The Convergence Zone

FRONTLINE’s Poisoned Waters , airing Tuesday, April 21, 2009 "...growing environmental threat comes not from the giant industrial polluters of old, but from chemicals in consumers’ face creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and household cleaners that find their way into sewers, storm drains, and eventually into America’s waterways and drinking water." “We thought all the way along that [Puget Sound] was like a toilet: What you put in, you flush out,” says Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire, who notes that about 150,000 pounds of untreated toxins find their way into Puget Sound each day. “We [now] know that’s not true. It’s like a bathtub: What you put in stays there.” No mention of SAVE OUR SALMON in the entire press release about the show. So not to worry.

Economical shopper that I am, I rarely buy salmon if its over 6.00 a lb, and I haven't asked recently where it comes from, but odds are its raised in a crowded pen on the edge of a body of salt water, mixing with the oceans. My daughter tells me what's wrong with farmed salmon. Not only does it lack much of the nutritional value of wild salmon, the farmed salmon & their diseases are moving from the farms to the open waters, directly threatening the wild species. Read more about it at Save Our Wild Salmon and Why Wild Salmon , a very informative site from Trout Unlimited. So far, I've learned: -- Its good to eat wild salmon if its caught responsibly, encouraging that fishing industry -- Not good to eat farmed salmon of any kind, shouldn't support that industry --There is no more salmon farming in Puget Sound, or anywhere in the US. It was outlawed due to disease in the fish and other factors. --Salmon is farmed on Vancouver Island, and in northern European...

Here's what happens when we were testing with the hose to add water to the garden basin. Looks like it just rained, but not on day this taken, April 4. This was last week, and recent cold weather and rain have added to the lower rain garden basin, to be shown next. My "raingarden" is not actually the same as what may be pictured in recent articles about this concept. What I have is more of a drainage system with a swale at the upper side, pictured here, and another swale at the lower level, with drainage channels running in between. Basically all this is more like the playing with sand and water at the beach that I did as a kid. We'd work on rerouting the stream channel that ran into Puget Sound near our house, using beach rocks, logs, and the sand. Now its dirtier, and there's an actual purpose to it other than just having fun. But when I'm out there and the rain is pouring down and I'm poking at the little blockages in the drainage patterns, removin...

Now that I'm making sure my plastic will be finally laid in the landfill, after being cast out of the recycling facilty if it does not meet the requirements, or after being recycled into park bench or decking material, and what's left goes in the landfill to stay forever, now that that's all figured out, I can focus back on my little rain garden project. Just visited a yard where the drainage is a real problem, lawn all squishy and mossy. But here we live on a hill, near the top at nearly 500 ft so we don't get drainage from above, except of course from the up the cul de sac to our east. A river of storm water runs along the front of the curb, and if I could just figure out a way to channel it into the yard, I'd really be in business. But back to the drainage from the roof of our split-level, and the channeling into this little swale. Here's a new picture of the daffodils and a few plantings. The red twigs were just stuck in as cuttings to root, but those...

This is text from places cited - how many of the plastic bags I throw away end up here? How can there be any more debate about paper or plastic or recyclable? Great Pacific Garbage Patch In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. The area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean. The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas. Th...

Its another cold, snowy day here in the Convergence Zone, and checking the garden I see that the drainage system from rooftop down gutters, downspouts, thru rain garden and to the vegetable patch is working fine. Spinach is sprouting little green shoots, and one spinach plant now with baby leaves is getting ready to grow (of the seeds planted last fall, just this one survived the winter). Pictures here of drainage and some more plantings. I'm using the garden now as a place for plants like the heuchera I got on sale to grow for a bit. They were from last fall, overgrown, sitting in a corner of the nursery greenhouse. Soon I'll divide them and they will be like new.