The Birth of Fawns

Last Thursday, in our backyard, I saw a female deer and her newly born fawn still wobbly on its thin legs. I rushed for binoculars and a camera. To my utter amazement I witnessed the birth of two more fawns in the next hour. Unfortunately, it was a dreadfully rainy afternoon. Mother deer had to work hard to lick her newborns dry. First born even sought shelter under the bows of a cedar tree during one down pour. They seemed to be doing fine though despite the unrelenting rain.

I am so privileged to have observed the births and the wonder of new life.

If you like to see a slide show of the pictures I took, please let me know.

Green Walls and Vertical Gardens

In our urban world the ground - the horizontal landscape - is precious, in short supply. In contrast, there is a large supply of vertical landscapes totally unused except as the outside of a container like a building or a freeway. The hard surfaces of all these walls, facades and concrete barriers do their best to diminish the quality of life in a city. They bounce back noise, create their own wind patterns, increase summer temperatures and permit pollution to travel far.

Enter Patrick Blanc, the French botanist who used his extensive knowledge of plants to create living walls of breathtaking beauty and wondrous possibilities:
http://www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com/

We think about his ideas mostly for indoors, bringing a garden inside, but what if we applied the concept to the outer world?

Imagine then a different city: buildings draped in greenery, erupting in flowers in the spring and summer. The plants temper the climate by moderating temperature and airflow. They dampen noises.
Urban gardeners adapting to growing vegetables and fruit on the vertical spaces of houses. Their bounty a welcome addition to the local markets.
Green barriers all along our urban streets planted with specially cultivated plants that absorb pollution, calm the surface winds and absorb storm run off.

Imagine the beauty of such a city, its air perfumed with flowers, enriched with oxygen and cleansed of pollutants. Maybe the birds would come back to live among us. Maybe we could even hear them sing again. Would we be healthier in body and spirit?

Woven Nanofibers to Generate Electricity

Imagine a personal, portable generator that boosts a failing phone or powers a small LED flashlight to guide you safely through the dark. Need power? Just plug into your clothes.

Researchers are the University of California have an idea how such a 'power suit' might work. Millions of nanofibers woven into your clothes capture the energy of your every movement and harness them as usable electricity. The fibers are really fine and light so clothes should be comfortable and yet the fibers are strong enough to hold up to normal wash and wear.

There is a lot of buzz about the nanofiber project. The Pentagon hopes that soldiers could energize small appliances in the field independent of other power sources like heavy batteries. Outdoor enthusiasts could recharge their cameras, phones or flashlights without leaving the wild. But best of all, the rest of us wouldn't need to remember any more to charge our favorite device. We could just keep it in the pockets of our power clothes.

Once we are good at making power cloth, other applications beckon:

Kite Flying at night: hundreds of kite dance in the wind, their tales bend and twist in the wind generating the piezoelectricity that powers their crow pleasing light displays. The best kites are the brightest. Great skill is required in the building and handling of piezo kites. Their creators are the envied leaders of a new craze among young people.

Wind Sails and Flags: Sail boats carry at least one sail woven with nanofibers giving them another source of energy and reducing the need for heavy batteries.
Small flags generate the power for porch lights. Large, fixed flags or small sails on poles make walk lights independent of the power grid.

Fiber Kelp: Maybe we could even rethink our approach to generating power from the ocean and rivers. Instead of giant clunky cylinders, or huge barriers, electricity could be produced by tens of thousands of cloth streamers, bending with the current like giant kelp and being just as hospitable to marine life.