Could we generate electricity from garbage on Gabriola? One New York town plans to turn their trash into electricity. A team of scientists in Minoa, New York have created the first prototype for a small-scale co-digester reactor using human and food waste to generate electricity for their village. Although the technology is not new – [...]
Filed in environment One Response so far
If I had money to blow on tech stuff I don’t need, I’d buy this USB typewriter in a heartbeat, and would then have the coolest computer setup on all of Gabriola, oh yes. In other technogeek news, those of you who want to build your own tablet computers are in luck with these directions [...]
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I listened to an interview on CBC Radio’s The Current this morning that I think will be of interest to many people in the Gabriola community who are concerned with sustainability. For anyone who missed it: here’s the 22 minute audio file. Click on June 18, Pt 1, Peak Oil. You can go out and [...]
Filed in environment One Response so far
Last month I blogged about the Kandas’ Gabriola square foot garden. The other day I went back to see how the garden’s doing. Two of the squares in their garden left me pretty much stunned. They were planted with the same seeds, yet one square of Bee Blend flowers is bursting with plants (shown in [...]
Filed in Gabriola Island,gardening 4 Comments so far
Can we expect wireless internet access on the Gabriola ferry route? Probably not anytime soon, but the Vancouver Sun reports that B.C. Ferries will offer free Wi-Fi, starting on the Swartz Bay – Tsawwassen run. Just what you’ve always wanted, or total waste of money? [Source: sorry, article no longer available.]
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Do you wonder what the food inspector finds when he looks in the kitchen at your favourite Gabriola restaurant? I do. And if there are any scary things going on in regard to cleanliness or food preparation, I’d like to know about those before I decide where to have lunch. The Food Inspections department of [...]
Filed in food,Gabriola Island One Response so far
One of the things about having a dog is that you always know Where the Dead Things Are. On Gabriola, they’re everywhere. Todays’ dead thing is this little mouse, left in our yard by some neighbour’s cat. Probably the same annoying cat who leaves calling cards in the flower bed.
Filed in dogs,Gabriola Island,wildlife 4 Comments so far
Good news: we’ve got lots of lupin on Gabriola. Better news: some of it’s blue. Best news: blue lupin has planted itself in our yard. Heh. Lupin is good for the soil, Wikipedia’s lupin page says: Like most members of their family, lupins can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into ammonia via a rhizobium-root nodule [...]
From an AFP article at Raw Story: Whale poop fights climate change. Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year thanks to their faeces, a study found on Wednesday. The cetaceans have been previously fingered as climate culprits because [...]
Filed in environment,sea creatures One Response so far
Knots. You want to know the cool ones, whether you’re tying up at Silva Bay or roping in your Gabriola garden in a (futile) attempt to keep the deer out. Animated knots to the rescue! Is very fun. Seeing the bowline again for the first time in many years brings back an awful lot of [...]
Filed in assorted,boating 2 Comments so far
I love the quiet of Gabriola, and interrupting that tranquility with a lawnmower seems just…. wrong. Evil, even. So we ordered a scythe over the internet, and found a book about scything, too. We assembled our scythe, and went to work early one morning. The first surprise is that scything is insanely fun. When I’m [...]
Filed in Gabriola Island 5 Comments so far
I often see equestrians on Gabriola trails, particularly in the part of the Elder Cedar Nature Reserve that’s near Windecker, and in the 707 Acre Community Park. I like horses and they (both horses and riders) always seem to be friendly and polite, so this is fine by me. But are horses OK for Gabriola’s [...]
Filed in Gabriola Island,invasive plants,RDN 9 Comments so far
The Gabriola Island Health and Wellbeing Survey is out. You can pick up a paper copy at the Gabriola branch of the VIRL, at the Gabriola Women’s Institute, or at the Gabriola Clinic. There’s an online version of the survey, too, at GabriolaHealth.ca. [Update, March 2011: that site doesn't seem to be around anymore.] I [...]
Filed in Gabriola Island 4 Comments so far
There they were, two people wading at Drumbeg with fishing nets. They were catching sea urchin, which then went into a bucket, and then home for dinner. I grew up near Gabriola, but didn’t get the memo on sea urchins – I didn’t know they were edible. Did you? Have the rest of you been [...]
Filed in food,Gabriola Island,sea creatures 5 Comments so far
I wonder what Gabriola’s guerrilla knitters would make of this wind knitting factory: The Wind Knitting Factory is a temporary factory – a mechanical wind-knitting machine – that illustrates a sustainable production process and demonstrates in a direct way that you can produce a viable product using only urban wind power. [continue, see photo]
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Many of you have been on Gabriola for ages, so you know this kind of thing, right?
Filed in Gabriola Island,history 2 Comments so far
If Gabriola’s wild daisies do your heart good, this is the time to go visit all those untended areas where grass grows tall in the summer-time. These daisies are at the Gabriola Commons. There are bound to be millions in bloom in the 707 Acre Woods, too. I’m very fond of these flowers. The bad [...]
In February I blogged about a Lotus pinnatus, a rare flower that grows on Gabriola and in the Nanaimo area. Nanaimo was thinking about adopting that flower as its official emblem; now they’ve done it. From the Nanaimo News Bulletin: Nanaimo names Lotus pinnatus as official floral emblem. At the height of its annual, short-lived [...]
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