Water your Trees with Greywater

...plants and soil you are irrigating before deciding whether these should be used or not. Ecos: Contains sodium coco sulfate Vaska: Has a D+ rating on the Environmental Working Group’s product safety database. Lifetree: Has a pH level of 7 Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap: Fine for greywater use in general, but it simply is not a laundry detergent–it’s castile soap. You can wash your clothes with it, but the results won’t be spectacular. The bottom line is...

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By Hand and Eye

...the hands on use of dividers, compasses, battens and the forgotten sector (used to divide an object into equal parts). It’s not a catalog of magical formulas, but rather an introduction into a way of thinking about design that provides guidance from thousands of years of shared human experience. While written specifically from the perspective of cabinetry and furniture design, I think everyone should read this book. But there’s a downside. Once yo...

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Whacked the President with a Single Stick

...nterruption and have a bout at single-stick. This ancient English exercise used to have as its point the drawing of blood. Neither the ex-Colonel nor the ex-Lieutenant Colonel of the Rough Riders has aimed a making this point, but both havve confined themselves to developing their skill with the weapon and getting as much exercise and fun out of the game as possible. Notwithstanding this, it is impossible to play with single-sticks without occasio...

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I Ate 100 Power Bars

...tter and coconut filled coffee and flavored beef jerky. Bicycles are being used as a symbol of hipness in convention booth displays. “Regenerative agriculture” has been appropriated as the latest buzz-phrase by large food companies. Every natural food product is labeled either “pro-biotic” or “pre-biotic.” If one could distill all those booths down to one item you’d end up with a pro-biotic turmeric, kimchi, kombucha, paleo sports bar grown “regen...

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Win Two Tickets to the 15th Annual Theodore Payne Native Plant Garden Tour

...enter your email in the comment form (your email will not be published nor used for anything else other than contacting you to send the tickets). We’ll choose a lucky winner at random and the contest will close on Friday March 23rd at 5pm. California native plants are beautiful and sustain our wildlife companions. They also help you reduce your water consumption in a climate that is rapidly changing. In addition to the use of plants, the Theodore...

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