Blog from the 'burbs

This past weekend I stayed in Boston, in a lovely 1894 Victorian B & B on Beacon Street. The owner, Katherine Swanner, was a wonderful hostess and also a font of information about Boston, past and present. She mentioned that one of the primary ways people get around in Boston, besides the T (part of which conveniently runs right down the middle of Beacon Street), is by Zipcar, in which cars can be picked up for hourly or daily use at T stops and other convenient locations. Rockville has Zipcar too; I've written a blurb about how Zipcar works at Rockville Metro stations in the Greenpages.

Happy Earth Day! It's a gorgeous one. I've added a blurb to the Gardening section in the Greenpages about our new compost tumbler. We've switched from the open wire-mesh compost pile we've been using for the past 15 years to an enclosed tumbler and are looking forward to seeing how well it works. I'll be turning it regularly and post pictures of how the contents change over the next few weeks (supposedly we'll have our first batch ready by mid-May). If you have any composting tips, suggestions, horror stories, or great successes to offer, I'd be glad to hear and post them.

The Clean Energy Open House at Mike Tidwell's in Takoma Park today was excellent. The best part for us was finding a compact fluorescent light bulb that makes nice light and doesn't hum (and uses 1/3 the energy of its incandescent equivalent and lasts for 10,000 hours and cost $5).

We swapped out two incandescents today for the two n:vision bulbs we got at the open house (and took some before and after pictures), and plan to get to Home Depot in the near future to stock up on more. I'll post in the Greenpages if we find anyone else who carries them in this area.