As we get ready for the spring garden, there’s plenty to do. We need to weed, compost and ready the beds. Inside, we’ve got seedlings we’re nursing along.
Yesterday, we began casting about for containers both for the larger seedlings and for herbs we may grow outside, which reminded me that we’ve seen a lot of cool re-purposing of containers for plants.
Here an old wash basin has been appropriated. We saw this outside an antique shop in the Midwest while on vacation last summer.

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Every year the holidays bring the same debate: Is it more eco-friendly to use a live fresh-cut evergreen or a reusable faux tree?

And the answer is that the most eco-friendly yuletide solution is to decorate a potted live tree, which is planted after the holidays.
The next choice would be to buy a live Christmas tree, and have it mulched after the holidays.
Pine and fir tree mulch is commonly used in civic garden areas or even as fuel. In recent years, people have come up with a variety of creative ways to reuse even whole discarded Christmas trees, according to the National Christmas Tree Association (NCTA).

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This holiday season millions of people will be surprised by their loved ones with new smart phones, game consoles, lap tops, DVRs and televisions and a gazillion other electronic gadgets.
Americans, especially, who bought $11.4 million in electronics just over the Black Friday weekend, are hopelessly in like with their computerized convenience items, gaming equipment and ever-expanding retinue of TVs.
But with the joy of ringing in the new, comes a new responsibility to not trash the old – especially when it comes to electronics.

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General Electric has unveiled a program that – finally – makes it relatively simple to recycle your refrigerator water filter. This is news we’ve been waiting for since we went to Lowe’s a couple years ago and tried to recycle our filter canister only to have the appliance department salesman give us a withering look while pointing, pointedly, at the garbage can. Not that this was Lowe’s fault, or the sales guy’s. There was simply no mechanism in place back then to recycle or reuse water filters. The solution, as it has been with so many American products, was to trash it. And it was painful to watch all that hard plastic head to the landfill; even worse, the charcoal filter inside which was (if it had worked correctly) teeming with microorganisms and chemicals that had been filtered out of the tap water.

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As a monster tornado bore down on Tuscaloosa last week, residents of Greensburg, Kansas were preparing for a weekend of festivities commemorating their recovery from a 2007 tornado. The May 4 twister that nearly blasted Greensburg off the map was rated an EF5. It turned 95 percent of the town’s buildings to tinder and claimed 11 lives as it skidded across the western Kansas town. Rebuilding the community of 800 has become a testament to how people can plunge in to a new way of living. While some residents left after the storm, many more have worked diligently to turn that dark event into an opportunity, constructing a new village made of sturdy, energy-efficient, sustainable homes that employ the latest technology. [caption id="attachment_75275" align="alignright" width="303" caption="Greensburg GreenTown's demonstration silo home"][/caption]

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[caption id="attachment_1609" align="alignleft" width="161" caption="Paul James offers expert gardening advice on HGTV."][/caption] Water shortages are coming, though it seems not to have registered with most Americans, who will expend billions of gallons of water on their lawns this summer so they can grow non-indigenous grasses and thirsty ornamental flowers. Blessed with abundant water until lately, Americans also will continue to shower, clean, flush and eat with little thought of the water scarcity predicted to imperil far more than our lawns. But by 2013 – in just two years – some 36 states are expected to face water shortages over part or all of their territory, forcing rationing and restrictions. It's time to drink in that information, and blunt the blow by taking a variety of conservation steps, especially in the yard, where most homeowners (except in rainy regions) use more than half of the water piped to their household.

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Feng Shui experts advise people to clean or reorganize their home one room at a time, thoroughly, to create oases of calm, rather than performing a slap-dash job on the whole house, and creating a discordant environment. This is good advice: Conquer the chaos instead of leaving a residue of disarray at every turn. And we think this concept works well for adopting green living standards. Take it a room at a time and you’ll be able to carefully select the products that fit your needs and make the changes that are workable. Let’s start with the closets.

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By Barbara Kessler Green Right Now Recycling is often the first thing that comes to mind when people consider greening their lifestyle. Kicking those cans, and milk jugs and newspapers, to the curb can put a dent in the trash and save natural resources. But "reducing" and "reusing" also can have a big impact. Reducing packaging, for instance, can circumvent the need for a product altogether. And reusing can result in some elegant re-imaginings that help conserve resources by re-purposing, shifting or extending the lifespan of an item. And, of course, reusing, by definition, also reduces. That's what's so great about it; there's the joy of discovery as you breathe new life into something that would have otherwise decayed in an attic or landfill, and there's the fun of discovery and refurbishing.

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There is a growing problem of what to do with electronic waste such as old televisions, computers, radios, cellular telephones and other electronic equipment. Electronic trash, known as e-waste, is piling up faster than ever in American homes and businesses. People do not know what to do with old televisions or computers so they throw them in the trash.

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Prince Georges County in Maryland could become the next large urban region to adopt a tax on grocery bags, pushing consumers to adopt reusable totes by levying a 5 cents per bag tax on disposables. This green measure has support among people wanting to de-litter the landscape and move to more responsible use of nature resources. Still, the measure could go the way of a similar recent effort in California in which a bag ban proposed by a Santa Monica legislator failed to win approval in the state Senate.

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Just when you thought it couldn't get any meaner, it gets meaner. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose attempts to strip public workers of their collective bargaining rights has provoked massive demonstrations by angry teachers, firefighters and state employees, is now also drawing fire from environmental and clean energy advocates. In addition to his plans to squash collective bargaining rights, Walker wants to dismantle several eco-friendly programs and has already axed one, the high speed rail line that would have been funded by federal stimulus money.

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Super Bowl XLV, being played in the nearly new ginormous 80,000-seat Cowboys Stadium, which expands to a capacity of 110,000 counting standing-room spots, will be the biggest ever in terms of on-site audience. This mega event -- counting the Feb. 6 game and official hotel and related activities -- will suck up enough energy to power 1,500 homes for a year, according to Just Energy. The Toronto-based energy retailer is helping the National Football League buy green power to offset the energy that will be expended on all the hoopla and bright lights. The NFL, which has a long history of making Super Bowls successively greener, bought offsets for last year’s match up, too. But this year’s offset purchase has grown to cover the expanding size of the event and more venues for a longer period of time, making this not just the Uber-of-All Super Bowls in terms of on-site audience, but “the greenest ever" as well, according to Just Energy.

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