Bottle Trees from Australia

An alert reader in Australia let me know about living bottle trees, Brachychiton Rupestris, that grow native in Australia.  These were news to me.  After reading the site, I am amazed at this resilient and beautiful plant.  Here is a link to check these out.

Bottle Tree Plantation

One thing I thought was especially interesting was the leaves of this tree develop in five different stages.  They have a picture of all the leaf stages.  This plant will never be boring, with such interesting leaves and that unique trunk shape, it could be the centerpiece of any landscape.

I emailed the owner of Bottle Tree Plantation and it turns out, I cannot have a tree shipped to me.    BUT, I can buy seeds.   So, if the seeds grow and I get some trees established, I could plant a few in my yard.  When they get big enough, I could hang bottles from the limbs.  I would have a bottle bottle tree!

Turn Off the Hot Water Heater

For the past year, I have been working to reduce my energy usage to reduce my carbon footprint and to lower my electric bill. My most recent saving measure has been to turn off my hot water heater during the day. According to my electric company, running a hot water heater can be as much as 20 percent of a typical electric bill. I started turning it off last month, and I received my bill this weekend. My usage went down 5 Kwh per day and my bill dropped overall 13 dollars from last month to this. The most telling number however is the one that shows my usage this year compared to last year. Last year in the same time period I used 36 Kwh a day and this year I used 21 Kwh per day! That’s a drop of 15 Kwh a day.

I’m thrilled about the drop because my electric company is warning of cost increases next month. I think I will be able to weather this increase because I am working so hard to minimize my usage.

Now, on to other, also fun news. ilexwhite is the winner of the outlet and light switch gaskets! Congratulations! ilexwhite if you will email me your address to katiebouch at gmail dot com, I will get those right out to you. Thank you to everyone who left comments thus entering my first giveaway. I had a lot of fun with this and as soon as I have something else new to giveaway, I’ll have another drawing.

Bottle Trees

If you are not from the south, you may not know what a bottle tree is.  So, a bottle tree is a pole (the trunk) with many branches that you put bottles onto. Today’s bottle trees are made of wood or metal.  Bottle trees used to be all over in the south, but almost disappeared for a while.  Lately though, they are making a resurgence in Southern yards.

I first learned about bottle trees from Felder Rushing.  He has bottle trees in his yard and arbor.

Felder’s Blue Bottle Tree

Felder’s Green Bottle Tree

Felder’s Arbor Bottle Tree

Historically, bottle trees were an African custom where bottles were hung in trees to trap evil spirits.  Sunlight would shine through the bottle, the spirit would see it and fly in the bottle to investigate.  Once in though, it could not get out.  Bottle trees are no longer used to trap evil spirits, now they are just used to beautify the yard, or annoy the neighbors.

I had a bottle tree made for me by a friends dad from a young cypress tree.  It was great, with many branches.  Unfortunately, the trunk was too short and when the tree was fully loaded with bottles, the tree would fall over from the weight.  I have plans to put up a new bottle tree soon though.

While I will probably make mine, there are places you can buy a ready made bottle tree, and the bottles too in need them, or want all matching colors or shapes.  The Bottle Tree is a local company in Sunflower MS.  The offer trees, and bottles.  Another local company is The Bottle Tree Man.  I LOVE his baby bottle bush which is just a scant 12″ high and will fit inside on the mantel or outside on your porch railing.  It is so cute.

The advantages of putting a bottle tree in your yard are many.  You can totally personalize the look.  Some trees use only one color of bottle, some mix it up.  They never wither, fade, or die.  They never need watering.  The are a handy place to store bottles outside the house (freeing up storage space) until you need them.   Changing the look of a bottle tree takes minutes whereas changing the look of a garden can take hours.  The sound of rain on a bottle tree is very relaxing.  They take up very little space while adding a great vertical element to your landscape.

Do you have a bottle tree?  If not, would you consider putting one in your yard?

More Music, Less Waste

Listening to my Pandora radio at work, it occurred to me how as a consumer, there are so many more green options for listening to music now than compared to when I was a child and teenager.

When I was a little girl, I had a portable record player that played my kiddy 45s. The one pictured is very close to the one I had.  It would be neat to see if it would still play records, if I still had it.  I’m sure mom tossed it years ago. 

When I hit 10 or 11, I got my first cassette tape player. As a college student, I listened to CD’s but if I wanted to give a friend a copy, we recorded it to a cassette. There were no cheap CD burning options. I don’t remember if there was even talk of a way to burn our own CD’s at that time.  I’m thinking not.

Now, I listen to my customized Pandora radio station. I plug up my ipod at home so I can hear my playlist while I cook supper. In the car, I can listen to XM radio, set to the stations I love the most. What all these options have in common is I am free from buying a whole album just to get the few songs I want. More, I am free from buying albums at all.

Technology has changed swiftly and one of the biggest changes is that my music collection grows everyday but I don’t have to have more storage space to accommodate it. I have never filled up a hard drive holding the music I listen too. I listen to new artists and old favorites but I cannot tell you the last time I bought a CD. Strictly from an environmental perspective, it seems to me this is an area where technology really serves people. There are many options to listen to, carry, and enjoy music without filling your home with records, tapes, or CD’s. Less stuff, less clutter, and less virgin plastic being created is a win in my book.

What’s your experience?

Airflow Breeze

Allie over at Allie’s Answers is having a giveaway of an Airflow Breeze.  This looked like a really interesting product and I thought I would share news of it with all of you.

The way it works is it takes the place of one of your current vents or registers that are part of your central air and heat.  You install it, plug it in, and then set the temp.  If your room is too cool or hot, the Airflow turns on and pulls air from your duct.  The purpose is to make that room that is always too hot or cold more evenly match the rest of your house.

While I am not in the market for any new items, I ‘put my name in the hat’ to try to win the one Allie is giving away.  If I win, I know exactly what room I would put it in.  My living room is always too cool in the winter and if there was something pulling more warm air from the duct and blowing it into the living room, that would be amazing.

Go check out Allie’s blog about it and post a comment.  Maybe you will win it and then you can tell me (and her) how well it works for you.

Make Your Own Dish Washing Soap

Last week I was on the road with my job. I stayed in a hotel where they give you a new bar of soap every day. I put all but one of the bars in my guest bathroom so that when I have company, they will have their very own soap to use. Since I make my friends use line dried towels, the least I can do is pamper them in what soap they have available. I used the last bar to make my own dish washing soap. I got the idea from reading about how to make your own laundry detergent. The main step in that is grating a bar of soap.

So, I thought I could make this work for dish soap. I grated the bar with my cheese grater. Now, I apologize for not having pictures of this fascinating process. Until I get a new camera, you will have to use your imagination. I know you can do it.

After I grated the small, thin bar of soap, I put the pieces and two cups of water in a pot. I heated the water enough to melt the soap, but not boil it. I stirred while it was melting, but I think that was just for my benefit. It would have melted either way. Once the soap was completely dissolved, I turned off the heat and let it cool. Then, using a funnel, I poured my new soap into my soap dispenser.

It was that easy.

I have washed dishes with it twice now and I have to say, I love it. My dishes are squeaky clean, no grease, no soap residue, and everything just shines. This was by far one of the easiest projects I have done.

I highly recommend trying this one. I used a small bar of soap I got free from the hotel, but you could do this with soap you already have on hand. If you have a regular sized bar of say, ivory soap, you could grate one third of the bar to two cups of water.

If you try this project, will you let me know in comments? I would love to hear how it works out for you.

Energy Saving Kit and Giveaway

This Saturday, I received an energy kit from my local electric company. Several weeks ago, I filled out an online energy survey and filled in my address so I could get the kit. The kit included two CFL bulbs, two faucet aerators, outlet and light switch gaskets, a filter whistle, a hot water temperature card, and an energy use thermometer gauge.

The filter whistle was the only item I had never heard of. You place it on your central air unit filter and when the filter is 80 percent clogged, the whistle will sound, to let you know it is time to replace the filter. Before, I just changed the filter once a month. I am looking forward to using the whistle because now I will be able to see if I can go longer between filter changes.

I put the aerators on my kitchen faucet and my bathroom faucet because these are used most often. I found out my kitchen faucet is cracked, so I will have to replace that soon. I’ll tell you all about how that goes in another post. Since using the aerators, I can tell the water is coming out slower, but it still comes out fast enough to fill my coffee pot.

All my light sockets already have CFL bulbs so now I just have two extras for when one of my current bulbs burns out.

I tested my hot water and while I thought it was set above 120 degrees, apparently it is set at exactly 120. So, that was a nice surprise to discover.

The energy use thermometer gauge tells you what your current indoor temp is and where you should set your AC or heating for energy savings. I already set my AC at 80 so I am definitely in the saving money camp. When the cold comes, it recommends setting your heat at 68. I am a very cold natured person, so not sure if I will be able to go that low, but I’m going to try.

As for the light switch and outlet gaskets, I cannot use them. My light switches are the wide rocker kind instead of the narrow flip kind. My outlets are odd, I guess all mobile homes have these, and they are definitely different from a traditional house. When I unscrewed the plate and looked at it, I realized the gasket just won’t work. The advantage for you is that now I have six of each to give away. Leave a comment by midnight Friday, September 26^th and I will enter you in a drawing for these. Good luck!

Low Impact Living

I’m always on the lookout for great resources for green living and energy saving  tips.  Today I checked out lowimpactliving.com and it’s a really great site.

I think what I like best is their calculator to figure your impact.  I’ve seen quizzes like this before, but this one is more in depth than many I have taken before and when the quiz is over, they offer projects you can do to lower your score(impact) even more.

It looks at your geographic location and the kind of home you live in and your baseline is set there.  Then based on your habits, you can discover if you are low, normal, or high impact. For example, I live in a mobile home, but I only cool half of it.  I have energy star appliances, I have all CFL bulbs, and I never water my lawn. So, I scored low impact. Starting with a base of 100, I scored 31.  If I plant some shade trees, wrap my hot water heater, as well as the hot water heater pipes and make a few other changes, I can get it even lower.

This is a large site that offers a blog, environmental products, resources and information.  I think they are well worth checking out.

Biodiesel in Mississippi

Biodiesel fuels continue to grow in popularity and usefulness.  Biodiesel is fuel made from new and used vegetable oils. Corn, rice hulls, and soybeans can be grown for biodiesel. Old cooking oil can be recycled into biodiesel.  The side effect is then a vehicle’s exhaust smells like whatever was cooked in the grease. Instead of exhaust fumes, a truck or mower leaves behind the tasty smell of french fries.

Recently, the University of Mississippi started using biodiesel in one of their industrial lawnmowers.  Because of the success, two weeks ago they switched to using the fuel in all their mowers.  They get 45 minutes longer cutting time, the emissions are cleaner, their engines are running cleaner, and they expect to get a measurable increase in engine life.

Here’s a video of one of the mowers.

Mississippi State University used biodiesel in a modified Chevrolet Equinox during the Challenge X. Challenge X is a multi-year challenge to modify an Equinox to get more miles per gallon while not giving up any comfort or performance. MSU won the contest, managing to squeeze the most efficiency from the fuel without losing any performance from the vehicle.

One problem with using biofuel is if you make the switch, then where do you go to get more?  Meridain MS is working to solve that problem with a filling station that offeres biodiesel.

Is biodiesel the answer to the oil problem?  I don’t think it is the whole answer, I think it is part of the answer.  I think products that lesson our use of, and dependance on oil is a good thing.

Gleaning

According to wikipedia, gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.  I have read about different gleaning programs and think they are a great idea.

Mississippi State University agrees and recently, their freshman volunteer group, Service Dawgs participated in a gleaning event harvesting watermelons that went to area food pantries.  There are gleaning events all over and as summer comes to a close, more and more farms are letting their leftover produce be harvested by individuals or volunteer groups.

Gleaning can apply to more than fresh food out in a field.  It can come from grocery stores, wholesalers, retail outlets, or even restaurants.  Food that is gathered to be used and saved from the waste stream can come under the heading of gleaned food.   The Slow Food movement has a great article giving more information on all the places it can be gathered, and how to go about getting it.

I think on a personal level, thinking about gleaning makes me think of my own food waste, and how can I reduce it. I already try to make the most of my leftovers, I freeze portions to eat later, and I buy small amounts appropriate to cooking for one person. But I think the best step I do is that I compost what I cannot eat, what spoils before I can eat it, or what is inedible (rinds, pits, seeds).  All my vegetable and fruit scraps are composted to be eventually reused as food for new plants.  What little meat waste I have, I share with my dog.  (No, not the chicken bones, those do go into the garbage.)

I like that more and more people are looking at the abundance of food in this country and are working to make sure everyone gets a share of the bounty.  I think our grandparents and great-grandparents would be proud of this move back to thrift, to making use of every little bit.  I’m happy to make that move and glad to be part of the change.