Brummet's Conscious Blog

-- Quote of the Day --    "In an earlier stage of our development most human groups held to a tribal ethic. Members of the tribe were protected, but people of other tribes could be robbed or killed as one pleased. Gradually the circle of protection expanded, but as recently as 150 years ago we did not include blacks. So African human beings could be captured, shipped to America and sold. In Australia white settlers regarded Aborigines as a pest and hunted them down, much as kangaroos are hunted down today. Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the specialists ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics."  ~Pete Singer -- Solar Energy --  ...

 -- Quote of the Day -- "When it’s all over, it’s now who you were. It’s whether you made a difference." ~ Bob Dole -- Wind Power --    Wind power is fast becoming a more reliable and efficient form of clean energy, and major structures are now using this technology.  Enco , for instance, (a Dutch sustainable energy corporation), has signed a contract with all the electric trains owned by Nederlandse Spoorwegen … by 2018 more than 1.2 million passengers will be able to travel with zero impact.    Find Dave and Lillian Brummet, excerpts from their books, their radio program, blog, and more at: http://brummet.ca * Support the Brummets by telling your friends, clicking those social networking buttons, or visiting the Brummet's Store - and help raise funds for charity as well!  

-- Quote of the Day --  "I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part." ~ Shirley MacLaine  -- Green Buildings --  Did you know that the color of your building plays a role in climate change?  If you think about it, the colors black and red in particular are well known for absorbing and attracting heat - so if buildings have these colors on their roof, driveways, or siding then they will attract more heat, trapping it in the area and thereby contribute to Urban Greenhouse Effect . Where as white colors and shiny surfaces reflect heat and light, contributing to Urban Glare. And these effects play a huge role in the energy costs for your building and the comfort of the residents. Painting those surfaces tan or light gray, or installing siding of similar colors is a simple solution.  You can choose to purchas...

 -- Chatter --  Whew! Well the landscaping is in now, and in fact I was able to glean from a couple more neighbors. One is taking out a bed she has under her narrow deck because it is too difficult to maintain... and I was able to take one of her dark almost black-purple iris from there for the landscaping project. Another house has been available for sale for a long time and is kinda abandoned - a lot of their flowers had expired but I took a small division of their dwarf iris for this project. another neighbor has a back yard they don't use or maintain and the grass is chest high - but beyond that you can see remnants of an amazing gardener's handy work some years ago... there's a huge berm of various peony, rose and other plants there. She suggested I take some peony for the landscape beds and so I chipped a couple roots off... and hope they take. They look a little wimpy and wilted right now. Anyway all the mulch is spread on the beds and the last bit of finished co...

-- Garden --  I wanted to thank everyone for your patience while I physically exhaust myself on our landscaping projects. You read about our projects on the 22nd and also just the other day (see post below)... We have all 7 trees in now and 3 shrubs so far. Interestingly not only are we going to reduce the wind, dust and heat issues for our neighborhood... we are increasing the value of our property, while supporting beneficial life (birds, butterflies, bats, butterflies and insects that will both pollinate our plants and eat up the potential garden pests). But most important to us is the fact that we know that these plants will help mitigate global warming - annually, when mature the 7 trees and 11 shrubs will absorb 1875 kg of pollution and release enough clean oxygen for 25 people every single year. They'll also provide leaves for our garden soil production. Besides all of this we've made the neighborhood a little more beautiful with the diverse leaf color and berry and...

-- Garden --   You may recall back on the 22nd of this month I gave a little chat about some of the amazing benefits of landscaping and greening balconies, roof tops, window sills, front steps, etc. This is our 4th year on this property and we are finally able to do some landscaping... I started with a 30' mulched landscape bed leading to and underneath a huge pine tree - filled with daylilies, iris, marigolds, clematis, sweet peas, rhubarb, amethyst,  blue hyacinth, 4 o'clocks, nasturtium, flower bulbs and so on. It has taken quite nicely and things are blooming well despite being the first year. This weekend we will start on "gorilla gardening" techniques... planting on the city property - a grassy area between our fence line and the street curb. *We did check with the city to make sure it was alright and also followed through with the "call before you dig" service which connected us with the gas, water, sewer, city and other tech folks out there to...

-- Guest Blogging Tips --  * By George Russel Joseph Many people have been wondering whether guest blogging has an effect on SEO in current times. The truth is that the practice increases SEO. This is because it aids in increasing overall long tail traffic. While guest blogging still has the ability of increasing the ranking of your site, you need to observe a number of tips. The tips that you need to put into consideration include: Ensure that you post on relevant blogs Google recently rolled out measures to punish websites that had links in irrelevant blogs. For example, if you have a health blog, you will be punished if a link is found in a commerce blog. To prevent your blog from being punished, you should ensure that you post on relevant blogs. This means that if you have a finance blog, you should post on finance related blogs only. For you to brand yourself and drive traffic to your site, you should not only post on related blogs, but you sh...