October 2, 2009
by BOBBY MCMAHON
Capital News Service
Maryland's housing industry has seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Probably.
According to recent figures and industry experts, the state's real estate and homebuilding industries have hit bottom and begun a slow climb back up.
BRAC-related jobs and a better-than-average economic outlook could mean a faster recovery than expected, but concerns remain about the expiring first-time home buyer tax credit and other problems in the industry, all of which put continued growth in doubt.
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Washington Gardener
by Kathy Jentz
It is apple picking season and most folks go out to a local orchard more for the experience of a crisp autumn day in the country than for the actual apples themselves. At local orchards, you can buy apples already picked along with apple cider, apple sauce, and my favorite, apple butter.
You can also sample apples of different varieties and gather recipes from the apple growers. Keep in mind that certain apples are better for baking and others are better for snacking. For every day eating, I’m a Gala girl myself, but recently tasted Jonaclicious at a local farmer’s market and I think I’ll make the switch.
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September 2009
When I was about seven years old my best friend and next door neighbor, Bruce, was stung fifteen times by wasps. He was playing hide and seek and somehow bumped up against their nest in a bush. The wasps swarmed to protect their home, and he was completely engulfed in their rage.
I’ve been thinking about Bruce’s bad day a lot lately, realizing that there are not a lot of people out there who would be willing to host these creatures purposefully. I think that convincing anyone to plant a garden to attract wasps would be a hard sell.
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EarthTalk
September 2009
Insulate your home and create oxygen with a green roof
There are many good reasons to build a rooftop garden, or a so-called “green roof”—whereby layers of soil and plants on top of homes and buildings provide a host of environmental “services” for the living space below as well as for the surrounding ecosystem. Unlike traditional roofs, green roofs thrive on (and filter) precipitation, decreasing the amount of pollution-laden stormwater run-off draining into our waterways. And thanks to the process of photosynthesis, the plantings create oxygen, cleanse the air and absorb carbon dioxide before it gets into the atmosphere and adds to our global warming woes.
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EarthTalk
September 2009
Homeowners can get up to $1,500 back from the federal government for any number of energy efficiency upgrades at home. If you upgrade to energy efficient insulation, windows, doors, heating, air conditioning or water heaters between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010, you are eligible for a tax credits of up to 30 percent of product costs.
The credit is capped at $1,500 combined; meaning it only applies to $5,000 in total costs. More details are available at the website of the Tax Incentives Assistance Project, a coalition of public interest nonprofit groups, government agencies and other organizations focused on energy efficiency.
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EarthTalk
September 2009
With the advent of the so-called Green Revolution in the second half of the 20th century—when farmers began to use technological advances to boost yields—synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides became commonplace around the world not only on farms, but in backyard gardens and on front lawns as well.
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April 2009
by Ashley Bryant
While incense and meditative music fill the air, the customary greeting of “peace” flows through the purple halls of Dr. Nazirahk Amen’s Carroll Avenue shop, Wisdom Path Healing Center. He hopes the word peace doesn’t loosely deflect from one person to the next—but penetrates the minds and souls of those his words meet. He is taking steps to get beneath the surface with his words as well as his hands by connecting the community back to its roots, not through any genealogic pursuits, but literally through gardening.
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photos by Julie Wiatt |
March 2009
by Howard Kohn
In the long passage from the first tests for termites and tensile strength in the underpinnings of the house at 47 Jefferson Avenue to the day of the hallelujah arrival of Mark Peterson and Laura Hamm Peterson a resolve settled in Art McMurdie that this would be his last salvage job in Takoma Park. But, oh, what a job he did.
The house had stood in a state of near abandonment for several years, lived in for the final stage only by an old lady and her cats. Built in 1923, it had taken on the look of Dorothea Lange’s Appalachia. Neighbors who brought packages of food to the woman could with any step crack another hole in the porch floor.
To Art, it qualified as a wreck and not a fixer-upper, a distinction with a difference. “A fixer-upper is for someone handy with tools. I was always looking for a house that should be demolished,” he said on a recent morning, relaxed in an easy chair in his own well-kept home on Cleveland Avenue. “You could say I’m a demolition man, just a different kind.”
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January 2009
Sustainable Gardening
by Susan Harris
Have you heard about the “Eat the View” campaign that’s petitioning the Obama administration to grow a Victory Garden at the White House? Led by Roger Doiron of Kitchen Gardeners International and widely promoted by food and garden writer Michael Pollan, Eat the View uses big names plus great videos and graphics to garner gobs of publicity for this excellent cause - over 450 newspaper items so far.
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January 2009
Easy Gardener
by Pat Howell
Easy Gardener figures that since there will be serious belt-tightening measures in 2009, that will mean fewer garden books, few, if any, plant purchases, but plenty more time to play in the garden.
Moving the existing plants around is long over-due. We all know that no garden is ever finished; and Easy Gardener hopes you have discovered that nearly all perennials (and some shrubs) really do love the attention garnered while being contemplated, dug up, divided, shared, and given a different perspective from which to view their neighbors. Plants are social creatures, so neighborliness suits them well, and they show it.
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December 2008
March of the energy efficiency experts
by Kellie Woodhouse
As going “green” becomes more fashionable, a new Silver Spring company is taking a fresh look on what it means to be eco-friendly for homeowners.
Energy Penguin, founded this past August, is an energy auditing business that advises customers on the rudimentary changes needed to make their homes energy efficient, safe and comfortable. The new start-up company educates homeowners on how the different components of a house interact with each other and what actions will efficiently improve its performance.
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photo by Julie Wiatt |
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