their droppings and the giant holes they make in my tomatoes for weeks now. Yet, these are the first full grown worms I've seen and they're bigger than my thumb.

Since my garden is organic I will let these worms be and let nature take her course, which she seems to be doing already. And considering my garden has seemed to have luckily escaped the late blight sweeping the state I have at least fifty tomatoes ripening. If I lose one or two to a worm it's OK.

My little Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Veggie Garden is a bit out of control. I've been harvesting like crazy. So far in the raised bed and a few small patches around the rest of my small yard I have eaten, shared or frozen the following:

35 Strawberries
42 blueberries
5 large salads
5 tomatoes
9 zucchini
1 cucumber
5 large bunches of cilantro
274 green beans (just over 3 pounds)
67 carrots
3 batches of basil pesto

So if you too have a small yard or even just a patio you can still do a lot. You just have to dream big.

Ted Kennedy: thank you from my whole family

2009-08-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy was my senator longer than I have been on this earth. Like many of my fellow Massachusetts residents I have never known a time without Ted Kennedy. One of my earliest memories is when he granted my mother an interview in the late 80s while she was the editor of a small town newspaper. The photo of that meeting hung proudly in my grandmother's entryway until she died, now it sits on my mother's desk.

Outside of my Kennedy-loving family Ted is often a man deeply disliked. Sure, he's had a colorful history. The most noted incident was leaving the scene of a drunk driving accident and letting his coworker to drown off Martha's Vineyard. But I should think that all that he has done for the "little guy" should have been his repentance.

Every single one of you have benefited from him. It's astounding when you look at the list, and this just a very very very short blip of it. A complete list is on his website:

Created the Individuals with Disabilities Act
Expanded HIV/AIDS funding and research
In 1971 he quadrupled the amount of federal funding towards cancer research, tripling the staff of many of Boston's research hospitals.
Broadened health coverage to include mental disabilities and substance abuse disorders.
Led the fight to enact COBRA which extends health benefits after the loss of coverage (I was on COBRA for two years after college)
Along with Republican Senator Orrin Hatch he set up the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) helping states provide health care to low-income children
Introduced the Affordable Health Care Act lowering prescription costs and extending Medicare to pregnant women, legal immigrants and low income children.
Championed the Head Start program, providing early education to needy children.
And probably one of the single most important pieces of legislation was the 1972 Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC). This program offers food, access to health services for low-income women, infants and children and most importantly, nutritional counseling. In 2008 8.7 million people benefited from this program meaning our children are growing up with proper nutrition giving them an important start to their little lives.

Last night 20,000 people visited the Kennedy Library in South Boston to pay their respects to his flag draped coffin. The library extended viewing hours to 2 AM to accommodate the crowds. And WBRU reported people lining up this morning before dawn.

Yesterday afternoon a motorcade with his family and coffin left Hyannisport to travel towards Boston. Six hours later I left neighboring Dennisport on my way home from my mother's Cape house. It was very moving to see the signs and flags hanging from highway overpasses stating thanks to the Senator and saying goodbye. When I neared Boston the digital MassHighway signs usually announcing accidents and backups simply flashed "Thanks Ted".

As I passed the Kennedy Library with my sleeping eleven-month-old daughter in the back I whispered "thanks". The library was lit up like usual, a blazing beacon on the waterfront, emulating the sail boats the Kennedy brothers spent so much time on. My thanks was for me and my daughter who was born five weeks early. Both of us benefited from the funding Kennedy helped pass over the decades boosting health research. I don't like to think what health care in this country would be like without him. It would be even more broken that it is right now.

Kennedy was a man who fought for the little guy. A man that didn't need to work, came from wealth and privilege yet who dedicated his life to improving the lives of Americans and making sure we never had to worry about being sick, or how we're going to feed our children. He deserves our thanks. So "thanks Ted" from my whole family, I really hope the bill that will provide health coverage, now named the Kennedy Bill, will be realized soon so you can truly rest in peace.

One thing for the planet: compost

2009-08-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to do a blog about compost and an eco-friendly backyard for some time. This week's Reduce Footprint's Wednesday Challenge finally got this out of my edit folder and into blog format. Thanks for the motivation Small!

There are many eco-friendly things going on in my small backyard. First of all is its size: the entire lot is 40 by 60 feet. My compact neighborhood fits about 15 families in the size of your average McMansion property. A small lot means a small lawn, which is a fescue and drought tolerant mix anyway. I don't water it. The brown spots in the picture below aren't from drought but because we've left items such as dive gear, surfboards, toys and gardening tools for too long on the grass.
The flowers are either drought tolerant, native or both. Sadly the garden was in full flower a week before I shot this picture from a second story window, now it's in a transition phase from day lily craziness to late summer sedums and black-eyed susans.

The Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama rocks organic vegetable garden is only watered with rain barrels that are against the house, see my April post about them for photos and how to build your own.

Then there's the clothes line and drying rack which I don't use as much as I'd like, but they do get used for cloth diapers every wash if it's sunny, the drying rack goes inside if it's rainy.

And finally, the compost pile. Can you see it? I didn't think so, look at a closer picture:

Still can't see it hidden in the back corner against my neighbor's garage? I didn't think so. So many people I know claim they don't have a compost pile because they're unsightly, or they smell, or they don't have the room, or they attract "vermin". Well, ours in none of those things. Even from a second story window you can't see it. The only bad smell is when the five gallon bucket we keep on the front porch gets too full and then we get a heat wave (yuck). We already have a few mice that live in the garage, which is OK with me, they're cute and amuse Jack the cat from his perch in our window. And we most definitely have the space, even in our tiny lot.

Compost is easy, a great way to keep trash out of landfills (once buried in a landfill your average squash will last decades) and the sewer system (food that gets down your disposal pushes sewage treatment plants to their limit) But, the best part is the homegrown garden gold you get in the spring! This spring I filled two fifteen gallon bins with compost from last year and spread it all over the garden and veggie bed. My plants are so much happier than last year when I was too pregnant to lift a shovel so I never reaped the benefits of our compost pile.

If you'd rather have a composter there are many for sale on the market, but they're not cheap. We just have a pile. It's easy to do. To start, dig a shallow hole and put your first batch of rotting organic matter in it (no meat or bones) and put a layer of soil on top. Every time you empty your bucket dig a hole into the middle of the pile, add your stuff and bury it. You can add grass clippings, weeds, whatever. Every so often my husband attacks the pile with a pitchfork and churns it up a bit. We even had garter snakes have babies in it two years ago taking advantage of the warmth! They were awfully cute and I don't consider them vermin at all.

For a much more in depth look into composting and a great how-to website visit How To Compost at compostinstructions.com. There's even info on there to start a worm bin for those city dwellers with no yard at all.

I have an evil plan to start a clandestine compost pile behind the shed at my mother's Cape house. They don't have trash pick up so we have to haul all our trash home with us. It gets kinda nasty in the hot summer. My mother is one of those people worried it will attract "vermin". She'll never know it's there! It'll be our little secret.....

Happy composting!

A farm share and kitchen garden recipe: Peruvian potato, zucchini and carrot pancakes

2009-08-20T08:02:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks' farm share from Green Meadows has yielded more purple Peruvian potatoes than I know what to do with! Considering I had so many yummy carrots from the garden, and had just picked a nice plump zucchini, I took to the grater and made veggie pancakes. Plus is was too hot to make the carrot-ginger soup I planned on. This was better!

Purple Peruvian potatoes really are purple, as you can see to the right in their grated form with the carrots and zucchini. They're great for baking and worked very well in potato pancakes.

Peruvian potato, zucchini and carrot pancakes:
-about one and a half to two pounds potatoes, grated.
-one cup grated carrots
-one grated zucchini
-one egg
-1/4 cup flour
-dash of salt and pepper

-Heat skillet on medium and add a bit of oil (I used olive, canola is fine too).
-squeeze excess liquid from grated veggies (I just do it in handfuls over the sink, but cheese cloth would work well too)
-mix veggies with flour, egg, salt and pepper
-spoon about one cup of mixture into skillet and flatten with spatula.
-cook about four minutes each side.
-serve with sour cream

Makes about six, and we ate them so fast I never got a photo of the finished product! sorry!

For extra added yumminess heat an oven to 425. With a rounded spoon make an impression in the middle of each pancake and crack an egg into the well. Bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment for about 12 minutes or until the egg is cooked.

Enjoy!

A magical carrot harvest

2009-08-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

This was the first time I've ever grown carrots. It shouldn't seem magical, but it was. I've never grown anything before that matures underground. Tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, and cucumbers all develop their fruit above ground, so I can see their progress daily.

There's really something magical about planting carrot seeds and seeing the green leafy tops emerge from the soil. Then they stay about the same for many weeks, the whole while there's me hovering, not knowing what's really going on underground. About once a week I'd pull up one just to see it's progress. And every time I did I was always shocked that this amazingly orange thing was under there the whole time, just waiting for me to yank it out of the ground.

Well, I couldn't wait anymore. After about ten teaser carrots I gave in and harvested about a third of the patch yesterday. And man were they yummy! Forty-one impossibly sweet and crunchy organic carrots each about six or seven inches long. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the ones I didn't eat right away, but I'll publish the recipe when I decide. I'm thinking carrot-ginger soup....mmmmmm, I can already taste it!

Snack taxi: my reusable snack and sandwich bag

2009-08-13T18:00:00.000-07:00

With the concern over creating trash I recently bought a reusable sandwich bag. I saw them for sale at my local farm stand, Green Meadows, where I pick up my CSA produce share. My husband and I used to wrap sandwiches in parchment paper and carry snacks in waxed paper bags, and very rarely I did use a plastic zip-lock. I'd reuse the bags or paper, but I'd rather not make trash in the first place.

Green Meadows sells a bag called a Snack-Taxi (formerly Happy Sacks). And I really liked it because they're made in the western part of Massachusetts in a small cottage industry. In the bag was a little card with the following statistic:

"Each year, an estimated 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide - that's over 1 million per minute."

Sadly, many of these plastic bags end up in the ocean and then often in the stomach of sea turtles who mistake them for jellyfish, one of their favorite foods. We get many of these injured turtles into the Aquarium's rescue and rehab department, and we do save most of them. But, I'd like to think that some day everyone will be more mindful of the bag they pack their lunch in and we can save even more sea turtles.

So for everyone who packs lunch or snacks to work or on the trail there are alternatives out there. The only problem is that I had to go out and buy another Snack Taxi since my husband kept stealing mine!

A farm share and kitchen garden recipe: Cheese ravioli with fresh chard, shallots and basil pesto

2009-08-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

When I got home from work tonight there was literally nothing obvious to cook for dinner. It's been over a week since I've been grocery shopping. But no fear! I have plenty of things growing right outside my kitchen door and sitting in the crisper drawer from this week's Green Meadows CSA farm share.

After a rummage in the back of the freezer I found a bag of cheese raviolis. I put the baby in the yard to play while I clipped the top two inches off every basil plant I have. In the back of the baking cabinet I found some walnuts, add a bit of olive oil and some fresh Parmesan cheese and voila! Fresh pesto! I made enough for two more dinners which I froze for later.

To add to the pasta I cut up all the chard I got last week from Green Meadows before it was too far gone. I sauteed it with diced garlic scapes and a shallot, also from the farm share. Toss that all together, sprinkle on some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and it was so good my husband finished his plate before I even finished a third of mine. And then he ate my leftovers.

I don't like to measure when I cook so here's about what I did in recipe form:

Cheese Ravioli with fresh chard, shallots and basil pesto:

Pesto:
-A colander of fresh basil, washed.
-a handful of walnuts
-a few tablespoons of olive oil
-a few small chunks of Parmesan cheese
Blend everything in a blender until it's minced.

Pasta:
-chard chopped into approximate 2" square pieces.
-one diced shallot
-one diced garlic scape

Saute the garlic and shallot in butter for about 5 minutes. Add the chard and cook until soft. Toss with cooked ravioli and stir in pesto. Top with fresh Parmesan. Yum! Sadly my photo is out of focus and we ate it all so I can't retake it!

Freezing herbs and a garden tally

2009-08-11T08:35:00.000-07:00

One of the many things I've learned this summer with my new 6 foot by 14 foot "Monsanto sucks, Michelle Obama rocks" organic veggie garden is that I have a super green thumb. I've always known I had a green thumb but I never realized just how green it was. OK, some of the credit must go to the new top soil, fish emulsion and copious amounts of rain that are keeping my rain barrels overflowing. But I'd like to think I deserve at least some of the credit, my dirty finger nails are proof of my labor.

As an afterthought, I sprinkled cilantro seeds along the edge of the bed just along the wood. Who knew it would have done so well that I would have to freeze some to keep up with the growth! I've seen little squares of frozen cilantro and basil for sale at Trader Joe's so I figured it would be easy to do, and it is.

Step 1: pick your cilantro (or other herb), chop into very small pieces:

Step 2: Squish into an ice tray and freeze:

Step 3: pop out of the ice tray and store any way you like:

Super easy and now I can enjoy cilantro all winter long. I did the same thing with basil a few days later. Now if only the tomatoes would ripen I can eat salsa and caprese salad.....

Garden tally so far:

blueberries: 42
strawberries: 35
salads: 3 large
zucchini: 8
cilantro: 5 large bunches
green beans: 234 (2.7 pounds)
carrots: 51
basil: more than I can count!

A field trip to Knowplastic

2009-08-09T11:27:00.000-07:00

I want to introduce you all to an excellent blog called Knowplastic written by Sunnye, a coworker of mine. She is saving all her plastic for one year in a spare bedroom in her house. I can't wait to see the outcome, and I'm happy it's not in my spare bedroom!

She just posted her Week 49-50 blog and I wanted to share some of the fun statistics she posted along with a picture of her plastic pile from last week. What really impressed me were the following stats:

-1995 was the highest year for recycling in the US (data from 1991-2006). So we are recycling LESS and not MORE. It should be the opposite.

-The ratio in pounds of plastic waste in the ocean to zooplankton is 6:1. So there's six times more pounds of plastic than animal plankton floating around. That's just scary.

-And finally Ireland charges an equivalent of US $0.15 for each plastic bag used in a store. It's reduced their plastic bag use by 90%. Another reason to remember your reusable shopping bags.

For a complete list of Sunnye's insightful, and unsettling, statistics check out her blog post at Week 40-50: Plastatistics!

World Cat Day: meet Jacques Cousteau

2009-08-08T05:13:00.001-07:00

Squirrel Queen's blog "The Road to Here" has just informed me that it is World Cat Day. So I thought I'd take a minute out of my Saturday to introduce you to Jacques "Jack" Cousteau, fittingly named after my childhood hero. Jack is one of those rare cats who you can say has a good soul. He's super smart, lovable and seems to think that my head makes a great pillow. He has a rich personality, so much that when friends come over one of the first things they often do is look for Jack.

One of the most amazing things this 12-year-old creature has done happened when I brought my newborn daughter home from the hospital ten months ago. At first he was wary. And then he accepted that mommy had a kitten and it was here to stay. Within three weeks he went over and licked her face and purred.

Now he lies down in front of her and lets himself be used as a standing platform, hitting post and tactile learning center. Often the baby stands up holding handfuls of his hair. And yet he just purrs and takes it. At night if I check on her he'll jump in her crib, sniff her as if to make sure she's OK, and then jump back out. Her first word at nine and a half months was kitty cat, although it comes out more like "itty at!"

What's amazing to me about all of this is until Lizzie came home he was so afraid of children he'd hide under the bed for hours until they left, and sometimes for hours after that. And he has a heart condition. I seriously thought the baby would be the last straw. Yet he continues to dote on Lizzie and allow her to play with him a lot more roughly that I would expect he'd take.

I am so thankful that I picked him that day at the MSPCA twelve years ago my first summer out of college. I wanted an orange male cat and he was the closest thing. I really lucked out with him. And when Jack is gone I will mourn him more than I have ever mourned another pet. I am so fortunate that my husband fell in love with him as fast as I did. Jack has some annoying habits like purring so loud in the middle of the night he wakes Brian up. And chewing on my hair while I'm sleeping, or drooling in my ear. When I first brought Jack home he spent the first month suckling on my neck all night since he wasn't completely weaned. I spent that month with a sheet wrapped around my head trying to keep him away. But I would do it again. He's a special animal and he has given me so much love and seen me through so many bad breakups. Until I met my husband a few years ago he's the only guy that ever stuck around.

So I hope you have enjoyed meeting Jack, and I hope he lives another year so Lizzie can continue to enjoy playing with him. I get unbearably sad knowing he's at the end of his life, and it's hard to see him slowing down and losing weight. I doubt I'll ever have another cat quite like Jack. He really does have a good little soul. I hope I gave him the best life a cat could have.

A revisit to the fluoride and babies issue

2009-08-05T17:43:00.000-07:00

By far the biggest hit on The Holdfast Seeker is from google searches of "fluoride for babies" or "fluoride and baby dangers" or something of the sort. I get at least four or five hits on this subject a week and today already two. I thought it's time to revisit this issue since I have dug up even more information and this is very important to me.

If you haven't already read my original post, "Fluoride and Babies Don't Mix", it provides most of the info I want to convey so I won't reiterate much. The basic gist is that silica fluoride, the highly toxic compound unfortunately added to many water supplies (including mine), is toxic. And especially toxic to babies with their tiny, developing brains.

However, sodium fluoride, the less toxic compound in toothpaste, might actually help teeth since it's topically applied. The important point is there are no data that show ingested fluoride does a damn thing for your teeth. It's that simple.

The scary stuff I just found out is that because fluoride is so toxic it's used in pesticides and rodent killers and all sorts of nasty things. According to Friends of Water fluoride doesn't break down so it accumulates over time. It has become so prevalent in our environment that the background levels are four times higher than they used to be back in the 50s when it started getting added to the water supply. An adult who drinks fluoridated water is getting far more than he or she needs just because of background levels.

Any child under two who drinks fluoridated water is therefore being even more overdosed than I previously thought. This can cause serious health effects such as cancer, lowered IQ, brain damage, kidney and thyroid problems. Many government and non-government agencies are finally listening to the research out there and are warning parents not to mix formula with fluoridated water or let their children drink fluoridated water until the age of two.

For a more complete review of these agencies and their research please read my original post and advocate for the removal or fluoride in your water supply. Your teeth don't need it. Many European countries banned the use decades ago and their dental health is in many cases better than in the US.

What can you do? If you have a small child don't give them fluoride drops if your pediatrician prescribes them or mix formula with bottled water (Poland Springs has some of the lowest levels of fluoride) and please spread the word. I'm amazed at how many doctors, dentists and parents think I'm crazy when I tell them this, and then I show them the research. Many of them have realized the dangers and continue to spread the word.

Plus, do you want medicine in your drinking water? I sure don't.

Cash for Clunkers for MORE Clunkers. WHAT?

2009-08-03T17:03:00.000-07:00

Since I first heard about the Obama administration's Cash for Clunkers program I have been questioning it. Generally, I approve of programs coming out of this White House, but this one I'm not so sure of. As soon as I heard that you can trade an 18 MPG "clunker" for a more fuel efficient 22 MPG new car and get a big rebate I said "WHAT? Are you kidding?" The energy and resources it took to make that new car would take years to make up when you're only getting four more MPG.

Finally, someone has my same thoughts. This evening on NPR I heard a great story by Christopher Joyce who seemed to be asking the same questions I had. In "Critics Say 'Clunkers' Program Isn't Very Green" Joyce lays out how un-green the program really is:

For instance:

"...if you trade in an 18 mpg clunker for a 22 mpg new car (22 miles per gallon is the minimum mileage allowed for a new car under the program), it would take five and a half years of typical driving to offset the new car's carbon footprint. With trucks, it might take eight or nine years..."

If you buy a Toyota Prius it might only take a year and a half, but most people are trading in clunkers for newer clunkers. And that's not worth the two billion MORE dollars Congress is about to approve to expand the program. I would much rather see that two billion dollars go towards expanding the public transportation system and get all clunkers, old and new, off the roads.

While in theory the Cash for Clunkers program is a great idea it doesn't go far enough. We need to make bigger changes if we're going to make a difference.

Fears of the future

2009-07-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

This weekend I enter my mid 30s. And even though I am aging, my knees hurt in the mornings and my ten-month-old wears me out so fast, I have so much to be happy about. I am really in a good place as I near the mid point of my life. I have everything I've ever wanted. Yet I can't get over the fact that I worry about my daughter's future. And I worry all the time, and it's not just how will she pay for college or how many times her little heart will get broken. It's bigger than that.

Was it a good idea to bring a little life into this world? As I rocked my daughter to sleep for her morning nap and she clung to me like a little koala bear all snuggling into my chest I started to cry. If I'm lucky I will not live long enough to see the real horrors that will result from how our species has wrecked this planet. But she probably will. I try not to think of the super storms, floods, famines, droughts and plagues that will inevitably occur. I can't stand to think of her suffering. But unless our species makes huge changes, and makes them fast, all our children will suffer.

So as part of my blog makeover I have added to my sidebar shortcuts to my easy green living tips. They are small changes in lifestyle, very small, such as unplug your wall warts (the bulky chargers like the one attached to my lap top). Simple, easy, saves a ton of electricity. Or go organic on your property, it will keep hormones from pesticides out of the environment keeping future generations of children safe.

So for all the children you know, all the children in the world, give them a safe future. Please. It's time we stop whining about how we can't do without that AC turned on high, or our SUV that gets 14 MPG that we need to buy because we just had a child, or the fact that you must spray your lawn with chemicals to kill that one dandelion. It's not worth it. There's too much at stake.

under construction

2009-07-30T16:18:00.001-07:00

hang in there followers. I'm playing with HTML.....but YES, this is still the same blog...new look :)

enjoy!

-kate

One thing for the planet: buy cereal in bags and not boxes

2009-07-28T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've been eating a brand of corn flakes for about three years now that is packaged only in a bag, there's no box. I chose this brand, Nature's Path, because it's sweetened with fruit juice and not cane sugar (cane sugar seems to set off my Crohn's Disease). The lack of a box is a bonus.

For some reason I've never read much more on the bag then the ingredient list which is pleasantly short: organic corn meal, organic grape and/or pear juice concentrate, sea salt. There's nothing I can't pronounce or that my intestines haven't evolved to digest which I really like. But there's something else interesting on the bag I noticed this morning over my daily bowl: a link to papercalculator.org, a website managed by the Environmental Defense Fund. Apparently, according to this website, Nature's Path's products without boxes have saved more than:

437 tons of paper board
1,389,323 pounds of CO2
7,464 million BTUs of energy
826,542 gallons of wastewater
248, 383 pounds of diverted solid waste

So next time you need your cereal fix look for products packaged without a box. If you don't want to shell out extra for organic there are conventional cereals out there such as generic brands of Cheerios and corn flakes that come in just a bag. Most regular grocery stores carry them, they're usually on the bottom shelf. Give them a shot and think of all the good you will be doing!

And if you work in and office that uses a lot of paper (which I don't) play around with papercalculator.org, it was pretty fun even though I didn't benefit much. Doing paper work and sitting still is low on the list of my priorities while at the aquarium...but hopefully our paper purchaser is being mindful when they place their order.

Ipswich Farmers' Market, growing mantids, and a teaser carrot

2009-07-25T17:42:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to get down to our local farmers' market. It didn't get going until two weeks ago and we've been away so this was the first week I made the three block walk to buy my local honey. Marshview Apiary from right here in Ipswich is always there and that's right where I headed. Processed cane sugar sets off my Crohn's Disease, and it tends to be hard to avoid since cane sugar is in everything. So, I've figured out how to cook and bake with honey and I'd rather get it from Eric and Irene Josephson then from the store. Here's my husband shelling out $6.75 for 16 ounces, total bargain!

We indulged in a pint of blueberries and four amazing cucumbers from the stall next door. Sadly the blueberry bushes at Green Meadows Farm where our CSA share comes from are infected with a fungus and we can't pick any this year. And my one little bush in the backyard has only yielded 25 berries so far (but twice as many as last year!)

The best part about the day was when I got home I played a bit in my Monsanto Sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden. My ten tomato plants are now well over six feet tall and are loaded with little green tomatoes. I harvested a few zucchini, and just for fun I held my breath and pulled up one of my carrots just to check their progress. I was expecting a tiny little root but look! I've never grown carrots before and now I'm wishing I had! My husband and I split it, it was delicious. Only sun, water and Neptune's Harvest fish emulsion went into it and it's was just as good if not better than anything I've tasted from the store.

Then I poked around to check on my mantids and I found one amongst the green beans. It was twice as big as last week and I'm glad it survived the three inches of rain and high winds we got Friday morning. The garden looked like a tornado went through!

I'll pull up another carrot next week, now I'm getting impatient, especially since I have about 100 growing....that yummy baby carrot was such a tease!

For more virtual farmers' markets visit the Farmers' Market Challenge at The Road to Here.

Farm share soup

2009-07-25T00:00:00.000-07:00

Squirrel Queen at The Road to Here has posted a challenge to encourage people to buy produce locally from a farmer's market or a local farm stand. The farmer's market down the street from us is regrettably small, last week they only had six stands and only two of them were selling produce. And what they had for sale was mostly what I had already picked up the previous Tuesday at Green Meadows Farm for our weekly CSA farm share, my love of which I shared with you all last month. So for SQ's Farmer's Market Challenge I'm going to focus on what I did with my farm share, and what I do with it almost every week: I make soup.

I LOVE soup. I could eat it every day, even in the summer when it's hot. The first summer my husband and I did a farm share was in 2006 and I was sadly too sick to eat all the produce. I've lived with Crohn's Disease since I was 14 ( lived, I will not say suffered, because if you suffer it's only because you let it get to you) So it's been about 19 years that I haven't been able to indulge in a bowl of popcorn, or smear crunchy peanut butter on a lap full of celery. A salad is often something I gaze at in wonder as other people with "healthy" guts shovel it in their mouths.

Generally I've been healthy for the past 19 years, I've never had surgery, I currently don't treat my illness with anything except acupuncture (the side effects of Crohn's meds are often worse than the disease). But I'm still left with the problem of getting my veggies. So I blend them.

The first time we came home with two full shopping bags of local organic produce from Green Meadows in 2006 I thought, "How on earth am I going to help Brian eat this?" I was having a relapse and had already lost 10 pounds. After experimenting we came up with this recipe for what we call Farm Share Soup. Or sometimes just Green Soup, since it usually comes out some shade of green.Basically the recipe is put in whatever you can or want. My rule is to have a variety of colors, different colors generally mean different vitamins and minerals. This week here's what I did:

-one kohlrabi
-one turnip
-one shallot
-one garlic scape (the curly thing in the photo)
-one sweet potato (not actually part of this week's share, it was purchased)
-a bunch of radishes
-two frozen blocks of spinach from previous weeks.
-a summer squash
-a box of Trader Joe's chicken broth (you can also use veggie, but I like the extra protein)
-about a half cup plain yogurt
-I usually like to add a whole fennel bulb and carrots but I didn't have any on hand.
-pinch of salt
-pinch of pepper
-pinch of coriander

Chop up all veggies and add to pot with broth and spices, boil into submission (to aid in my digestion). Then blend in a blender. Add more broth to thin if you'd desire. Add the yogurt, stir and eat! Yummy! This batch came out a pale shade of green, sometimes it's more orange, sometimes not.

The recipe changes according to the season. In the fall I add more potatoes, turnips and pumpkin. Late in the summer more squash. Sometimes I put in coconut milk since there's evidence it's beneficial for Crohn's disease (and tastes yummy!) There are no rules except trying to add lots of color and coming up with flavors you like. And the best part is I'm getting an insane amount of veggie goodness without the Crohn's-related issues and I freeze a jar from every batch so we can have farm share soup all winter too!

Bon apetite!

Favorite photo challenge: thanks for playing!

2009-07-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

When I issued my Favorite Photo Challenge a few days ago I never dreamed how much fun I would have and how much I would learn about some of my followers. The stories behind the photos posted on the following blogs are really worth a read:

DJan at D-Jan-ity: camping solo in Peru

Rae at Weather Vane : a beach pre-911

Squirrel Queen at Through Squirrel's Eyes : camp games with the whole world

AL at Caramel Macchiato : a photo illusion

Susan at Ripples of Kindness : children and wildlife

Thanks to the above fabulous bloggers for taking the challenge! -kate

Sky photo challenge: being put in my place

2009-07-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

Ripples of Kindness has posted a challenge:

"Not unlike humans, the sky is often referred to as "angry, dark, blue, cloudy, happy, clear, etc.
If you have a photo showing the sky personified, please post your link. I’d be interested in seeing what emotion you caught with your camera when you looked up at the sky."

I took this photo on Matinicus Rock, about 20 miles off the Downeast Maine coast. I was out there on this tiny island - mainly inhabited by terns, puffins and razorbills - as a volunteer for the National Audubon Society's Seabird Restoration Project, otherwise known as Project Puffin. It was my third summer doing a two-week stint observing puffins, banding them, and trying to dodge angry tern parents while moving about the island. I had witnessed lots of interesting weather phenomenons over the three summers I spent there, including the Northern Lights. However, this photo captured the coolest phenomenon I saw.

A front moved through from the west and this line of clouds in the picture came over us, according to our weather instruments, at about 70 miles an hour. It was so low to the ground I swear if I had climbed to the top of the lighthouse I would have been able to touch it. The emotion I experienced was one of being put in my place by Mother Nature. "Don't be complacent" she was telling me, "never take a peaceful sky for granted."

My pest-eating army: praying mantids hatch!

2009-07-21T01:00:00.000-07:00

I love coming home to my garden after a week away. Especially when that week away was a sunny one and the previous three were wet. That means the tomatoes had grown up to my shoulders - and I'm not a short woman.

and the zucchini leaves were bigger than my head!

The best part though was my three praying mantid egg cases hatched sometime while I was gone. I ordered these back in early June along with 4,500 ladybugs, their job was to eat the
aphids infesting my "Monsanto sucks, Michelle Obama Rocks Organic Garden". Well, the lady bugs mostly took off after a few days, but the praying mantids are still hanging out nearly a week after being released. This is one of my little mantid soldiers a few days after hatching:

I opened the jar they hatched in, placed it under the bean plants and they crawled out on their own. I bet there were at least one hundred in there!

They can jump surprisingly far and they really do hunt in that jerky style you see on the nature shows. And, the best part is, when they see prey they turn their head very slowly and deliberately then move those little saw-like arms so fast you barely even notice until you see them devouring their prey. I shall try to catch it on video.

It will be fun seeing them grow to full size. I admit though, that when harvesting my first crop of organic green beans last night in the near-darkness I was really afraid of squishing one. I seem to have evolved an attachment to these alien-like creatures in a way that I didn't with the ladybugs. Perhaps because they've stuck around and didn't take off. Perhaps because they seem to have personality (can an insect have personality?) They accepted their marching orders and really are doing their jobs.

Next spring I'll order them a month sooner!

My favorite picture: Pushkin, Russia 1993

2009-07-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Of all the pictures that you've ever taken, going way back to your first camera, what's your favorite?

I took this, my favorite, in February of 1993 as a high school senior on a class trip to a newly democratic Russia. I was in Pushkin on my way back from Catherine the Great's insanely luxurious Summer Palace (I quickly understood the 1917 peasant revolution after being told that everything that glitters is gold) when I saw this boy peering at us Americans through his window. It must have been a new experience for him to see so many Americans after not seeing many outsiders for so much of his young life.

I wonder where he is now, he must be in his late 20s and has probably moved far away from his home like so many Russian men. I wonder what it must have been like to grow up near one of the richest palaces in Europe, surprisingly still gilded in real gold after decades of Communism. I love the look on his face in the photo. It's total innocence, kindness, curiosity and pleasure at holding his cat all rolled into one expression. I think he is a beautiful child.

What's your favorite photo in your collection? It can be new, old, digital, print film, black and white or color. Doesn't matter, it just needs to be your favorite. Post yours and send me a link in my comment section and I'll link back to them all in a later post.

-kate

"A room without books is like a body without a soul" -Cicero

2009-07-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

Cicero sure was right. Even back around 70 BC when he said that. I have books in every room of my house. I try to reduce my consumption of other objects and gadgets in my life so I can splurge on my love of books. I blame my parents for my book-hoarding gene, they both have large collections. My mother practically has her own lending library, I often leave her house with an arm full of a dozen or more.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a few followers who also love the smell of a book. Think about that. The smell of a book? Next time you walk past a used book store pop in for a moment and inhale. What do you smell? I smell memories of curling up in a hammock on a fall day with Nancy Drew, my old copy of Goodnight Moon I probably chewed to death as a toddler, trudging through the Brothers Karamazov trying not to lose track of the characters... Books have one of the best scents ever.

A big part about my trying to live more mindfully is to be aware of the things that I would otherwise normally forget about. Reading a good book is more than just the words: it's the smell of the paper, the feel of the paper, the weight of it, the soft sound the page makes as I turn it, the pressure the corner of the hard binding makes in my stomach as I lie on the couch transfixed by the characters.

I don't think I will ever download a book and read it on a screen. I feel like that's somehow cheating. I don't care if I can carry one hundred novels around on my laptop when I can only cram two or three in carry-on luggage. I just don't ever want to be without the smell, feel and other sensations a book gives you while reading it.

Likewise I have similar feelings about my ipod. I miss vinyl. I am actually old enough to covet the sensation of opening up the book-like cover of a double album, hearing the creak of the cardboard, admiring the art and reading the words covering every square inch. Then slipping out its papery sleeve releasing the scent of 70s, feeling the grooves of the recording on the vinyl. Finally balancing the needle on the record as you start to hear the crackles of the empty space before the music starts.

As technology replaces books and records I will hold on to my old-time collections. And I will gladly lug around a two pound copy of Harry Potter in hardcover. The day my copies of book seven arrived on the porch with a thug (we ordered TWO copies so my husband and I could read it at the same time) I ran out and thanked the mail man. He said, "I've been carrying a lot of those around today" with grimace. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who still loves a book, and a long long one at that. Are you also sad when a good book ends? That's why I keep so many of them around. It's nice to know that I can visit the characters again whenever I want.

less stuff

2009-07-15T12:00:00.000-07:00

I heard on NPR last night that if you converted the square footage of the nation's self- storage facilities into acres they would cover the entire city of San Fransisco and the island of Manhattan. Do we really need so much stuff that it overflows out of our already large (compared to the rest of world) houses?

My husband and I generally don't buy a lot of stuff. We have two weaknesses: books and gear. We love books. We love their smell, their feel.. I'm rarely without a book in the bag I take to and from work. I'd be happy if the walls of our house were lined with books just so I could gaze at their titles.

For gear we've got rock climbing ropes and gizmos, SCUBA gear, four bikes, ten surfboards, cross country skis, a snowboard, three kayaks and a canoe. But, we actually use all this stuff. To make up for our hoarding of books and gear we only have one small TV, a fairly small house with a tiny lot, and almost all of our modest collection of baby stuff is hand-me-down. And we still have plenty of storage in our small attic.

A friend recently started bugging us about our TV. It's old, it's small, and my husband found it on someone's porch. It works fine. Our friend told us we should by a new plasma screen and mount it on the wall. I honestly don't see the point. We don't need a new TV so why should we buy one?

A lot of Americans over the past few decades buy things because they want them. Over consumption has become a disease. As a society we really need to rethink what we need and what we want. If you treat yourself to something you want on occasion, as opposed to every day, then you will appreciate your possessions so much more. Plus, if you don't buy all that stuff you don't need you'll probably have less debt, more savings, and you can spend your extra cash on traveling to new places. And memories only require storage in your brain, not in a rented 10x8 storage unit.

Reduce Footprints has posed a challenge to all its followers to go on a "no spending diet" for a week: " ... don't buy anything new (except for food, health and safety products). No new clothes ... no new shoes ... no new gizmos or gadgets ... forget about a new car, new furniture or new appliances ... nothing new for one week! "

I propose to expand that challenge and make it a daily practice. Do you really need that new 60" TV, or those shoes you'll probably wear once, or that shiny new upgrade to your one-year-old ipod or cell phone? The last time I replaced my cell phone it was because it went for a swim in my biggest jellyfish exhibit. And I recycled the old one.

pass on the left, please!

2009-07-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

One a recent drive down to Cape Cod and back I almost lost it. I don't know if I'm just getting older and less tolerant or if people truly are driving more and more like self centered maniacs. Cape Cod attracts people from all the surrounding states and you really can see the different terrible driving habits of every New England region when they come together in this melting pot of a sand dune.

I'm making some blanket statements here, and I know I'll offend someone, but these are the general bad driving habits according by New England State:

Massachusetts: my home state. People born and raised here pass on the left, on the right, in the middle... Basically they have no respect for the rules of the highway lanes. People: PASS ON THE LEFT!! It actually says this in the Massachusetts driving manual:

"• Stay to the right and only use the left lane for passing. If you are traveling on an expressway with three or more lanes in your direction, treat the far right lane as a slower-speed through lane, the middle lane as a faster through lane, and the far left lane as the passing lane."

I am sick and terrified of people in their giant SUVs tearing up on my right going 80 miles an hour. That is the SLOW lane. I've taken to parking myself in the far right lane and doing just over the speed limit to block this behavior. Not only is it unnerving to be passed in the slow lane but it's extremely dangerous. It's actually recently illegal in Kansas and hopefully will become so everywhere else soon.

Believe it or not parts of route 93 and 128 actually allow travel in the breakdown lane during rush hour. I had forgotten about this until my nightmare commute to Cape Cod last Monday evening. Instead of using the lane for a bit of extra room, people were using it to get past everyone else and they weren't nice or slow about it. So I pulled my classic maneuver and went 60 in the breakdown lane as far as it was allowed. I really pissed off a lot of people but it calmed the whole commute down.

People from Massachusetts also tailgate. And they're often nice people. Many of my friends tailgate. I think they're just clueless. Also extremely dangerous. I was taught a minimum of one car length per ten miles and hour. So if you're going 60 there should at least be six car length between your front grill and my rear bumper, NOT THREE.

Maine: People in Maine generally drive really fast. Having spent a lot of time going from place to place in Maine I can see why. Popping out to the local pizza place for take out could take you a half hour drive. I'm OK with them speeding since they're generally nice about it, don't tailgate often and rarely pass on the right.

New Hampshire: Live free or die. It actually says that on their license plates. They don't much like people telling them what to do. I don't often see a NH plate tailgating me, but they tend to plant themselves in the passing lane and stay there no matter how fast they're driving. Most of the New Hampshire plates I see are hightailing it back over the border on the way home from their Massachusetts jobs. They love to complain about us Mass-holes to the south, and yet most of them work here.

Connecticut: Drivers from Connecticut are serious weavers. They'll pass you anyway they can and get real real mad when they can't find a way around you.

Rhode Island: Also serious weavers but have no idea what a turn signal is. I think they've had them all removed. Oh, and they speed too.

Vermont: I honestly can't say most Vermonters do anything obviously wrong. On occasion one might tailgate or pass on the right, but for the most part they're nice, lawful drivers. I'd move there in a second if they had salt water.

So the moral of this post is to please be mindful while driving. Take a deep breath and say to yourself "If I weave in and out of traffic, pass in the slow lane and ride three inches off the next guy's bumper will I really get there faster?" Probably not. A few months ago my husband was tailgated out of our town by an impatient driver who then weaved dangerously in and out of traffic on 128 all the way to the same exit my husband got off at. Then the guy pulled into the same office parking lot and they actually rode the elevator up to their floor together. My husband bit his tongue the whole way up....

The tools of my Aquarist trade

2009-07-12T05:00:00.000-07:00

I made a promise to Rae at Weather Vane that I would accept her challenge to do a post about the tools of my trade after she posted a fantastic blog about her nursing tools. My trade is an unusual one. I'm a Senior Aquarist. A WHAT? An aquarist: "a person who keeps or maintains an aquarium." My aquarium is a pretty big one, we have a 200,000 gallon center tank with three sand tiger sharks bigger than me. Penguins, fur seals, jellies, shorebirds, electric eels, harbor seals, sea turtles, poison arrow frogs...you name it.

My specific job includes caring for the jellies and shorebirds. My upside down jellies tank is pictured above, the jellies are the things way in the front of the frame on the bottom. I've been working here ("here" since I'm currently on my lunch break - yes, I unfortunately work Sundays) for 12 years. I literally have the job I've wanted, where I wanted, since I could say the word "marine biologist". I grew up staring at the divers in our 200,000 gallon tank and telling my parents that "I wanna do that someday!" And I am.

Diving in that huge tank with those enormous, yet puppy-dog, sharks is not in my daily duty list. But we all have to go in there on occasion to keep our dive skills current. And yes, I swam into a shark once. I swore it looked at me and thought, "stupid human".

Today, my tasks took me through my daily check in to make sure everyone was alive, all the pumps were running and there were no fires or floods. Coming into a flood first thing after a week's vacation would really have ruined my day, yet it has happened. Then I cleaned the giant litter box that is my shorebird exhibit. Then I caught up and checked a bird's swollen foot for pododeramatitis, she seemed fine. Then I took a shower since I rolled out of bed and jumped in the car at 6:30 AM for the drive straight to work from my mother's beach house. And now I'm writing this blog and eating a tasty burrito from our cafe.

In my daily tasks I use the following tools (clicking on the picture will enlarge it):

- From the top you'll see a pair of PCV cutters, a torpedo level and a pipe wrench. Aquarists are also plumbers, and no I did not learn to plumb in college, but I'm quite good at it. How do you think we run all the pipe to and from our tanks, pumps and filters? We do it ourselves.

-In the next row is a scrub brush, a trowel, an air stone and a net. All things I use while cleaning my giant litter box of a bird exhibit. Imagine having nine cats and you'll know what it's like.
-Next to that is a scale which I use to weigh the birds, frogs, and whatever needs a weight check. And the ubiquitous Sharpie and ball point pen that always live in my pocket to label pipes, record temps, weights, feeds etc...

-To the right of the pens are two temperature measuring devices: a digital stick thermometer for water temps and a digital temp/humidity gauge for air temps and exhibit humidity, humidity is very important with birds and frogs.

-In the bottom row from the left are my Keen waterproof and covered-toe sandals. Keen gives them to us for free every year, they are a great company and we all wear them, even at home!

-Next to my Keens are a flour sifter for cleaning my mealworms supply and a cutting board for cutting up carrots for the mealworms.

-To the right of that are my keys and ID.

-Next to my keys are a tank chart and a spray bottle. These are for our African Bullfrog, where we record his temperature, humidity (hence the sprayer, ideally we want it up above 90 %), and when we change his water and offer him yummy crickets.

-Lastly is a pair of dive gloves. This is a small representation of my dive gear which I have safely stashed in my locker. I love my dive gear, I have a purple theme to it so everyone knows it's mine.

Missing from this photo is my cell phone which I always have in my pocket since we stopped using radios years ago. We kept dropping the radios in the tanks so they were taken away. I've dropped my cell phone in the water twice, it's insured. Without it I have no way to call someone when I get locked in my bird exhibit, which happens more than it should.

Now that you have a bit of an idea how I spend my day I'm going to go clean my mealworm supply. Yummy. I just ate too.....

Kreative Blogger Award

2009-07-06T05:00:00.000-07:00

In a few hours I am taking off for what will hopefully be a sun-filled and relaxing week on Cape Cod with my family. The last thing I want to do before I go is to pass off this award that was given to me by Rae at Weather Vane. Rae has turned into one of my favorite bloggy friends. She's quite prolific, churning out a thought-provoking and often tear-jerking (in a happy way) blog every morning. I look forward to her posts, they always brighten my day! This is by far the most fun award I've passed on yet!

Here are the STEPS of this Award:

(1) Thank the person who nominated you for this award.

(2) Copy the logo and place it on your blog.

(3) Link to the person who nominated you for this award.

(4) Name 7 things about yourself that people might find interesting.

(5) Nominate 7 Kreativ Bloggers.

(6) Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate.

(7) Leave a comment on each of the blogs, letting them know they have been nominated.

Please visit these seven super creative blogs if you have a moment :)

A Scarlet Shutter : Beverly Hamilton Wenham is the most creative person I know. She takes photos, she writes, she paints....I get exhausted thinking about it!

Muse in Kansas : A blog I just started following. Deborah also paints and takes amazing photos!

THE BLACKBUS.... / A solitude of Hermits : Hermit Andy posts his photo blog of the Scottish Highlands on both of his sites. I like to sort through his images when I need a moment of pause.

truepenny inc. : Ana always comes up with something crazy, thought provoking or just funny. She's been quiet (busy) so urge her to start posting again! :)

Musings from the Texas Hill Country : photos, garden stories, sunsets....Lynn's got it all.

Notes from the Field : the blog journal of filmmakers in the Kalahari shooting lions at night - with a camera, not a gun. The doodles added by Lulu Labonne make this one of my favorite blogs to visit.

CARAMEL MACCHIATO : my most recent blog friendship. AL posts beautiful pictures and amazing stories from across the world in the Philippines.

OK, so seven interesting things about me:
1) I have the job I've wanted since I was three years old (marine biologist), and at the place I grew up always wanting to work (a public aquarium). Numerous kids tell me everyday how cool my job is and yet I'd rather be home with my own kid instead.
2) I'm an accomplished salsa dancer.
3) I wish I was an accomplished surfer, but I generally fall off a lot. But what I lack in skill I make up for in enthusiasm.
4) I can't live more than ten miles from the ocean or I get claustrophobic.
5) I named my cat Jacques Cousteau (we call him Jack)
6) My grandmother once told me that traveling is the best education you can get and I try to visit as many foreign places as I can to learn how others live.
7) One of my biggest fears is flying which makes following my grandmother's advice tricky, but I do it anyway.

My Lonely Stainless Steel Water Bottle Has Friends! Go BPA-free!

2009-07-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

Until a few years ago I always drank out of a #7 polycarbonate plastic water bottle. One went everywhere with me. The first one I owned I purchased fourteen years ago before I took off to Africa for the summer. By the end of a long hot day in a baking Land Cruiser the water in that thing was at least 80 degrees. I drank it anyway. It tasted like plastic. I didn't think then about the mess that plastic-tasting water could be doing to my endocrine system.

A few years ago I read the haunting book Our Stolen Future by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peter Myers. It goes into great detail about the history of hormone disrupting chemicals, mainly PCBs, DDT and bisphenol-A, which you may have heard referred to in the news recently as BPA.

Before I even finished the book I ran out and purchased a Klean Kanteen stainless steel water bottle
(seen to the left), hopefully minimizing my exposure to BPA, the chemical used in hardened plastics and pretty much every plastic reusable water bottle (including mine) on the market. Plus it's used as a liner in metal food cans and cardboard baby formula containers. For a long time I was the only one at work who owned on. My prankster coworkers used to make fun of it, sinking it in some of our holding fish tanks and hiding it in bags of collected seaweed. One time they even hung it from a pipe on the ceiling with a cable tie. I took me three days before I could track it down even though I probably walked under it a hundred times.

Then slowly, one by one, more stainless steel water bottles appeared around the building. I decided to do an experiment a few weeks ago to see how many I could find. I grabbed a bucket and started going from office to office, lab to lab and through the volunteer lounge. On a short-staffed Monday, in only about ten minutes, I rounded up eleven besides mine. When I went to return them after the photo shoot I saw four more up in the Research lab attached to backpacks piled up and ready to go on a collection dive. I'll have to do it again on a day when the whole staff is around. I bet I could find a few dozen.

A quick walk through our gift shop later that day reveled that we no longer sell plastic water bottles, even the BPA-free ones. All the water bottles we now sell sporting our aquarium's logo are stainless steel. Hooray!

So my lonely stainless steel water bottle now has friends. It makes me glad to know that most of my coworkers are trying to watch what they put in their bodies. We can't avoid all man-made chemicals, but we can do our best. Hopefully I'll never find it attached to a pipe ten feet off the floor again.

My local Representative, Ed Markey, is trying to get a BPA ban through congress. He was recently quoted as saying:

“It is clear that BPA poses serious health risks, especially to children,” said Rep. Markey. “Chicago’s decision adds to the momentum building across the country in support of a nationwide ban. Congress should quickly ban this toxin from all food and beverage containers so that parents can feed their children without worrying about poisonous chemicals.”

The BPA industry is of course pushing back, even trying to use a pregnant woman as a spokesperson. But this recently pregnant woman isn't buying it. I'll stick with the stainless steel for me and glass baby bottles for my kid.

One thing for the planet: recycled toilet paper

2009-06-30T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've done a little comparison shopping for everyone. I decided a month ago that it was time to ditch the 2-ply, super soft, rolls-so-thick-they barely-fit-in-my-toilet-paper-dispenser toilet paper. I've been using 100% recycled paper products elsewhere in my house for years. I don't go through much since I use dishcloths more than paper towels, but I've never made the leap to toilet paper.

According to the Seventh Generation toilet paper label I read in the store:

"If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 500 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissue with 100% recycled ones, we could save 448,000 trees, 1.1 million cubic feet of landfill space (equal to 1,700 full garbage trucks), and 161 million gallons of water, which is a year's supply for 1,270 families of four!"

I bought a roll of 1-ply, it was a bit scratchy I admit. So I bought two other products available in my local store: 100% recycled "Small Steps" by Marcal and 40% recycled "Naturals" by Scott.

Here's my results:

Seventh Generation: Their 2-ply is a bit softer than the 1-ply. I like that you can buy it in individual paper-packaged 1000 sheet rolls to avoid plastic, although the 2-ply is only available 500 sheet rolls.

Marcal's Small Steps: Only found it in 1-ply which is about the same quality as Seventh Generation's 1-ply. Also available in individual paper-packaged 1000 sheet rolls.

Scott's "Naturals": Available in 2-ply 440 sheet rolls and was by far the softest, but that's the benefit to being more virgin paper and less recycled paper. They call it a "sensible blend of 40% recycled fiber". It only lasted half as long as the 1000 sheet rolls of the other brands. From what I can tell it's only available in plastic-wrapped packages.

In conclusion I've decided to stick with the Seventh Generation since they were a pioneer in the recycled and earth friendly paper product business. I like their sense of community and their idea of corporate consciousness.

The best part about this experiment is I don't even think my husband noticed I took away the soft and squishy old stuff! I call that a success! So go save some trees, some petroleum AND some water at the same time!

Lemonade stand award

2009-06-27T14:18:00.000-07:00

When life gives you lemons, make a little lemonade.

Squirrel Queen over at the Road to Here has so very kindly awarded me with The Lemonade Stand Award a few weeks ago. It has taken me some time to be able to pass it on. There are so many blogs out there that have great, sunny, positive attitudes, here are a few of them that bring a bit of sunshine into my day. Some of these blogs may already have been awarded a Lemonade Stand Award, but I don't think anyone's going to be sad to get more lemonade! Happy reading!

The basic guidelines are:
1) Put the award logo on your blog.
2) Nominate at least 10 bloggers (more or less, whatever number is good for you), that have a positive attitude.
3) Be sure to list and link your nominees within your post.
4) Let them know they have received this award by leaving a comment on their blog.

I'm passing it on to five people, I have some more award-happiness to spread around so check back soon!

The Sunflower Ranch: always something up to make you smile

Life on a Bison Farm: the latest post of their three kittens totally cheered me up on a rainy, yucky day when I was stuck at work.

My Weather Vane: Rae always has something up to make me giggle, or stop and think. Both are good. She's also the nicest person I know that I've never met :)

Gleeful: I haven't been following very long. But, the subtitle to the blog is "An almost daily diary of simple joy". That says it all.

Inside Jade: A new young blogger, writes about the trials of teenage-hood. Yet, with all the insanity a teenager goes through she stays pretty upbeat, which is amazing.

Congratulations and enjoy!

Eating locally: the CSA farm share

2009-06-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

Reduce footprints put out a challenge this week to eat locally. This actually works in nicely to a post I've been working on about our local farm share. For the fourth year in a row my husband and I have had a community sponsored agriculture (CSA) share in the delicious organic produce of Green Meadows Farm in Hamilton, MA. This was the first week's distribution which I picked up last Tuesday, believe it or not this is a "small share". It's far more than my husband and I can eat. We freeze a lot for the long winter:

Green Meadows has an interesting history in that the property was owned by General George S. Patton III of WWII fame. His son, Major General George S. Patton IV, retired to the farm in 1980 and turned this former leisure property into a blueberry farm. All the fields are named after brave soldiers who lost their lives fighting with the Major General in Vietnam.

We love our farm share for many reasons:

-it's local (five minutes down the road from our house).
-it's organic
-it supports a local business
-it makes us eat our veggies :)
-every week there's a pick-your-own offering, the past two weeks it was strawberries, check them out below! I ate most of them and only left my husband two, I couldn't help it they were SO good!

-and most importantly (my husband's favorite reason) it makes us feel good. He says he enjoys talking to the "cute farm girls" that grow our food. He did actually just say that. Although it's actually a large crew of very dedicated women and men, but we'll let him enjoy talking to the farm girls....

Green Meadows Farm also has chickens, turkeys, sheep, pigs (which they let you feed!) and a super friendly house cat that's employed to get the mice. Four years ago getting a slot for their CSA was easy. This year there were 300 people on their waiting list and they're already taking names for next spring's waiting list. I take that as an excellent sign that Americans are starting to be more mindful about what they eat.

To find a farm with CSA shares near you go to localharvest.org and enter your zipcode. I'm still stunned at how many farms offer farm shares! In a 15 mile radius of our house there are nine farms that have shares, talk about eating local!

a sunny break

2009-06-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

If you live anywhere in the northeast your weather report for the last ten days and the next two (at least) would include the terms "chance of showers", "patchy fog", "thunderstorms" and "rain". I think there's mold growing behind my ears. The rain is a good thing, neighboring towns have already posted water bans, but even this die-hard New Englander is wishing for sun. If it's raining where you are as well here's a little sunny tour of the North Shore on a day when the stars align and we have sun, good clean surf and a whole day with no commitments. My perfect day:

Head over to Gloucester and paddle out for a dawn session at Long Beach or Good Harbor before the life guards make us surfers get out of the water:

Take a hike out to Halibut Point State Park to poke around in the tidepools:

Pack a picnic lunch and drive over to Crane Beach and do some shorebird watching:

Walk along the beach to the base of Steep Hill :

Take a moment to admire the sailboats heading in and out of Plum Island Sound:

Continue the walk around the back of Cedar Point and along the marshes of the Ipswich River:

Stop at Russell Orchards on the way home to visit Big Boy (last weigh 1,100 pounds!) and eat cider donuts, yum!:

Then rinse off all that salt water in Hood's Pond before heading home at the end of a long, sunny day:

I hope the sun is out where you are, and I really hope the sun comes out where I am soon! For more sunny photos of the north shore of Massachusetts visit My beautiful piece of the world.