Mother Earth - Karen's Perspective

Free Energy Audit for your home

Did you know you can get a free energy audit for your home? Have you had yours yet?

I had mine today. Fabulous experience and.. free gifts!

Duke Energy will come to your home and do a FREE energy audit. Just call Duke Energy to schedule your appointment. I had to wait almost 3 months for mine but it’s no big deal to wait, right?

My audit took less than an hour. The inspector started by sitting at his laptop where my account was already pulled up. He knew my energy usage history. Then he asked questions about our energy needs and habits such as how many people live in the home, what temperature we keep the thermostat in the winter (68*) and what temperature in the summer (74*), do we wash in cold, warm or hot water. (cold)

Then he made a tour of the property beginning in the attic crawl space where he looked at insulation and duct work. He checked the hot water heater for age and efficiency, checked windows, fireplace openings, heat ducts, vents and insulation in the attic as well as under the house. He checked the heating unit for age and efficiency.

02 / 02 / 2010
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What to do With Your Christmas Tree after the Holidays

Christmas Tree

1.) Make a feeder for birds and squirrels!

First, remove all ornaments and lights. Take the bare tree and move it out to your yard still in the stand. String it with popcorn and cranberries, sprinkle with birdseed or hang bird feeders from the boughs. Smear pine cones with peanut butter, hang apple rings or orange halves. Hang hollowed-out orange halves in the tree and fill them with nuts.

Enjoy the show as the birds feast on your gift to nature! Not only will the tree provide food for wildlife during the cold winter days, but it can also be a place for them to hide from cold winds.

2.) Mulch the tree for your garden. It can then be used in the landscape as a cover around trees, shrubs, and flowers. This helps insulate the soil, conserve soil moisture, and retard weed growth. It also helps return nutrients to the soil as it breaks down. Pine needles are great for ground covering and mulch.

12 / 24 / 2009
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Turning Wine to Water

I voted for Doc Hendley for CNN’s top hero. He is a local boy, graduating in 1997 from Ragsdale High School here in North Carolina, and he’s truly making a difference in the world.

Doc is working to bring clean drinking water to more than 26,000 people in countries like Cambodia and Sudan and Peru. He’s built wells in 6 countries already and started the non-profit group Wine to Water.

This group builds wells and trains people to build and fix wells and to install special bio-filters that can clean water.

The winner of the CNN contest receives $100,000 for his or her program. You can vote as many times as you like. The winner will be announced Thanksgiving night.

My passion is clean water for the world. What’s yours? What are you doing about it? Click on the link above and check out the extraordinary people CNN has found, everyday people like you and me, doing things that really matter. Vote for your favorite and do something today to make a difference in your world.

10 / 21 / 2009
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World Statistics in Real Time

This is absolutely amazing. Check out these up-to-the-minute statistics. World-O-Meter

10 / 12 / 2009
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1 in 6 People Don’t Have Access to Clean Drinking Water

How can you help?

Check out Charity Water.

10 / 07 / 2009
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Plastic Bottles Banned in North Carolina

Really? That actually might be a good thing but, no, not quite. Plastic bottles are however, as of October 1, 2009, banned from landfills in the state.

What’s being banned? All rigid plastic containers. This includes any bottles with a neck smaller than the container itself.

The goal of the ban is to keep our 288 million pounds per year of soda containers, milk jugs and detergent bottles out of the landfills and into recycle centers. Another goal? The creation of jobs. We already have companies that recycle plastics such as Envision Plastics & Plastic Revolutions here in Reidsville.

09 / 16 / 2009
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Mother Earth

Green tips – Water Conservation

photo from Randy son of Robert

About 75% of the earth is covered by water but less than 1% is available for us to use. The rest is mostly salt water.

Nationwide, our water resources and supplies are stressed, to put it mildly. Between 1950 and 2000, the U.S. population nearly doubled. In that same period, public demand for water more than tripled! Each American now uses an average of 100 gallons of water each day.

09 / 04 / 2009
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Build a House for $8.33 per square foot

“You can build your own cob house with little money, but with lots of time and enthusiasm,” according to Kent at Tiny House Blog. This is Ziggy’s cob (a mixture of straw, clay, and sand similar to adobe) with a footprint of 360 square feet built for under three thousand bucks. (Yes, that is $ 8.33 per square foot.)

Here’s what you need:

* sand (just over 30 tons total) – $507
* gravel (about 13 tons total) – $177
* straw (16 bales) – $36 (most straw I used was free)
* black walnut scrap lumber – $100
* misc. lumber – $20
* windows – $220 (two casement, one double hung window)
* electrical – $28
* galvanized wire – $30
* nails – $100 (I couldn’t believe how expensive nails are)
* raw linseed oil (for floor) – $72
* EPDM pond liner $622
* polycarbonate for skylight $400

Oh, yeah, and 9 months of full-time labor!

Read more about it at The Year of Mud: Building a Cobb House.

09 / 02 / 2009
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No More Plastic Bags for Mexico City, San Francisco, Tanzania…

Hooray! I saw on CNN that Mexico City went green Wednesday, August 19, as amended ordinances now outlaw businesses from giving out thin plastic bags that are not biodegradable.

I’ve written about the horrors of plastic bags twice now, first in my blog post No More Plastic Bags! and again in the post Once Again… Paper or Plastic? Reusable. If you do nothing else for the planet, please stop using plastic bags!

San Francisco enacted an ordinance in March 2007 to phase out the bags. Los Angeles is set to impose a ban if the state of California does not impose a statewide 25-cent fee per bag by July of next year.

08 / 21 / 2009
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Mother Earth

Green Walls by Nature!

Green roofs have beautifully proven themselves to be a resource against global warming. There is one problem with the green roof in all its beauty and function… very few people can see it!

Green walls, however, allow us to raise living plants in a whole new way while providing some physical advantages. For one thing, what a wonderful position as a gardener to work standing up!

For the most part, the needs of the plants will be the same as if they were planted in any horizontal plane. More good news, weed seeds have a harder time rooting on a vertical plane.

Check out these green walls! Once again, they challenge us to think outside our own box. I love that!

Starbucks makes a lot of efforts to be “Green”. They are considered one of the most socially and environmentally responsible companies in the world. Now, at many stores, they’re sprucing up their drive-throughs with green features.

Green walls can be used indoors.

Green walls are found most often in urban environments where the plants reduce overall building temperatures which helps reduce energy consumption. Living walls are especially suitable for crowded cities as they allow good use of available vertical surface areas.

How about this amazing building by Korean architect Minsuk Cho! It is the Ann Demeulemeester Shop in the Gangham district of Seoul.

I hope these photos have inspired you like they have me! Another wonderful way to grow gardens! I, for sure, am going to try one.

Imagine raising an edible crop wall. For starters, I think I’ll try growing wheat grass. My husband loves energy shots of wheat grass from Jamba Juice. Wheat grass shots are pretty expensive so now I can try to grow my own. I’ve heard they’re pretty easy; don’t know about on the wall!