World-Famous Scientist, LBK Experts, and a dork at the TTU Museum tomorrow!

One of these three people is speaking at the Texas Tech Museum tomorrow (10/16/2016) at 2pm: (And I am excited about it!)

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe and a couple of dorky guys

If you've never heard Dr. H speak, you could be in for a real treat tomorrow, but you have to get yourself over to the Texas Tech Museum (4th and Indiana). It's a bit ironic that Lubbock [where we work so desperately to convince ourselves that we have nothing to worry about or that there is nothing we can do about it] is home to one of the world's most respected and influential climate scientists.  

Dr. Hayhoe and her unsung colleagues at the Texas Tech Climate Sciences Center offer a clear voice of inspiration, wisdom, and hope in an area that offers lots of sound and fury but little else.

The whole event is in support of the Smithsonian/Chicago Museum of Science and Industry Green Revolution exhibit which is now on display at the museum.

All the info you need

Besides the speaker, the reason that I am excited about this event is that it is designed to offer encouragement and support to local people who want to lead greener lives. From 2:30-4 you can visit booths manned womaned peopled by local experts on a number of topics. You can meet the LP&L guy who is the Mother Teresa of LED lighting, you can meet the Tech Recycling people; you can meet our local authorities on xeriscaping, community gardening, water conservation, wind energy, solar power, and so much more. There's even going to be a dorky blogger there talking about electric vehicles and their ability to help us pollute vastly less while saving money and enjoying the ride! (He might also talk a lot about bicycles, give away a few {tiny} Teslas, and give away three self-promoting t-shirts.)

May the dorky blogger see you there and may we all find new ways to make our world a healthier place!

PS. Personal Carbon Reduction makes me so very happy!

Scrounging - the Low-Budget DIY Hardware Store

A bit of brainstorming:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Upcycle

Cheapo Mesquite Hugger who wants to improve the world WITHOUT spending any money

Materialism versus Minimalism versus way too much crap versus way too many unfinished projects

So, let's talk construction dumpsters.

Residential - drawers, 2x4's, and a few ceiling fans

 

JG's daughter and some neighborhood kids are wanting to build a clubhouse. They are all around 8-11 and they are full of ambition and ideas. These industrious kids came up with an amount of cash they need to build the clubhouse - $150. We have been discussing the clubhouse at work. It's one of those things where I realize how differently I look at the world around us. One guy said, "A hundred and fifty dollars - they're not going to build much with that." Several heads nodded agreement. I was thinking That sounds like $125 too much to me.

Guess where this one is.

That's one tall shadow! (and lots of good lumber)

Another residential - pallets and paneling

 

Commercial - lots of shelving and display racks

 

The five sites above are all on my bike ride from home to work. I did not have to go looking for them. When you start looking, you will be amazed at how many you find. People trash a lot of stuff, and a lot of it is very useful stuff. It's not rare to find doors, windows, furniture, appliances, bikes, lawnmowers. If you are into the idea of reduce, reuse, recycle, and upcycle, be watching for construction/remodeling/demolition sites. Me, I try to keep projects in mind and scout while I am out. For example, I need to build some garage shelves soon. I have had my eye out for a few solid-core doors for that project. Sunday afternoon I started building a pallet dog bed (similar to one below) for Condo, our senior greyhound. I have it all cut out, sanded, and ready for home-brewed-coffee stain. So far, I have not spent a penny. Nor have I contributed to a tree being cut down. Also, there is less crap headed to the landfill.

 

Find it here

 

 So, let's talk etiquette:

1. ASK first! We are trying to be responsible stewards - not thieves or gunshot victims. (Remember, I live in Lubbock where two men recently shot each other over a ladle.) If you cannot find anyone to ask (or they tell you no), forget about that one and move on to the next.
2. BE SUPER CAREFUL! Wear leather gloves and safety glasses. Be mindful of what type of waste you are dealing with: nails, screws, glass - these can all tear you up. Be just as mindful of other types waste that can also be harmful to your health - things like mold and medical waste. Again, it's better to walk away than to risk personal injury.
3. Leave the place nicer than you found it. Don't scatter stuff around or make a mess. Besides it being the right thing to do, it will also help to make sure that we scroungers stay welcome there.
4. Show off your new creation or brag about your $ savings - that way we can encourage others to make a dent in our overwhelming waste stream. (Please send pics to the Mesquite Hugger. I love this stuff!)

May you find joy in working toward better!

 

(To Bella and the Blondies - can't wait to see the clubhouse!)

Raised Bed Garden Ideas and a Bucket Instructable Preview

Thank God it's Saturday. It's been a busy week and there have been lots of places to be.

Today, there are lots of things to do, but not as many places to be. Ahhh...

So let's talk gardening. Last year the garden was a high point for me. A chance to learn, to experiment, to build, to enjoy, and to marvel. Hoping for more of that this year.

Last summer's attempt at a raised bed

How about you? Does digging in the dirt appeal to you? Are you like me and do not know what the heck you're doing? Do you have terrible soil? Are you concerned about drought? Do you just really want some really really local food?

If you are a beginner, a great place to start is raised bed gardening. You can start very little or go really big. You can go ready-made or DIY. You can go new or recycled. The idea is pretty simple - create a box frame, fill it with good soil, and start gardening. Okay, there's a little more to it, but not a lot. It gives you better soil control, better weed control, and better insect control.

Here are three links to get you started:

Green Living Ideas: Ready-Made Raised Bed Garden Kits for Organic Gardeners

If the Flintstones had a raised bed garden

For my wine-slurping friends

Green Living Ideas: 10 Easy Raised Bed Garden Ideas to Dream about for Spring

My personal favorite is the Food-Is-Free Project Self-Wicking Raised Bed Garden

A preview of the next MH Instructable

Speaking of self-wicking, I am jumping into my next gardening adventure, a self-wicking pickle bucket container. (For me, if it ain't recycled and doesn't require tools, instructions, and a bit of cursing, it just ain't gardening.) I am moving slowly on a greenhouse, but the buckets can move into the greenhouse if  I ever get it built.

May you enjoy the fruits and vegetables of your labor soon!

What MH SHOULD Be Writing About - Tiny Houses

Mesquite Hugger Page Views

 

The clicks say it all. Check out the number after Tiny House Posts. The page has more than double the views of any other page. People love tiny houses and visit the tiny house posts often on Mesquite Hugger. Strangely, I write very little about them. Tiny houses are very appealing to me in theory, but not very realistic. Living in less than 400 square feet sounds very do-able for a single human being and it sounds like a pretty good way to cut down on one's expenses, but there's a bit of a hole in that logic. I keep seeing different amounts of money and time frames for building a tiny house.

 

$30,000 is not rare, and very few seem to be built in less than 1 year.

 

So, let's hop over to the Lubbock Craigslist for a second:

 

$30,000 will buy you four used travel trailers

 

Tiny houses make very little sense if your first goal is to save money. If you buy a $10,000 travel trailer you can move in immediately. Save $20,000 on the initial investment and save the money from a year of spending all your time and money trying to build a tiny house. And the trailer already has a title - so there's a lot less bureaucracy in making it legal.

Does the tiny house appeal to you because of mobility? Then check out a bus or a motor home. It's all about mobility. Again, you can get into one for very little money. You can even go off grid pretty easily. Many RV's already have 12 volt DC appliances, so the transition to solar is pretty easy. Tired of supporting oil companies? Convert your diesel to run on used veggie oil. If you get tired of the scenery, start her up and head over to greener pastures.

Now, for the pieces I cannot argue against. The value of building something with your own hands and from your own designs is immeasurable, and having the ability to choose reclaimed/recycled/green materials is amazing.

 

A few questions you might want to ask yourself before you start building:

How good are you at working with your hands?

How well do you persevere on big projects?

Whose nerves and toes will you be stepping on to make this happen?

 

A tiny house can be an amazing project and a worthwhile investment if you are the right person. On the other hand, for many of us (myself definitely included) the tiny house could easily be an unfinished money pit sadly hunkering under a big tarp in the backyard of the larger house you pay for every month. Sometimes the greenest option is the thing already built, the one that allows you to spend time pursuing things that matter most to you.

 

So how about it, tiny house dreamers? Where do you want to spend your time and money? What do you want to be doing?

 

May you find your answer and may it enrich your life and the lives of those around me.

 

Petroleum-Free Transport - So, you want to build an electric bike...

Buy the swag for this image here

It is spring time. We are getting the rain (pray for more!) and the wind. The trees are budding out. The seasonal birds are arriving. It's a very nice time to be outside. What a great time it would be to have an electric bike to get you around.

My first electric bike was a revelation. It turned my commute to work into a very enjoyable time, a time for creativity and adventure. I had been freed from sitting at lights or racing to fight my way onto the loop. And I found myself taking different paths to work each day. On days when I wanted adventure, I went off-road. On days when I was in a hurry, I would take the faster and straighter roads. I would show up with a smile on my face that would last for hours. And I knew that I could do it all again at the end of the work day. All of this happened on a bike that, by most standards, was a pretty crappy electric bike. It was a 24 volt system with lead-acid batteries, poor brakes, and weak spokes. But it did not matter.

[A sidebar about being middle-aged: (skip this part if it does not apply to you)
The roughest part of being middle-aged is reaching a point where you feel like you are responsible for holding the whole world together. The generations above and below you keep looking to you for guidance and support. Your peers keep going through rough patches. You realize that your physical capabilities are slipping and your mortality becomes a very real thing. It's why we have blood pressure medicine, Prozac, and Viagra. It's why we come to think of golf as a sport. That first electric bike was for me 25 minutes per day when all of that disappeared and all the weight lifted, and I felt free.]

A few days ago, I ran across an article by Spinningmagnets, one of my favorite contributors to the Endless-Sphere electric bike forums. In the article, he outlines some of the more popular and functional kits for converting a standard bike to an electric bike. If you have any interest in owning an electric bike, this article will help you make that transition with a lot less trial and error.

Excellent article about available kits from mild to terrifying
(Now, if I can just figure out how to afford the 750W Bafang crank-drive setup...)

May you know a bit of freedom this spring!

Upcycling, er, um, Augustructables!

I am a big fan of most things "cycling". Bicycling, motorcycling, recycling, and the list would go on if I could think of some more. I really like upcycling. If you can show me how to take a discarded piece of garbage and resurrect it into something functional, beautiful, or both, you have absolutely made my day and you have started the wheels of my brain doing burnouts and donuts and wheelies.

My list of favorites:
pallet-wood furniture
shipping container houses
grain silo houses
treadmills upcycled into wind generators
plastic barrels upcycled into lots of different things (vertical wind turbines, canoes, aguaponics equipment, rain barrels, composters, beehives, etc.)
old skateboards or bicycles upcycled into anything
glass bottles as building material

And the bad list:
toilets turned into planters

If you, too, are a fan of upcycling, then check out my favorite website, Instructables.com
Instructables is a place where lots of people share their ideas for upcycling, repairing, and upgrading.

My challenge for you, dear reader, is to find an Instructables project and tackle it in the month of August. We'll call it Augustructables! When you do, please share it by posting it in the comments.

Happy upcycling!