Pansies who love chicken wire

My son and I were cleaning up the yard on Saturday and he found a piece of old chicken wire. It was a cast-off scrap from a cage I'd built last year to protect our strawberries. Since it wasn't very big, I told him to bin it.

Then, on Sunday, I realized that was a mistake and retrieved it. Turns out this piece of chicken wire may be the solution to one of my biggest problems: squirrels in my pansies.

As my son potted pansies for the hanging baskets, I cut the chicken wire into rectangles to cover the surface of the planting boxes on my deck railing. Then I scooped out about 1/5 of the soil and lay the mesh on top of the remaining soil.

Then I cut four holes through which to plant the pansies, after which I covered the mesh with the soil that I'd removed earlier. This was repeated for three boxes and two pots down on the patio.

This morning, the unprotected front pot has clear evidence of squirrel tampering. But the planters with their new layer of chicken wire look undisturbed. If all goes well, this will prove to be the solution to one of my squirrel problems...and save the lives of countless innocent flowers!

10 ways to survive a garbage strike

There's a serious chance that my city, Toronto, will have a major garbage strike this summer. The last one was in 2002. It was a long, smelly one in the middle of a hot summer. Windsor is in the midst of a very long one.

Garbage strikes are more than an inconvenience, they're a health hazard. But they're also a good time to take stock of what we're throwing out and look for ways to clean up our act. With that in mind, here are some tips on surviving a garbage strike. What ideas do you have? I rent part of a house with a yard, so I'm particularly interested in hearing how these strikes affect people in high-rise apartments. Let's turn the comments section here into a running list of ideas on how to beat the stink!

1. Stop eating meat.
This is easier for the vegetarians, and there's are good reasons why most of us should cut our meat consumption, anyway. But in a strike it's a really good idea. Rotting meat scraps are some of the smelliest stuff we throw away. They're also the most likely to attract rats and create a genuine health hazard.

2. Get composting.
If you have a back yard, get a composter. In Toronto, the city sells them for $15. We're getting a second one because of the volume of garden and rabbit-related organic matter we produce. The first one has, in the past year, consumed enough material to fill many garbage bags. In apartments, consider vermiculure. That is, the fine art of worm composting. If you have kids, they'll love you for it.

3. Freeze!
For a short strike, put the smelly stuff in plastic bags (you may have to conveniently forget your cloth shopping bags one day to get some), tie them up and toss them in the freezer. You could save a little energy too, as food scraps have greater thermal mass than air, and so will hold the cold better.

4. Time for cloth.
As a parent, I washed a lot of cloth diapers. It's not that horrible an experience. They are a significant expense, though, so plan for it to be a long-term solution. In Toronto, disposable diapers can go in the Green Bin for composting. But in a garbage strike, they're going to get ripe awfully fast. I'd rather do an extra load of diapers every day or two than have a mountain of dirty disposables sitting in my living room! (Or, if laundry facilities are inconvenient or far away, hire a diaper service to do the washing for you.)

5. Reduce.
Easy to do. Look for products with less packaging. Buy fruit loose and avoid those clamshell containers - they're not recyclable in my city, anyway. Plastics are relatively easy to store, as they won't start to smell, but all the same, they're some of the bulkiest stuff to go in the bin.

6. Re-use.
A lot of our "waste" is quite usable. A lot of house-related stuff, from the end of a roll of tar paper to 2x4s and even toilets, can find a new home through places such as Habitat for Humanity's Re-Store. There are also places to bring partial cans of paint (because really, how long could you live with the beige your landlord painted all the walls?), furniture (checked out Value Village or Goodwill lately?), and so forth.

7. Double-bag.
If you can't do anything but throw something potentially stinky away, double-bag it. That will help keep the smell down and help prevent rodents from attacking the trash.

8. Postpone.
Now might not be the time to clear last year's freezer-burned Thanksgiving leftovers out of the freezer. You might also want to hold off on projects likely to create a lot of waste.

9. Use the phone book.
Find the numbers for by-law enforcement officers who handle illegal dumping. Garbage strikes lead people to do some stupid things, like toss their trash into local ravines. This is a dangerous, messy and downright uncivilized thing to do. If you see it happen, call the authorities. Write down the license plate number of the perpetrator.

10. Get out of town.
Yes, a garbage strike is a good time to go on holiday. You won't build a pile of waste in your backyard and you won't have to endure the stench of the heap being stored at the local park. Grab a tend, catch a train up to a nice provincial park and do some backpacking. Or take a bus up to the beach. If you're driving, maybe go visit your uncle's farm...and ask if you can make use of one or two of the garbage tags for his municipal pickup while you're at it.

While you're out in the country, take a deep breath, enjoy the clean air and try to remember the really crappy days that some freezing guy came and took away your stinky old diapers, turned a blind eye to that extra bag you'd set out, or loaded your old couch into the truck without complaint. And try to remember that, one day, the strike will end.

In the meantime, add your ideas in the comments section below.

Windfall

Those of you who have been reading for a while will know that I recently got into woodworking. This is partly because money's tight, partly because I like working with my hands. But working with wood can be problematic for people who care about the environment. Sure, it's nice to look at and feels good, and it's not made from petroleum or harsh chemicals. But a lot of it comes from big clearcuts. And some really nice woods are from threatened species of trees. Believe it or not, a lot of it is harvested by tree poachers.

I have nothing against cutting down trees. They're a renewable resource, and a good one for many things. I do have problems with large-scale clearcutting, tree poaching and non-sustainable forestry practices. It also takes a lot of fell the trees, haul them out, mill them and ship them down to the city.

So I was happy to receive a literal windfall.

This winter saw some heavy snow up near my parents' place (a couple hours north of Toronto), and it knocked down an old apple tree in the back field. While visiting last weekend, I grabbed a dozen or so of the logs my dad had cut. They're in the basement drying now, and should provide some lovely wood for crafts. No extra fossil fuels used, no killing of a live tree, just ethically pure lumber. It's not a lot, maybe a dozen board feet or so to be claimed from foot-long logs. But that's enough for a couple little projects I've got in mind.

But what about those bigger projects? Sure there's certified "forest-friendly" timber out there. But I'm a tenant. I'm not often looking for studs. Since my wood needs are mostly for furniture or crafts, I want smaller quantities of pretty wood. Ethical wood, if possible.

After my first post on the subject, my friend Dimitra suggested checking out Urban Tree Salvage. Their wood isn't cheap, but they've got some spectacular material available. And it's all from sources that'll set even a hardcore environmentalist's heart aflutter. I'm a bit distracted with the garden right now, but I do plan on ordering a bit of lumber for projects to be done next winter.

Great as all this sounds, how bad is conventionally sourced lumber? We all know about clearcuts. I've certainly spent time in some huge ones in Northern Ontario, and seen bogland drained to speed tree growth. There are plenty of questionable practices here and abroad. But putting those concerns aside for a moment, just how much energy does it take to produce my lumber?

According to Dr. Howard Odum at the University of Florida, it takes about 40,640 BTUs to produce an eight-foot 2x4. According to NRCAN, that's just shy of 12 kilowatts (about 39 cents at today's wholesale prices in Ontario). The Ontario grid, last I checked, produces about 0.22 kg of CO2 per kwH, so if all the energy were from the grid, producing that 2x4 would generate 2.64 kg of carbon dioxide. It seems fair to assume that it's actually going to be higher than that, since Ontario's grid includes hydro and a bit of wind power, while harvesting the lumber will be done with diesel trucks and machines. Oh, and there's also the question of how far the board has to come...

But at the very least, my little windfall stash should save a kilogram or two of CO2 emissions. Not a lot, but just enough to make me feel good about it. Thanks for the logs, dad!

Reusing lumber

Recently, I decided to try my hand at woodworking. You see, I need furniture and I'm a writer. Anyone in publishing knows that means buying new furniture is out of the question.

As it happens, I'm fairly handy, like building things and noticed a table that looked good in an issue of Canadian Home Workshop. And it was labeled as a "beginner" project. Perfect. It went well, and I now have two very nice end tables waiting to be painted.

However, I feel a pang of guilt every time I buy virgin timber. Add to that the poor selection at my local Home Depot (the lumber independent lumber yard at the end of my street closed a couple years ago), and woodworking is a bit tricky. There is forest-friendly lumber, but really, I think that I can do better.

There's a lot of waste lumber in the bins at construction sites or, better yet, behind stores and factories. As another issue of Canadian Home Workshop reminded me recently, shipping pallets are often hardwood. Many are made of maple, such as the stuff being cut down in places I like to ski and hike. It would sadden me to no end to see these noble trees used just for pallets, then burned or chucked in a landfill.

So, now begins my foraging for lumber to re-use. It also means I need a few tools, namely a table saw (need this anyway) and a plane to smooth out this found treasure. My first projects will be for the office, which is a safe place in case they don't turn out the way my dreams would have them.

Where to find good used tools? Craigslist is the most obvious, though eBay can also be a source. I'm also asking you: Do you or any relatives or friends have good used power tools they want to unload? They'll go to a good home and help save some very nice trees.