But still there were lucky ones, those who were lucky enough to have a lawn to take care of and time to do this. They wanted to have a lawnmower but couldn’t buy it – nobody sold them, again, because all the shops were state owned and all suppliers to the shops were state owned factories, producing things according to the Soviet Party Plan without any correlation to the demands of those minor fortunate lawn-owner group members. So they had to build lawnmowers themselves. Different parts of other more available house hold appliances were used, like: child bicycle, baby trolley and the engine was taken from Soviet washing machine.

Soviet Lawnmower [EnglishRussia]

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Try a proven bait and trap, the likes of which the folks at the Maine Supply Co. have damned near perfected with their simple, affordable, and hugely effective Flies Be Gone bag. These things have a spectacular consumer rating. They’re effective up to four weeks at only $13 a pop, and they trap upwards of 20,000 flies each.

These things are environmentally friendly and easy to dispose of since they use no toxins or pesticides. One drawback: they’re butt-ugly. Total eyesore. Put ‘em behind a bush or something.

Flies Be Gone [amazon.com]

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There are so many electric models available that perform the average job every bit as well as their gasoline-sucking counterparts, we really have no excuse for holding on to the obsolete technology.

One hidden bonus that many old school devotees seem to be unaware of is the dramatic reduction in noise pollution; electric mowers are wildly quieter than gas powered mowers. One of the selling points behind such tools as the Neuton Mower (pictured) is that it’s so quiet you can talk on the phone while using it.

This sucker costs about as much as the same sized option of the liquid fuel variety, runs for a solid hour on a single charge, and it’ll cost you about $5.00 a year to run the thing on the avg. sized lawn once a week. Your old mower drinks that much in gas after two or three runs. Plus, your air will be cleaner. According to the EPA, gas-powered lawnmowers account for up to 5% of US air pollution.

Of course, if you really, really care about the environment, never mind your own fitness, you could always go seriously old school and get a reel mower. Yes, they still make ‘em, and yes, they still work just fine.

NEUTON® Mower [drpower.com]

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Why garden naked? First of all, it’s fun! Second only to swimming, gardening is at the top of the list of family-friendly activities people are most ready to consider doing nude. Moreover, our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us–even if only for those few sunkissed minutes–that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet.

Personally, I’m all for people in general having a healthier body sense. Learning to accept yourself as a-ok the way God made you is a really healthy thing to do. But the idea of having my naked junk anywhere near spiders and slugs is more than enough to make me want to wear pants, thanks.

World Naked Gardening Day [wngd.org] (Obvious NSFW applies, plus there are pictures of people you may not want to see naked at the link.)

(image: gobuki.com)

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There are, fortunately, lots of ways to deter them, and none require harming the environment (minus, of course, the slug itself).

• Slugs are natural drunks. Leave out wide, shallow cups of beer for them to drink themselves to death in.

• Copper delivers a shock to slugs! Make use of that penny jar and ring your garden with them. The slugs won’t get killed (unfortunately), but it will deter them from even the tastiest of your produce.

• Although slugs can crawl unharmed over razor blades, they tend not to seek out rough and scratchy terrain. Lining your garden with lava rocks, sharp gravel, coarse sand and other irritants will help keep them foraging elsewhere.

• A ring of iron phosphate around your garden will kill scores of marauding slugs – they eat it and die in a day or two. However, this might also be passing the lethal ingredient onto whatever predator might subsequently eat the slug after it’s ingested the stuff, so beware. I also don’t know what effect this stuff might have on the environment, though it does occur in nature.

• Plant stuff the slugs don’t like. Here’s a partial list:

Ajuga (bugleweed), Alchemilla mollis (lady’s mantle), Alyssum, Arabis, Armeria (thrift), Artemisia, Anemone (fall-blooming types), Aquilegia (columbine), Astilbe, Astrantia (masterwort), Aubretia, Bergenia, Crocosmia, Dianthus, Euphorbia, Ferns, Fuchsia, Geranium (cranesbill), Grasses (ornamental types), Helleborus (hellebore), Hemerocallis (daylily), Heuchera (coral bells), Hydrangea, Iris,
Lavandula (lavender), Narcissus (daffodil), Paeonia (peony), Pelargonium (annual geranium), Penstemon, Phlox, Potentilla, Rosa (rose), Sedum, Tulipa (tulip), Vinca (Vinca minor, V. major)

Plants that Slugs Don’t Like [gardeners.com]

(image: winecountrydivas.com)

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Moreover, a lot of the chemicals we use in our gardens have properties that are dangerous to us as well:

Of 30 commonly used lawn pesticides, 19 are linked with cancer or carcinogencity, 13 are linked with birth defects, 21 with reproductive effects, 26 with liver or kidney damage, 15 with neurotoxicity, and 11 with disruption of the endocrine (hormonal) system. [beyondpesticides.org]

There are other options that will not harm the environment, yet will safely and effectively control your weeds.

• Vinegar-based Deadeye will kill your weeds with direct sprays, but it’ll also kill grass and whatever else you spray, including your desired plants and vegetables.

• WOW! controls weeds before they emerge, including crabgrass, creeping bentgrass, foxtail, lamb’s-quarters, purslane, and other unwanted vegetation, using a corn syrup byproduct. Bonus: It releases nitrogen in the ground, so it’s actually good for your soil.

• Herbicidal soaps operate on the dehydration plan, usually working within a week of the application. The idea is to spray directly upon the undesired area, much like with the vinegar method. You should have a dry, dead plant to pull up within seven days. I’m wondering, of course, why you wouldn’t just pull the sucker up out of the ground in the first place.

(image: gardenutah.org)

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These biodegradable jobs are made from cornstarch and are totally eco-friendly, breaking down in landfills easily, and excellent at their function. They come with handles that tie up smart, containing all odorous evidence of the nasty within. They also come in scented and unscented models, in case you need that extra psychological defense against the act of touching dookie. They hide nicely in a pocket or a handbag, and at 100 bags for five bucks, you can’t go wrong. The bags, and subsequently, the crap, breaks down within a month, much unlike the plastic shopping bag which doesn’t really break down at all within our lifetimes. Turds wrapped in those guys will outlive us!

Pooch Pick-up Bags [amazon.com]

Related: There’s an enormous movement brewing that is calling for people to cease all together the accepting of plastic bags which are so commonly used by bodegas, grocery stores, and most other retailers. The logic is sound: They do not break down in landfills, they are wasteful, they are made out of petroleum and therefore costly to our ever-dwindling supplies, and they simply contribute to greater pollution. When was the last time you saw one stuck in a tree, yesterday? Cut ‘em out of your life wherever possible. It’s easy as hell to carry a reusable bag, or the net-style expandable bag the likes of which the Europeans have been using for decades.

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When an animal dies in the wild, nature has a way of breaking the critter’s corpse down quickly and efficiently, by way of carrion eaters, bugs, bacteria, and finally the plants build on the last of the remains. The creature goes back into the earth in very direct fashion. Man does not have this luxury for a number of legal and ethical reasons, all of which are in perpetual controversy. For the most part, you simply can’t bury the dead without the toxic aspects of cremation, formaldehyde, or a sealed casket getting involved.

Traditional casket burials are unsound in that, even without formaldehyde, the body takes a long time to rot in the oxygen-depleted depth at which the bodies are laid to rest, particularly within sealed caskets. Apparently the water table is adversely affected when the body has not been allowed to rot naturally. The cremation process, on the other hand, is unsound in that it is enormously costly in fuel, and more importantly, it releases mercury and other pollutants into the air. Organic interests have been up in arms about this for years. A Swedish group called Promessa seems to have created a gap-bridging solution.

From the Promessa website:

Within a week and a half after death, the corpse is frozen to minus 18 degrees Celsius and then submerged in liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle, and vibration of a specific amplitude transforms it into an organic powder that is then introduced into a vacuum chamber where the water is evaporated away…The now dry powder then passes through a metal separator where any surgical spare parts and mercury are removed.

The idea is that a total removal of water from the body reduces the biomass by around 70%, at which point what we have is an organic power that does not decompose when kept dry. This powder is placed within a cornstarch container and can be buried at a shallow depth. Through contact with the moisture of the earth, within 6-12 months the remains will be turned into pure compost.

In short: They freeze-dry you, vibrate you into powder, vaporize the water out of you, remove all your fillings, bone pins, and body piercings, and then pack you up in a biodegradable box.

Here’s the sentimental bit: At the time of the burial, loved ones may opt to plant a tree or some other sort of rooted vegetation above the remains. The new lifeform shall take nutrients directly from the soil, now rich with the fertilizer made from the deceased, and the circle of life is far more intact than any other commonly-used method of burial.

Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells, and the remains of my late husband Joe.

Promessa homepage [promessa.se]

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If you’re a more hands-on sort but need direction on what to plant, and when, SUFCo’s owner, Colin McCrate offers instruction and welcomes your involvement in your little victory garden. If you’re too busy, or too lazy, that’s fine too: They’ll handle everything for you, including building your garden beds, planting the seeds, and maintaining your plants as they bubble up out of the soil. SUFCo promises to provide your household with fresh seasonal vegetables and herbs every week.

One of the SUFCo’s strongest selling features beyond being able to produce fresh vegetables on your own property is that they have an extremely stringent organic policy; while they do have a USDA organic certification, they are confident that their confident that practices are superior to those of the Organic and environmental stipulations necessary for the accreditation.

My guess is that apartment dwellers are SOL on this score; you’d have to be able to have one hell of a window box to make it worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re on your own. Fortunately for you, there are still plenty of great farmer’s markets in the Seattle area where you can score good organic produce.

Out with the lawn, in with edibles [seattlepi.nwsource.com]

Seattle Urban Farm Company [seattleurbanfarmco.com]

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Long the haven for all things forgotten, hidden, unsavory, or in any other way unacceptable for casual observance, the realm under the bed is no place for monsters, as we once believed in our childhoods. It’s more the place for sex toys and dirty magazines, dirty clothes, dirty dishes in some slovenly cases, and all manner of things we don’t use but can’t bring ourselves to throw away.

We sleep in a Captain’s Bed, which has three large drawers on either side of it. Xtine keeps some of her clothes in there, as well as her magazine article tear sheets, a lot of vintage pulp, her leather gear, and one whole drawer of nothing but backup hair and skin products. There’s a division between the sides of drawers where the cats sometimes hide amidst the dust balls. And that’s usually it. Today’s inspection revealed only one errant item: a rubber monster finger puppet, so I guess they do live under there after all!

I double dare you to inspect and report back on what you’ll find under your own bed. Honor code applies, but if the findings are truly embarrassing, aliases are very easy here, of course.

Strange Things Under Beds [news.sky.com]

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Okay, with the computer itself, those arguments are moot—I’m not opening that Pandora’s box of debate here, and yeah, I buckled down and bought a MacBook recently. It’s great, but the screen’s already got oily thumbprints on it (honestly, I’ve tried not to touch it, but shit happens), and it’s time to get something to clean it with. But I do balk at the pricetag of the stuff that Apple says is the only junk to do the job right and proper.

Does anyone have any cheaper, just-as-good alternatives they can back?

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It’s clear the previous residents had problems with ants, too, if the many plastic traps are any indication. And while I don’t particularly want to encourage them—time to wash out the trash can, obviously—it’s not like we’re going to be able to completely rid ourselves of them without tearing down the building, or at least sealing all the cracks (if their nest is outside). Is there something harmful about having ants in a home?

Humans live in a swirling ecosystem of micro-organisms, insects, and vermin. I can’t help but thinking it’s cool that ants might keep my house cleaner, or even preventing less desirable nasties to gain a foothold. (Maybe I should release ladybugs inside this summer!)

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Instead, we should have given this stuff away. Or at least swapped it for something else we wanted!

I’ve assembled a small list of sites that exist to help you get rid of your old junk. I haven’t used all of these, so be wary.

• Freecycle is the granddaddy of the gifting web community. It’s likely there is a Freecycle group in your town. Freecycle is best for giving away, although the frugal junk collector will enjoy keeping an eye on the local lists. You don’t get anything from giving away your stuff besides good feelings.

• Craigslist is the internet’s free classified ads. You’d think everyone would have heard of it by now, but I continue to trip over people who have not. Craigslist is a great place to sell your stuff or give it away for free.

• Bookins lets you trade books for $4 apiece including shipping.

• BookMooch lets you trade books as well, but uses a points system. (Get points for trade ins, use those points to order new books.)

• Lala allows you to trade CDs, those strange discs with magical inscriptions.

• Game Trading Zone is a site for trading games.

• So is Goozex.

• As is Switchplanet, which also lets you swap DVDs.

• What does I Trade Video Games (dot com) exist for, I wonder?

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The 24-gallon “Action Packer” version pictured here looks extra sturdy, but is probably overkill for most.

When not in use, they tubs stack inside of themselves, taking up little space. With the lids on, they stack as high as the ceiling in cat-resistant columns. I use one to collect my electronics cruft, cables and such, while our winter clothes and shoes go in two others tucked in the basement. My Lego collection fits in two, comfortably hidden beneath my work bench.

Cardboard is for chumps.

Product Page [Target]

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