Tomorrow morning, March 22, 2010, is a historic occasion for the Austin, Texas Metro Area. At 5:25am, the new Capital Metrorail redline train leaves Leander, Texas’s TOD on its way to Austin, Texas. I will be at the Leander Station at 4:30am to help. I am excited about the event and the prospects for all of us who live in the area. We need solutions to Austin’s traffic problems and commuter rail will play a part be it big or small. I know CapMetro is relieved and I am too! I will be there assisting as a MetroRail Ambassador. Watch this video for tips on how to ride.
Now, you can consider buying a home or condo near a rail station and perhaps live carless! Search Austin Homes
And if you work in Downtown or Central Austin you can buy a less expensive home in the suburbs, such as Leander and ride the train in to work everyday! Search Leander Homes
Green buildings are making headlines and it’s not for the shade of the paint that’s used on their walls“ they’re being talked about because they’re built using energy-efficient methods and sustainable materials, and because they promote eco-friendly lifestyles. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, green buildings emit 35 percent less carbon dioxide and use 35 percent less energy than conventional buildings. While you may not be able to achieve these exact statistics when you set out to build your home, there are ways in which you can adopt green measures to make your home more eco-friendly. A few easily followed green construction methods are:
Buy locally: You may not be able to pick and choose eco-friendly options for all your building materials, but you do have the option of buying those that are available locally or at locations near you. This helps save on transportation energy and costs. Also, the materials are available cheaper because they’re not imported or transported from other locations within the country. So you’re not only going green, you’re also saving costs as a bonus.
Use energy efficient devices: Buy appliances that are Energy Star rated and which save electricity and energy. They may cost a little more initially but your recurring expenses are much lower than usual. Invest in refrigerators, washers, driers, ovens and other appliances that consume less energy, CFC bulbs instead of fluorescent tubes, and fans instead of air conditioners. Set the thermostat to normal levels so that your home is not too hot or too cold. Use natural light when you can by building large windows that face east. Also invest in a solar panel for most of your energy needs if it is cost-efficient.
Use recycled/recyclable materials: If you’re going to use wood for your windows and other building needs, choose options that are salvaged or recycled. Similarly, other materials like plastic, glass, aluminium and steel are available in the recycled forms. When you use recycled materials, you’re also able to recycle them again when you improve or remodel your home a few years down the line.
Make your home eco-friendly: Fresh water is fast becoming a scarce commodity, so when you build a home, install a facility to harvest and filter rainwater. Also, set up a system where your shower water is automatically recycled and diverted to your lawn sprinkler and to water your plants.
Maintain what you’ve built: And finally, once you begin to live in your home, adopt eco-friendly measures like recycling your trash, using your garbage disposal correctly, closing faucets tightly and repairing leaky ones immediately, switching off electrical and electronic appliances when not in use instead of leaving them in the standby modes, and keeping your home neat and tidy.
Friday, March 12th, 2010 from 4:30 to 6:30pm there will be a tour of GREEN buildings at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. The Double LEED® Building Tour Higher Education Institution Facilities is being held by the Central Texas Balcones Chapter of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC-CTB). The Admissions Center building is LEED-NC Gold Certified and the Center for Lifelong Learning is LEED-NC Silver Registered. Parking is available on campus.
Register at http://doublegreenbuildingtours.eventbrite.com/
How do you help those in need and help the environment at the same time? 1house at a time is a great organization that helps Austin, Texas homeowners in need avoid foreclosure on their homes by lowering their utility and food bills. High utility bills often represent a family’s second highest expense. Homes chosen for projects receive energy efficiency upgrades and other projects to save money and help our Earth. This month’s project happens March 13TH from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM. Projects include removing the old refrigerator, washer and dryer and replacing then with energy efficient units. A rain gutter system with gutter guards will be installed as well as a rainwater collection cistern. A garden will be installed to help provide healthy food at low cost.
Texas Metal Cisterns and Green Zone Home are helping in this month’s event.
Texas Metal Cisterns in business since 2000 can be reached at (512) 565-0875
Green Zone Home, 8868 Research Boulevard
Austin, TX 78758 (512) 467-0005 Green Zone Home provides home energy consultations.
Won’t you consider helping a family in need by volunteering 4 hours of your time? If you are not able to personally help at the site could you help with a donation?
Learn more about retrofitting your home, rainwater collection and GREEN Austin Homes
I have a love of bees because of what they do for us. Besides providing pollenization that our food supply needs, they also provide honey for sweetening which I also ingest for the purpose of warding off local allergens. My late husband was an accomplished beekeeper. I enjoyed learning beekeeping by working the bees with him. This was in the early 1980’s. He had the traditional white wooden bee boxes with frames inside to hold the honeycombs. We used a hive smoker to help us “work” the bees. We would smoke them by blowing smoke from this smoker onto the bees. This served to make them “drunk” and then we were able to “work” them. We took the frames out, cut the caps off the wax which held the honey in and put the frames full of beeswax filled with honey in a large, steel tank on a support system inside the tank made for the frames called an extractor. We put the tank lid on and then turned the hand crank. This movement of the frames around the inside of the tank slung the honey out by centrifigal force. Yes, I might get stung once or twice while doing this, so don’t try working bees if you are allergic to bee stings. I did not have “real” beeking clothes myself so I would wear a long sleeve shirt and long pants and put rubber bands around my sleeve cuffs and pants legs at the bottom. This was done to try and prevent the smoke drunk bees from crawling onto my skin under my clothes. Sometime they would get past the barrier I tried to create and eventually sting me. They crawl all over you but don’t sting when you are working them because of their drunkenness. It’s interesting what the smoke does to them.
Now, honey bees are in trouble. They need your help more than ever. Without honeybees pollinating US agricultural crops our food supply will be in trouble. “Colony collapse disorder” has decimated entire populations of honeybees. Thankfully some people are concerned enough to educate the public and help the bees. There is a new movie called Nicotine Bees about how huge agribusiness is coating their seeds with chemicals called neonicotinoids that end up in pollen and on leaves that may be a factor in “colony collapse disorder”.
In the Austin area there is a new Austin – Urban – Beekeeping MeetUp Group to help the bees. Our first meeting is soon. I’d love for you to join us! Go to MeetUp.com and join up!
Holistic Management International Texas is a great resource for managing your farm or ranch in a “greener” way. They offer many classes and workshops in various Texas towns. February 26 – 27 they are holding a Drought Mitigation Workshop together with Farm Aid in Laredo, TX. March 5 and 6 they are holding their Spring Conference in New Braunfels, TX. There are also classes in Planned Grazing, Mob Grazing and others as well as organic hay for sale in the February Newsletter. See the Holistic Management International Texas newsletter for more details and complete information directly from the source on green ranch management.
Betty Saenz, member of Williamson Audubon GroupIf you live in the northern part of Austin, Texas or even elsewhere, the Williamson County Texas Audubon Group (WAG) is a great organization to further your interests in nature and or birds. I just retuned from a Williamson Audubon Group meeting at the New Church on County Road 245 in Georgetown, Texas. A large crowd, including myself, were entertained by guest speaker and local, award winning wildlife photographer Greg Lasley. Mr. Lasley said he has had his photos published in over 100 books and magazines which include American Birds, Texas Highways Magazine, Wildlife Conservation and many more. His book, Texas Wildlife Portraits was available for purchase and signing. Mr. Lasley’s book is available for purchase on Amazon.com Mr. Lasley showed many photographs of various birds and other Texas wildlife on 2 huge screens so all attendees could see them well. Listeners could hear the Lesser Prairie Chicken recording on his i Phone while looking at its photograph. Lasley said the Lesser Prairie Chicken with their orange sacks on the side of their faces can still be seen roaming in the wild in the northeast Texas Panhandle. Many Native American tribal dances mimic the Prairie Chicken. Other photos included the Screetch Owl, Inca doves, a golden cheeked warbler with its bright yellow head and namesake cheeks, black capped vireo, wild turkey, yellow throated warbler, Least Bittern, and the beautiful Painted Bunting. Painted Buntings have a bright blue head, red throat, bright green below the head and an orange belly and back. Mr. Lasley also had photos of females and immature males which both looked a drab green. He said it takes 2 years for the male painted buntings to mature into their bright colored plumage. I have not yet seen one in the wild but long to! Mr. Lasley has had some interesting experiences on his wildlife adventures. He spoke of a ranch owner who fed wild Harris’s Hawks store bought kidney off of a mesquite tree on his ranch. There were pictures of a Wood Duck with can be seen on Town Lake (Ladybird Lake) and a white tail hawk as seen in McAllen, Texas in the valley. There was 1 soaring adult white tailed hawk as well as a nest of fluffy, downy babies.
Among the non-bird photos was a jackrabbit, coyote, Mexican ground squirrel, armadillo, Pallid bats roosting, an alligator at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, a painted damsel fly, a black saddlebags dragonfly, a blue faced ring tailed dragonfly, an Ebony jewel wing (black) dragonfly, a wolf spider carrying its babies, a flame skimmer dragonfly, a Toothpick grasshopper, a long jawed spider with a dusty dancer damselfly caught in his web, a beautiful red Mayan dragonfly, a praying mantis photo taken through a Macro lens, a South Texas Queens butterfly, a migratory American Snout butterfly, a Banded Peasant dragonfly, a Rock Rattlesnake, a Luna Moth in Luling, TX, a Texas horned lizard, a Texas Spiny Lizard, a red-eared slider turtle, a Texas tortoise and a 6 foot Texas Indigo snake which are known for eating rattlesnakes. This goes to show that most birdwatchers, like myself, are nature lovers. Many of his photographs were very unique and artistic showing just an animals head, part of a tortoise’s shell or only a section of a Wild Turkey’s plumage.
My 25 minute drive from Leander, Texas to Georgetown, Texas and back was nice down the new section of Ronald W. Reagan Boulevard (Parmer Lane). It felt like you were miles and miles from nowhere since there was no traffic. You can join the Williamson Audubon Group (WAG) by signing up on Meetup.com
April 12. 2010 at 7:00pm at the NewChurch Georgetown, TX the Guest Speaker for the Williamson Audubon Group will be Richard Kostecke, PhD of The Nature Conservancy. I am amazed at how much the people in this group know about birds. I am hoping to be able to identify all the birds in my Texas backyard! In looking at my personal, signed copy of Greg Lasley’s Texas Wildlife Portraits, I think I can almost narrate through most of the book after the presentation tonight. Hopefully I can hold my grandkids attention that long! LOL
Contact me at (512) 785-5050 or by e-mail to learn more about the Williamson Audubon Group or about buying or selling a home, lot or ranch in the Williamson County or Austin area.
What are VOCs and what can we do to avoid having them in our homes? VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and no, this is not the type of “good” organic we want in our Texas Organic Home. VOCs are pollutants in our homes and can effect the indoor air quality of our homes. The resulting poor indoor air quality can have both short and long term ill health effects. For some great information on VOCs, just visit the United States government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website and look at the web page on Indoor Air Quality. Since VOCs are emitted by building materials, furnishings and paints as well as other materials in our homes, I am concentrating on these two in this blog. One of the best ways to avoid VOC’s is in the construction or even remodeling process.
There are green cabinet makers who follow green woodworking practices for example that are aware of the problems VOCs can cause in indoor air quality. Among these are Jeff Mitzel at Green Award Custom Woodworking at 5710 E. MLK in Austin, TX (512) 323-6633. Jeff and the other craftsmen at Green Award Custom Woodworking care about our earth and the indoor air quallity in your home enough to use materials that do not off gas in your indoor living environment. They also work by a zero waste policy. Waste ply materials are recycled by local artists, teachers and art therapists as well as in other woodworking projects at the Austin,TX shop. Using locally milled woods, new green products as well as reclaimed woods, the wood shop uses over 70 green raw materials in the creation of millwork and cabinetry. Green Award is also Austin, Texas’ oldest continually running cabinet and millwork shop.
I attended the Williamson County Kids N K9’s Graduation last night at the Williamson County Academy in Georgetown,Texas. It was a wonderful program! Each teen spoke to the crowd about what they learned from the Kids-N-K9s Program and then demonstrated their dog’s newly learned skill set. In addition to the usual sit, lay down and stay, the Kids-N-K9s dogs demostrated weaving through the legs of the teens, crawling, bowing, going through a tunnel and waving. The Williamson County cities of Hutto, Leander, Cedar Park and Round Rock partner with the WILCO shelter- so my taxes as a resident of Leander help pay for both the shelter facilities and the programs there. Unfortunately, the WILCO shelter is a “kill” shelter at this time. When the population gets too much over capacity, some unfortunate animals are euthanized. The Kids N K9’s dogs will never be euthanized because of the training they receive by teens at the Williamson County Academy. This program helps the WILCO Academy teens to learn many skills such as dog handling and training as well as patience and tolerance.
I met Homer – the black lab in the Kids N K9’s You Tube video above. His new family was at the graduation too. He is going to live in Pflugerville.
Do any pet owners know of any other great PET resources and programs that you like so I can share them with the public? Pets can be a great addition to the Texas Organic Home.
I am jealous. Everything’s in Austin…Sometimes, to someone who cares about the environment it seems that way…I live in Leander, Texas, Williamson County because of the affordability of homes and the Leander ISD school system. I am trying to help the City of Leander to encourage greenbuilding and green yards. My yard meets the criteria for Austin’s Award Winning Green Garden Program yet I am not a City of Austin water customer so I can’t share my yard in that venue. The City of Leander gets the water from the same place, Lake Travis but we buy it from Leander, not Austin. Part of being a Texas Organic Home is to have a green yard. By green I do not mean a huge, water hungry synthetic yard but a water conserving, sensible and beautiful yard that is safe for humans, pets and wildlife due to lack of synthetic chemicals. “Synthetic” yards use non-native plants and grasses from some rainforest that do not jive with the Austin/Central Texas climate. These plants drink too much of our water and may be invasive and take over our wild spaces.
Call or e-mail me and I’ll help you learn more.
signed, a Native Texan and aspiring Master Naturalist, Citizen Gardener, and Master Gardener.
