October is Fire Safety Month

Recently, my husband tried to install a new lighting fixture in our living room.  The old one didn't work properly - the light bulbs kept exploding.  I thought this was odd, but we simply stopped using it and I didn't think too much about it.  That is, until Itinerant Cryptographer took the fixture away and water poured out.  Yikes!

October is Fire Safety Month in the United States, a perfect time to inspect the wiring in your home to make sure that you don't have any problems like mine.  Along with our dangerously defective lighting fixture, my husband discovered that one of our kitchen outlets was not up to code.  It was missing the ground wire, so he installed a ground fault interrupter on the outlet to prevent the possibility of electrical shock.

In the U.S., October 7 - 13, 2012 is Fire Prevention Week.  This year's theme is Have 2 Ways Out, to encourage families to practice how to safely escape during a fire and to plan an alternate route in case your primary means of escape is blocked by fire or smoke.  Start your escape plan now with these tips from the National Fire Protection Association and be sure to download a Fire Safety Checklist.  Sparky the Fire Dog®

even has his own webpage, where you can send e-cards, learn All About Fire Trucks, play games about fire safety, and more!

Outdoors & Oceans in October Contest

Dhana, an environmentally-friendly clothing line, is hosting a fall contest for kids ages 5 to 12. To enter, kids create artwork celebrating the theme of "Outdoors and Oceans in October"; parents post a photo of their child's art to Dhana's Facebook page. Contest entries should be created using pastels, oil, water color, crayons or mixed media (which includes just about everything other art supply that you can think of!).

The deadline for entries was just extended to Monday, October 17th, so you know what that means -- your odds are good for winning a prize! You could win a T-shirt from Dhana, a bag of treats & toys from my friends at Green Halloween®, or a mystery prize.

Good luck!

Where we live, October always includes a visit to a local farm.

Adventures in Local Eating: The Pumpkin Edition

When my friend Lazy Locavore first talked with me about her food choices, I thought that I had misheard her.

"You're a loco-vore?" I asked. "A crazy-eater?"

"No," she said with a laugh. "I'm a locavore. I eat locally-grown foods."

I didn't think much about this until she handed me a pound of locally-raised ground beef.

"Try this," she said.

I put the meat in my refrigerator. Again, I didn't think much about it until I took the meat out and actually looked at it. This was Meat with a capital M. It smelled fresh, it looked fresh, and it was very moist, almost bloody. I could practically visualize the cow, which initially set me back a bit. But my husband and I persisted and soon we had tasty hamburgers for dinner.

"Huh," I thought. "Maybe there is something to this locally-grown food stuff."

A couple of weeks later, I was standing in a farmer's market, looking for ripe apples. Taking a sniff of the rich and lovely scent of fresh produce, I realized something. I miss the smell of food. So many things you pick up in the grocery store these days are almost devoid of smell.

But what really got to me were pumpkins. This year, my boys went on several hay rides and soon we had a porch full of pumpkins. Lazy Locavore persuaded me to cook one.

"It's not hard," she insisted. "I can do it and I'm lazy about my food."

Several of our pumpkins were true carving pumpkins, hollow inside with a slightly off smell and few seeds. I was glad that Lazy Locavore had taught me to look for a small, solid pumpkin when baking. When I found one that literally bent the knife as I tried to cut into it, I knew I had a keeper. It looked something like this (sans the face):


Now, several days later, my pumpkin looks like this:


And here's what I learned: Pumpkins are food! I had been completely ignoring the fact that people actually eat them. I just saw them as ornamental.

The most important thing that the locavore movement has taught me so far: when we no longer relate to fresh foodstuffs as food, something needs to change.


Photo credits: Mama Joules

My ornamental corn has sprouted!

Recently, I purchased some ornamental corn and put it in my front yard. I figured that I would celebrate the fall season and maybe feed some neighborhood squirrels in the process. I wasn't expecting this!

My ornamental corn has sprouted! All of the little kernels are trying to make baby corn plants. Now I'm not sure what to do with my corn. I hate to throw out anything that is growing, but I wasn't really planning to raise corn. Maybe I'll toss the cobs out into the woods behind my house to give the seedlings a fighting chance. Given that winter is coming, though, I'm not sure how well they will do. We'll see ...


Photo credit: Mama Joules

It's time for a Green Halloween®

[Note: The following article, in slightly different form, first appeared at Natural Family Online in 2007. At that time, I was fortunate enough to interview Corey Colwell-Lipson as she began her adventure with Green Halloween®. Today, Celebrate Green! has nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter. Corey and her mom Lynn have been interviewed by such journalistic heavyweights as U.S. News and World Report, National Public Radio, and ABC News, along with many other media outlets. I remain awed and impressed with Corey and Lynn's perseverance and tenacity. Despite their new-found fame, the message of Celebrate Green! remains profound, yet simple: Let's create eco-friendly, sustainable holidays.]

***

It’s nearly dusk on Halloween and, once again, you’re running behind. You sprint into the nearest grocery store and scan the shelves, looking for something to hand out to your trick-or-treaters. You find your resolve weakening. Sure, you’d like to hand out treats with less packaging, something not laden with sugar. But the bulging bags of candy look so tempting …

Hold it right there. With a little help from Green Halloween®, an eco-friendly, not-for-profit movement, you can avoid this situation entirely.

What is Green Halloween®? Founder Corey Colwell-Lipson puts it this way. “Green Halloween® is a community movement to create child and Earth-Friendly holiday traditions, beginning with Halloween. Green Halloween® incorporates choices from at least one of three considerations: child-friendliness (including health), Earth-friendliness, and people-friendliness (the people who grow or make the products we buy or use). Ideally, Halloween choices and purchases would take all three areas into account but that is often hard to do. We suggest that families do what they can and what will make their Halloween and their consciences happy.”

Corey Colwell-Lipson was inspired to start this grassroots movement while taking her daughters trick-or-treating in 2006. While most houses handed out typical sugary Halloween fare, a few gave her daughters non-sweet treats like bubbles and stickers. As she recalls on her website, “I was so thrilled that someone thought outside the candy-box.”

She vowed to visit these homes the next year, but soon forgot which ones they were. An idea dawned. “I mentioned to a nearby parent, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there were a sign you could place on your door or window that notified trick-or-treaters that their upcoming treat would be healthy?’ This way, parents could seek out those homes and turn trick-or-treating into a scavenger hunt – a hunt for treasures rather than treats.” And thus, a community movement was born.

Green Halloween® launched in 2007 in the Seattle, Washington area. Local businesses jumped on the bandwagon, asking to use the Green Halloween® logo for their products. “[We want to] make our logo a recognized symbol which will be used on holiday products such as for trick-or-treating, birthday and holiday gift bags items, and stocking stuffers,” says Colwell-Lipson. “[In 2007, you saw] our logo on a few items. [Now], we hope that our logo will be meaningful to the masses: when parents see our logo, they’ll know that the item they are buying meets our standard of child/planet/people friendliness. In addition, whenever our logo is used, a portion of the sales of that product will go towards helping others and or our planet.”

Colwell-Lipson was encouraged by the response she’s received from other parents, local organizations and businesses. She decided to tackle other holidays next. She and her mother, Lynn Colwell, co-wrote Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Traditions and Celebrations for the Whole Family and launched the Celebrate Green! website in 2008.

“The use of petroleum, palm oil and non-recycled tree products are examples of unsustainable practices that we hope to change,” she says. “All traditional holidays, including Halloween, make ample use of products made from these unhealthy or environmentally unfriendly materials, and yet numerous alternatives exist. Our planet has a limited ability to regenerate itself. [We seek] to reduce our eco-footprint by using our collective creativity, flexibility and common interest in the planet to create new holiday traditions while maintaining the heart and soul of our holidays.”

She adds, “My broader goal is to integrate easy, affordable, fun, kid and Earth-friendliness into all holiday traditions such as birthdays and Christmas. I hope that being ‘green’ all year long will become a notion embraced by mainstream America.”

So, how can you get started this Halloween? Here are just a few ideas from Green Halloween®:

* Make your own bags to take trick-or-treating.

* If you are hosting a party, keep your focus on fun rather than treats. You might dunk for apples or build your own scarecrow.

* Hand out items to trick-or-treaters that are environmentally sustainable, healthy for kids, and made using fair work practices. Think spinning tops, stickers, or seashells over candy.

* If your heart is set on handing out candy, Colwell-Lipson suggests Endangered Species Chocolate (a portion of the proceeds go to charity) or Yummy Earth’s candy drops.

Colwell-Lipson says, “Putting some green into your Halloween does not have to be difficult or costly. In the continuum of being green, all families can hop on board! You can start wherever you already are. For example, if your family already eats organic and shops mostly locally, Green Halloween® offers additional ways you can make your holiday even healthier and more green … If your family has yet to try healthy alternatives, this is a great year to start!"

"The Green Halloween® website offers even green-newbies fun, easy and affordable ways to start new holiday traditions your whole family will enjoy,” says Colwell-Lipson. Visit Green Halloween® and download a Guide for Parents (this is a .pdf file) or stop by Celebrate Green! for other green holiday ideas. Happy Halloween!

Learn about local wildlife in Millbury, MA

Photo credit: dawnzy58, through a
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license via Flickr.

My friend Michele asked me to help get the word out about two free sets of classes that she's teaching on local wildlife identification through Massachusetts' Millbury Public Library. The outdoor sessions will likely include visits to the Blackstone Bike Trail, Davidson Bird Sanctuary, and Deering Estate.

The Art of Seeing

Workshop for learning about local wildlife and the signs they leave behind.

Session 1:
Wednesday Sept 30 at 6:30pm and Sunday Oct 4 at 1pm

Session 2:
Wednesday Oct 7 at 6:30pm and Sunday Oct 10 at 1pm

(Wednesdays at the Millbury Public Library; Sundays at a local open space in Millbury)

The indoor session will focus on how to start and keep a nature journal as well as basic information on identification of birds, flowers and trees. Our outdoor session will focus on using our new skills.

Participants will be required to supply their own field journal, pens or colored pencils, water bottles, snacks and transportation to the site. Carpooling will be encouraged.

To reserve your place, contact the Millbury Public Library at (508) 865-1181. For more information, please contact MicheleDecoteau[at]verizon[dot]net.

I wish I lived closer so that I could attend! Happy trails, Michele!

Caterpillars change colors ... who knew?

Two instars of the Common Mormon caterpillar
(This photograph,taken by Sindhu Ramchandran, is used under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license).
Recently, my 3-year-old was delighted to find a fuzzy black caterpillar crawling across the sidewalk in our front yard. We took it inside and put it into his brother's bug house, which resembles a tiny pop-up hamper with a zippered lid. Both boys took to feeding it leaves and soon we had an interesting puzzle -- our caterpillar is now turning orange.

I never knew that caterpillars could change colors. Poking around on the Internet, I learned that some caterpillars change color in response to temperature (like the Tomato hornworm)(1). Others are affected by diet and crowding. Some species, like the caterpillars of the American Peppered Moth, can even change color to match their host tree twigs. This ability to hide, known as crypsis, allows them to avoid being eaten by birds (2).

Caterpillars can also change colors when they shed their skin. Christmas Notebook has an amazing set of pictures of caterpillars molting (and then eating their own skin!) in butterfly babies.

Each stage between skin-shedding is known as an instar. Monarch Butterfly and Milkweed Mania has a great set of pictures showing the size and color differences of caterpillars at various instars in Life Stages: (determining instars).

Along the way to learning about caterpillar colors, I found this great page from the Royal Alberta Museum on how to keep butterfly and moth pupae over the winter, advice that just might come in handy!

References

(1)Abstract of "Hidden Genetic Variation Yields Caterpillar of a Different Color" by Elizabeth Pennisi as presented in the February 3, 2006 issue of Science.

(2)"A Reversible Color Polyphenism in American Peppered Moth (Biston betularia cognataria) Caterpillars" by Mohamed A. F. Noor, Robin S. Parnell, and Bruce S. Grant, published online September 4, 2008 at PLoS ONE

Mark your calendar for Make Tracks!™ 2008!

This year, the National Wildlife Federation is sponsoring the first annual Make Tracks!™ Family Trail Week-end over the Columbus Day holiday -- October 11-13, 2008. Get out of the house with your family, hit a trail, and enjoy nature! There's a link to NatureFind where you can enter your zip code (in the US) and find a trail near you. The NWF also has some nifty ideas for making your time out-of-doors more special.

(My thanks to my friend Kim for letting me know about this event!)

It's almost time to have a Green Halloween®!

Corey Colwell-Lipson, founder of Green Halloween®, has started a new blog to help keep us motivated to celebrate our holidays in an eco-friendly way!

Green Halloween® began as a regional movement last year in Seattle and is rapidly spreading across the U.S. As Colwell-Lipson has said, her goal is to get people to "think outside the candy box." The Green Halloween® website provides some great ideas for adding some green to your holiday, such as handing out trinkets like stickers and collectible cards instead of candy. And before you buy that Halloween costume, Green Halloween® suggests that you ask yourself some hard questions: Can this item be used after Halloween? Can it be recycled? Does it contain earth-friendly materials or is it made of synthetics wrapped in yards of plastic?

Colwell-Lipson recently announced the launch of Celebrate Green!, a new book co-written with her mother, designed help us celebrate green year-round. Be sure to stop by the Celebrate Green! blog for even more ideas!

What does "celebrating green" mean to you? The easiest holiday for me to envision "green" is Christmas. I love to find our Christmas boxes and I get so excited as I carefully unwrap the nativity scene from my childhood, complete with the tiny wooden manger and the shepherd with his real metal crook. I even like the plastic reindeer (certainly not originally part of the nativity scene!) that come to inspect the manger. Isn't that what treasured holiday rituals really are -- reuse at its best?

[UPDATE (10/8/08) -- Check out Escape to Books' October 7, 2008 interview with Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell here!]

Life in a pine cone

The next time you go for a walk, see if you can find a pine cone. When you pick it up, marvel at this: you may be looking at someone’s home. Some animal species – like spiders, mites, and ants – can live, eat and sleep in this microhabitat. I learned this the hard way a year ago. I was working on a craft project involving pine cones and decided to saw one in half. Soon after I began cutting, small insects started fleeing the pine cone in earnest. A good rule of thumb for crafters is to bake a pine cone in a 200 degree F oven for about 20 minutes before using it for crafts. From an ecologist’s perspective, however, I must remind you that in doing so, you might be destroying someone’s home. You may wish to study the microfauna (little bitty animals) in your pine cone instead. Check out Life in a Pine Cone if you want to examine a pine cone like a scientist. I think this would make an interesting topic for a science fair project. What do you think?

Who ate my pumpkin?

This morning, I found the smallest of our three pumpkins in the middle of the lawn. How did it get there?

My first thought was that someone had accidentally kicked it, or not so accidentally used it for batting practice. But when I picked up the pumpkin, it was missing a piece near the stem. How odd. Did our dog chew on it? But no, she would have eaten the whole thing!

I looked at missing portion of the tiny, ornamental pumpkin. The hole seemed like it had been made by something using small paws or very little teeth. Something had eaten my pumpkin!

We live in a suburban area, which leaves me with two likely culprits: the gray squirrel that lives in our tree and the eastern chipmunk that lives under our front step. I did a little research and found out that both animals like to eat fruit (who knew?). And pumpkins, I learned, are actually fruits, not vegetables. So far, so good.

So ... which animal ate my pumpkin? Based on the markings, I'm leaning toward the squirrel. The marks on the pumpkin look an awful lot like the ones I found on the bird feeder last year when the squirrel knocked it down. Besides, I've never known the chipmunk to steal any food from us. In addition, the chipmunk is a lot smaller and would have had a hard time knocking the pumpkin down from the porch.

For now, I've put the damaged pumpkin back in place on the front step. But I'm tempted to buy a bunch of ornamental pumpkins to see if any more of them go missing. I'd love to catch the culprit in action!

Gray SquirrelPhoto credit: Joe Kosack, PGC Photo

Start a leaf collection

Fall is the perfect time to start a leaf collection. Take your child for a walk around the block and admire the leaves that you see. Notice how many leaves are on the ground versus how many are still on the trees. What does that say about the time of the year? Is winter here yet?

How many colors of leaves can you count? Pick up a leaf and notice what makes it unique. Leaves are identified in part by their shapes (like round, oval, triangular) and their edges (spiky, wavy, jagged).

If you live someplace where the seasons barely change and colored leaves are rare, have your child write to a friend or relative and ask that person to send some fall leaves your way. Your child will be thrilled. One of my favorite childhood memories is of my father bringing me home colored leaves from a business trip to Boston. (Thanks, Dad!)

To dry your leaves, place a paper towel on the counter. Arrange your leaves on the paper towel so that none of them are touching. Place another paper towel over the leaves and a heavy book over that. The book will flatten the leaves and the paper towels will absorb any moisture. After a day or two, your leaves will be dry.

To make a leaf rubbing, lay a sheet of paper over your leaf. Take the side of a crayon and rub gently over the paper. A leaf shape should soon appear.

You can also take a piece of contact paper, lay the leaves on it, and lay another sheet of contact paper over them to make a placemat for the table. If you don't want a placemat, cut out the contact paper-wrapped leaves and punch a hole at the top. Let your child hang the preserved leaves around the house.