Picking bananas in the living room
I don’t much like fooling people on April Fool’s Day, but I do like the levity it inspires. Here’s a great compromise, passed on by my mother.
It’s an interview from the Colbert Report with Michael Reynolds, the inventor of the “Earthship” concept. Earthships are homes built into the land out of “garbage” materials like tires and bottles. Maggie and I visited an Earthship when we visited my grandparents in New Mexico and they did indeed have a banana tree in the living room.
We also visited a more local Earthship and it was amazing how different it looked even though it was built from similar materials. The challenges you face in New Mexico (altitude, dry heat, snow) are pretty different from those you see in the Midwest (rain, snow, and more rain), so the house had changed even though the principles were the same.
It’s a cool concept and Mike Reynolds is an interesting guy, so it’s worth watching. Enjoy!
‘Tis the season for getting those garden plants started. Many classic garden plants like tomatoes and peppers suggest starting indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost so I’m actually a little bit late. (Last frost here is about May 15th, I think.) My friend Maggie and I are growing flowers for our weddings as well as planting a big veggie patch this year. As usual, I pulled out my seed collection and decided I didn’t need to buy any new seeds but then after I had my hands in the dirt I realized I was missing some of the plants I wanted. Ah, well.