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Gleaning Made Easy – Neighborhood Fruit

Fruit! We all Most of us love it, but not all of us have it and it can be so dang expensive.  Some of us have some, but want more variety and well, it can be so dang expensive.  However, have you ever noticed how much of it litters our sidewalks in the summer? The smell of perfectly good fruit fermenting on the sidewalk is almost synonymous in the summertime.

Many people have taken it upon themselves to make sharing of fruit from their trees easier for each other by allowing gleaning.  It’s a great way to get rid of that leftover fruit and also share with friends and neighbors.  But it is not always easy for everyone to know where the people are who don’t mind a little gleaning.  Well, Neighborhood Fruit has set out to solve that problem with a great website and iPhone app.

With the website and app you can search a radius around your zip-code for public and private trees where piking of fruit is allowed.  It’s a great idea and may just help to keep the sidewalks cleaner and your bellies fuller with fruit that would have otherwise rotted on the tree.  The only problem is that right now it does not appear that any trees are registered in the city or the state yet.  So please register your tree if you have something to share!

One more reason Salt Lake City is so great! Best city for commuters.

We are always looking for reasons to share why are city is so great and we have yet another to add to the list.  We are the number 1 city in the nation for commuters according to Forbes!  I have been all over the country and I have to agree, but it is nice to see it in writing.

I have to also admit here that I am guilty of complaining about how bad our traffic is at times.  I know, I need to stop.  We really do have it good here.

Click here to read the article on Forbes.com.

Earthly Inspiration Brings Forth Environmentally Friendly Designs.

I struggled with a title for this post not because I didn’t know what to say; I just didn’t know how to say it. I may have to change it later when I can finally find the words to describe the work of Tyler Blaine. So for now, I’ll just tell you about and show you the work.

Last week I had the great pleasure to meet with Tyler Blaine. Tyler is a young guy making a huge mark in custom home features that you, I or anyone would find hard not to love. He works with many mediums, from concrete, to metal, to wood and derives the inspiration for his work from the deserts of Utah. Taking what are solid mediums and creating fluid representations of plateau’s, mesa’s and rivers and turning them into sinks, tables, barbecues and bicycle racks.

The funny thing is that I have been stumbling upon his work while showing homes throughout the valley.  Here and there I would see a sink or counter that really struck me as amazing and beautiful.  I had no idea I was witnessing the creative genius of just one person and I certainly never expected to receive a chance phone call from the artist himself, but I did and now here I am writing a post about his work.

Created from base materials of metal, wood and concrete, he molds them into functional objects that invoke the spirit of the desert. In order to the preserve the environment that inspires him he uses reclaimed and recycled material wherever he can. His concrete can be formed with 100% recycled glass aggregate and his carbon footprint negated through the use of a fly ash blend in the concrete. Woods are reclaimed from many sources or re-purposed from scrap lumber.

“If not wandering through mountains and hills as a child, admiring the beauty of the natural realm, I could be found wandering amongst heavy equipment, concrete footings and suspended decks.  May father’s passion and integrity for his architectural concrete structures, have taught me to observe the craftsmanship and design of structures around the world, thus my inspiration to design and fabricate through industrial mediums.  Interactions with the world’s humbling geography and geology have provided my life with unparalleled joy.”

So if you are looking for something beautiful and creative, something that invokes the spirit of the environment and you want to bring it into your home, you cannot go wrong with Tyler Blaine. Look him up and give him a call.

Photos from Thomas Design

Why I work the way I work.

Under my profile photo on my Facebook Fan Page is a quote of mine.

My goals are simple. They are to educate everyone around me to the benefits of living well, eating well, designing well, building well and therefore leading yourself to a healthier, efficient life.

It is how I feel and what I believe and many have asked why I work that way.  Well, today a friend shared a video with me that sums it all up in a short, quick and visual way and I wanted to share it with the world.  This video tells you exactly why I do what I do.  It is for the children, for me and for you.  I do what I do and work the way I do, for everyone.

I have said it before and I will say it again.  I do not do what I do to save the world or the planet.  The world is fine.  If we all disappeared today it would shake off everything we have done like a bad cold and keep turning until the sun swallows it someday. I do what I do to prolong our time here on the planet.  I do it so our children and our grand children the world over can enjoy an amazing day, a beautiful sunset and snowflakes like I did.

Watch the short video below.  It says it all.

A Wake-Up Story from Healthy Child Healthy World on Vimeo.

The Modern, Green Garage of my Dreams.

As an EcoBroker I am often asked where to go for certain green things needed in remodels and additions.  Something I have often been asked about, but haven’t had a good source for was garages.  Unless you designed your own a green garage meant the builder used his lumber scraps….

Well, with this post over at Jetson Green all that has changed.  Tom Bassett-Dilley – Architect, has designed the PERFECT Green Garage! With it’s FSC certified lumber, green roofs, permeable paving, rain barrels and power plant this is exactly what I have always wanted.  It’s simply amazing.

The philosphy of the Green Garage can be summed up best by this quote from the Green Garage Plans website:

Philosophy: the Big Idea for a Little Structure

The inspiration for this project arose out of our work with smaller alley-accessed residential lots in Chicago and its older suburbs (such as Oak Park and Evanston), which pose the same challenge: how to make a meaningful back yard with what little space remains between garage and house. Many of these lots either have old and failing, or new plastic garages, neither of which really benefit their lot. We see the garage as potentially transformative to the back yard environment and experience. Rebuilding also gives the opportunity to recycle and introduce sustainable technology, such as geothermal wells under the new slab or photovoltaic solar collectors on the roof: the garage can be a power plant for the house. Unlike the ubiquitous cheap vinyl garages, the Green Garage is built to last, using as many local resources as are available. In keeping with our firm’s philosophy, each project is site-specific, making a meaningful place by linking users to their environment in delightful ways. While these prototypes are rendered as garden structures, like mini-barns, we can also adjust the architectural language (while maintaining the green garage principles) in the case of historically significant properties.

You seriously owe it to yourself to check them out if you plan on building or renovating a garage anytime soon.

Source:  Green Garage Plans via Jetson Green

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