I rarely make New Year's Resolutions. I'm much more inclined to Visualize Change, than to will change, but I feel so much new energy in the air as we launch ourselves into 2008 that this year I did make at least one resolution. Inspired by Amy Stewart's book, The Earth Moved, all about worms, I have resolved to begin worm composting. This will be an excellent way of eliminating a trudge through the snow to the compost pile,…

This year we put LED lights (light emitting diode) on our Christmas tree. The bulbs are not as large as the bulbs I remember from my youth, nor as tiny as the fairy lights that have been so popular in recent years. What makes them unique and desirable is the fact that they use only a quarter of the electricity of incandescent bulbs. We noticed that the quality of light is different. LEDs are not as bright as…

There was so much response to the posting about rain barrels in Garden Rant that I want to pass on a link to Rebecca Chesin at her website with lots of information about making a rain barrel, and information from various dependable sources about the safety of water that has washed off the roof. I never thought that asphalt shingles or that the chemicals used in wooden shingles to make them rot-proof or moss resistent might make the…

Susan Harris at Garden Rant recently wrote about the new interest in rain barrels. I personally haven't thought a lot about rain barrels since we visited our daughter Betsy who was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya in 1989. She was working on a gravity fed line from a spring to a newly built water storage tank. This would mean that women (and note that I am talking about women and children) would not have to…