With the price of oil at record highs and a slumping economy, we are all looking for entertainment on the cheap! Creating a wildlife habitat will provide lots of entertainment without ever cranking up the car. We shot a video of just some of the activity in our backyard that has kept us entertained over the years. And Jason and Cari at Backyard Wild are encouraging you to get your own habitat started by offering discounts on bird seed and feeders. Mention you saw it on Smell Like Dirt and get 10% off!
Its raining in the southeast and when it does, we gets lots of hits from people looking for information on how to buy rain barrels I decided to do a short post so that the information is easy to access. If you live in the Charlotte NC metro area, there are two easy ways to order rain barrels in April. In Charlotte, order your rain barrels through Mecklenburg Soil and Water Conservation District but hurry, deadline to order is April 7. If you miss that deadline and live near Matthews, Habitat and Wildlife Keepers (HAWK) and the Town of Matthews have teamed up to sell the same rain barrels at the same price as the county. Send an email to HAWKncwf@gmail.com to order yours today, deadline April 15. And if you don’t live close enough to the Charlotte area to take advantage of these sales, contact your local county extension office and ask where you can get a rain barrel .
The annual Mecklenburg County Tree Seedling and Rain Barrel Sale is just around the corner! If you haven’t already ordered your rain barrel, make sure you do it by Monday, January 14th. And when you are there picking up your Rain Barrel on the 26th, you can pick up a lot of great bushes and trees which are native to the Piedmont area of the Carolinas. This sale is an hugely popular event and even though the doors don’t open until 9am, lines start forming around 8am. There will be dogwoods, red maples, oaks, beauty berry, long leaf pine, button bushes and more on sale for $1-$5. For a complete list and more information, click here. Doors will remain open while supplies last, or noon, whichever comes first. If you miss out on the opportunity to get a rain barrel on the 26th, there will be other opportunities throughout 2008. For a list of the schedule, click here.
We’ve all heard about the declining population of songbirds around the world, but here’s a great video by the CBC that does a wonderful job of explaining the impact of suburban sprawl, industrial farming and logging/clear cutting on our bird population. If you’re on this site, your probably already concerned about environmental issues, but I hope this video will inspire you to take your concern to the next level. Wildlife needs more advocates! If not you, then who?
We recently spent a week kayaking the Ichetucknee River in North Florida and although we’ve already posted a couple of great videos from our trip (see the Rattlesnake Rescue and Pileated Woodpeckers on the VodPod on the far right of your screen), we are posting this overview of the State Park and all of the wildlife we saw. Its a great place to see a lot of amazing wildlife and if you can’t get to Florida soon, we hope it will inspire you to visit a park near you to see wildlife in their natural habitat.
There’s a great article in the Charlotte Observer today highlighting the need to get our kids outside and exploring nature. Friends of Smell Like Dirt, Mark and Patti Weber, are featured due to their commitment to teaching an appreciation of nature and encouraging Alex and Matthew to Smell Like Dirt! (Alex and Matthew can be seen briefly in our “Mister” video – running through the sprinklers! Check it out in the VodPod listing on the far right of your screen) I’m counting on the Weber kids to lead the environmental stewardship movement when they get older. They’ve already got a healthy appreciation of all things outdoors and love animals of all kinds. They have lots of birdfeeders in their yard and Alex and Matthew can identify the birds that visit.
The Weber’s have been good friends for over 14 years and we congratulate them on doing such a great job raising conservation-minded kids. We hope that others will take their lead! If you want to get in touch with the Webers, leave a comment here for them and we’ll make sure they get it.
"In Spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." --Margaret Atwood.
I believe we are losing our relationship with nature and with it, the understanding that how we live impacts the world around us. This blog will explore ways to reconnect to nature: Gardening with native plants, creating a haven for wildlife in your backyard, tips on living green and fun ways to experience our abundant natural resources. Its time to get outside! I smell like dirt, do you?
The US government says that a huge earthquake risk lurks in the heart of the country, where a series of large shocks hit 200 years ago. Seth Stein says that kind of warning is dead wrong.
FUKUSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) - Japanese officials said on Saturday the unprecedented effort to remove spent fuel rods from one of the crippled Fukushima nuclear reactors was on track despite lingering concerns about the structure's vulnerability to another earthquake.
ATLANTA (Reuters) - Tropical Storm Beryl gained strength as it closed in on the southeastern coast on Sunday, dumping rain and whipping up heavy surf from northeastern Florida to South Carolina.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German solar power plants produced a world record 22 gigawatts of electricity per hour - equal to 20 nuclear power stations at full capacity - through the midday hours on Friday and Saturday, the head of a renewable energy think tank said.
MANZANILLO, Mexico (Reuters) - The remnants of the first hurricane of the 2012 season, Bud, dumped heavy rain along Mexico's coast early on Saturday but caused little damage before it turned back into the Pacific.
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff on Friday vetoed divisive elements of a new law that relaxes the forest cover farmers must preserve on their land, taking a stand against the agricultural lobby that pushed a more lenient version through Congress.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Frustrated by the gridlock that has stalled Congress leading into the 2012 presidential elections in November, the top Republican on the Senate Energy Committee is drafting what she hopes is a fresh look at the big-picture energy policy.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (Reuters) - The Republican-led Ohio legislature approved a bill setting rules for drilling and related activities in the state's shale gas industry, in a vote late on Thursday, responding to a series of small earthquakes in Ohio last year that experts linked to a practice called fracking.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Cleanup workers will soon attack a jumble of debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami that litters an Alaskan island, as residents in the state gear up to scour their shores for everything from buoys to building material that has floated across the Pacific.
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is placing Europe's biggest bet on biomass as an alternative to polluting oil and coal and expensive gas, but reliance on imports could challenge the plan's low-carbon credentials and Britain's energy security.
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - The captain and the navigation officer of a container ship which smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday spot were jailed on Friday for causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.
