Happy New Year from Bloomingwriter and Bloominganswers

Here it is only the third day of 2012 and I've already managed to pull a bit of a post together! I learned some years ago not to make resolutions, so that I don't have to feel guilty about not keeping them. Instead, I do the best I can. As Master Yoda would say, "Do, or do not--there is no try." He had a point, didn't he, and not just his ears.

Mostly I wanted to take the time to say thank you to all those who have already signed up at bloominganswers. It's still very much a work in progress, with some facets that are confusing to me when I'm working behind the scenes to make things as easy to navigate as possible. I'm delighted that we have members from the United States and the UK as well as from across Canada--this is a site for any gardener, whether indoor or out, whether in the tropics or in the tundra.

It's been nearly six years since I started writing this blog, so actually it's entering its seventh year of posts. Much has changed during that time, especially in terms of my personal, physical abilities. Yesterday, since we were having yet another overly-mild day, I finally got the last of my bulbs planted, a task that would have normally been done by mid-late November, when I was laid up after my knee surgery. But bulbs are tenacious, and they were in good shape when I plopped them into the soggy ground, and they will mostly all bloom come spring. I remind myself that I'm also tenacious, and that others have far more serious ailments than I do, so I need to be grateful and carry on.

It's important to me to thank my readers, both online and in the publications I work with, and those who have bought my books. Also I thank everyone who comes out to the presentations and workshops I do from time to time. One of the greatest joys about gardening is the sense of community it fosters, and the sharing that goes on between gardeners, between friends across the miles.

I have several potential projects in the works along with the new website, and so I shan't promise to blog every couple of days, or even every week. Nor will I promise to get to everyone's blog as quickly as I used to. There are so many now, which is exciting because it's great to see the passions for planting and how people do things differently. There are also so many other social media demands on our time, from Facebook to Twitter to Google+ (whatever that latter is--I don't know yet) and it can become overwhelming. I remind everyone that we garden for pleasure, and that reading and participating in garden sites ought to be for fun too. No stresses, please--we have enough of those in the other parts of our lives.

So here's to 2012, and more garden adventures, wherever you are, whatever you plant. For me, I'm hoping winter will arrive soon, to cover up the wet yucky yard, and to bring on the snow buntings!

No time for my blog, I am too busy planting!

Hello, friends, fellow gardeners, and other visitors. Did you think I had run off to far away lands? Not exactly...it's been a busy busy month, this July, which of course kicked off with the Open Garden weekend. My voice finally came back completely after about two weeks, which was surely a record for laryngitis. Highly entertaining when one makes a living asking questions of others.

I don't know how YOUR garden is going, but ours has exploded into a rhapsody of lushness. Shrubs are covered in blooms, daylilies are filled with scapes and packed with high bud counts, grasses are growing taller and taller..in fact, pretty much everything is growing taller and taller.

Naturally, I can't resist bringing home new or new-to-me plants, and there have been more of those than ever, this year. They range from tiny saxifrage alpines to fascinating perennials like this yellow stokesia...

To the not-hardy but definitely delectable chocolate cosmos, which really does smell of chocolate. I have to remember to dig and store the tuber of this plant this year!

Long ago, when I was a student at NSAC, the greenhouse lab technician wrote a poem for me. Ken and I were always bantering back and forth, playing little tricks on each other, and as I was going into exam time I spent even more time in the greenhouses, either playing with plants or actually studying. The last couple of lines of the poem, which I still have somewhere, went thusly:

"As she runs to the greenhouse we still hear her chanting,

No time for degree, I am too busy planting!"

Some might think "I'm not finished planting yet!" will be my epitaph. They're probably correct. But you know what? This is the perfect time of year to do planting, at least in our climate. Warm days, cool (ish) nights, adequate rainfall...all these things are highly welcoming to new plants whether they be annual transplants that you just had to save, or container grown trees and shrubs!

There is LOTS of colour in our gardens these days, but as far as I am concerned, there always is. There are the big showy annual poppies with their brilliant colours, countless lilies and roses, astilbes and hostas, cranesbills and filipendula...

But there's also a feast of foliage here. When I look out one office window (the other is obscured by the ever-joyous 'Limelight' hydrangea), I see a feast for the senses--lots of flowers, yes, but also rich foliage from golden tansy to copper beech to purple barberry to blue oat grass. It all makes me happy.

I spend a LOT of time when not actually gardening, staring through my camera's various lens at plants and their visitors. What I love about macro photography is that the camera's lens 'sees' things I can't with my naked, aging eyes, like the hairs on this bumblebee's legs.

If you aren't growing astrantia (masterwort), I'd like to know why! It's a fantastic plant, very floriferous, attractive to a huge number of pollinators, makes a nice clump, and some varieties self-seed, though I haven't had that pleasure yet. There are about half a dozen varieties in our gardens, from white 'Star of Heaven' seen here to deep red flowered varieties, to pink varieties, to 'Sunningdale Variegated', which has gold and green leaves.

Summer is also a time for family, and I've been very happy to have my son home visiting. He is a film and camera buff, creative like his mother but more into making films to tell stories than into writing. He has been teaching me more about my camera, too.

And the happiest of things I can share? I am back riding my horse after more than two years of not riding! This is pretty important to me, especially as I'm going to be getting new knees within the next year, which will make all things easier to do. After losing a number of cherished friends in recent months, I decided that what I'm dealing with is only pain, and no matter what I do I hurt. So I might as well do what I love, and to heck with the pain. Leggo, my faithful Morgan horse, seems to approve too.

I'll try to post more regularly in coming weeks, but if not, you'll know why...I'm still too busy planting!

5 years of Blooming Fun...

Life is always entertainingly busy around these parts. Right after the holidays, people came back to work, looked at their calendars, and freaked out about the time, and bombarded me with “we need to get this done” statements. Those sorts of announcements  don’t bother me at all, as I like to be busy, but I’ve been so busy that I plumb missed my own blogaversary.

Somehow, I thought it was at the end of the month, not two weeks ago. Whoops. Well, at least it wasn’t my own anniversary, a birthday or something else of import.

Fabulous Foliage, and Spotlight Saturday...on Sunday.

To coincide with my Chronicle Herald column for today, I thought I'd blither on a bit more about the joys of foliage for autumn. But before we get too far into my rhapsodic ramblings about leaf colour, a brief public service announcement. It's been far too long since I did a 'SpotLight Saturday' post, primarily because life got in the way what with garden season being full steam ahead, coupled with book writing and other work that pays the bills whilst book writing...Something had to give, and so the amount of time spent reading blogs fell off. Now that gardening is winding down and the days are much shorter, there's more time to read...and I like to encourage and promote other blogs, so I'll try to do these more often.

I first became aware of Dirt Gently's Horticultural Adventures because the blogger appeared in my Twitter feed as a new follower. Naturally, as a Douglas Adams fan I was completely smitten with the blog title...and a quick visit showed me this was a fun blog to follow. Great photos, and some self-effacing humour about gardening skills. The blog was only started in September, so a little encouragement from fellow bloggers is always a good thing.

Disclosure: I look after the blog for Baldwin Nurseries, and it's a work in progress. Baldwin's is one of my favourite nurseries in the province, and Robert is a good friend who loves plants, especially natives and those that are good for pollinators. So while 'he' may not comment much on other people's blogs, I do hope you'll visit and leave comments for him to enjoy. And come see the nursery, of course. It's getting a bit late in the season now, but he has plenty of great shrubs for fall and winter colour.

For those of you in Canada who watch CBC, Rob is participating in Debbie Travis's show All for One, tonight at 9 pm. I know very little about the show as I'm not a fan of home decorating shows, but I do know that tonight's show was shot in Windsor, NS. So I hope fans will tune in!

Which brings me back to blathering on about foliage. Dawn redwood (Metasequoia) is one of my favourite of non-native trees, with its graceful growth habit and interesting history. Before the needles of this deciduous conifer fall, they turn bronzy gold, and their spring colour is also bronze toned. The winter interest is in its striated, striking bark and elegant form.

A four-season beauty, the native red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea) has some excellent colour in its foliage. Once the leaves drop, the twigs show off brilliant red colour all winter. The cultivar 'Flaviramea' has golden twigs. You need to keep this shrub well-pruned so that it has plenty of new growth--older trunks lose their winter colour.

This photo is NOT mine. Although I have two burning bushes (Euonymus alatus) in my garden, getting decent photos of them has been a challenge since they began turning colour, because of the incessant wind. So I decided to turn to Google for help, and chose this Botany Photo of the Day shot so as to also promote UBC's excellent website. In today's column, I mention how I receive regular emailed photos at this time of year, wondering what "that" shrub is with the great colour. This is "that" shrub.

I wholeheartedly recommend ninebarks to everyone wanting a great four-season shrub. Most of them have interesting coloured foliage all gardening season, deepening to richer shades as autumn comes on. This is 'Diabolo', a purple-leafed cultivar that is an excellent, hardworking, easy care shrub.

The deciduous azaleas turn colour before losing their leaves, although they've been highly annoyed by the wind this autumn and have been more battered than colourful. This is an unnamed variety from Bill and Sharon at The Willow Garden. I have a number of their tough, beautiful rhododendron and azaleas, including several crosses that haven't been named.

Kolkwitzia is one of those plants that some refer to as old-fashioned, commonly planted and just sort of "there" in the garden. I love it for several reasons, not the least of which is the delicately luminous colour in fall foliage. 'Dreamcatcher' has richer colouring throughout the season, but mine was mown down by an errant lawnmower last year and is slowly recovering. So this is the common variety, given to me by a friend several years ago.

Barberries are excellent for fall colour. This is a seedling shrub from one of the purple leafed varieties in my garden. It's getting redder day by day.

Although the fall colour of my copper beech isn't showstoppingly brilliant, I include this photo for another reason. Beeches and oaks display a trait known as marcescence, meaning they retain their foliage for months after it has died. Usually it's younger trees that will do this, and my copper beech is only a few years old. Come winter, its coppery-brown leaves will look quite interesting--especially when there's a four-foot snowdrift surrounding the tree!

Many perennials will display some interesting fall colour as they wind down for the year. This is 'Alma Potchsche' New England aster, flowers faded but foliage still providing me with a smile.

And to wrap up, the always-wonderful foliage of Virginia creeper, catching some rays of sunlight on a day when the wind WASN'T screaming--a circumstance that has been rare this autumn, as I've mentioned before.

The montage at the top of this post includes Miscanthus 'Malepartus', showing great tints in its foliage; euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow', which I'm hoping is going to make it through the winter here with a little care; and 'Brilliance' autumn fern (Dryopteris), which has gorgeous foliage all through the growing season.

Okay, it's over to you, fellow bloggers: what are your favourite plants for fall colour?

New Page! Garden Events & Activities in Nova Scotia

Because I love to support good, reputable local nurseries, local garden clubs and nature societies, and other organizations and businesses of this nature, I decided to develop a page dedicated to them. It's my first foray into making pages and I can't say I have it all figured out just yet, but please bear with me and we'll get there.

Now, I do ask for your patience with this, as I'm all new to making pages. Because I use a third-party template, I haven't yet dared tamper with making tabs across the top of the blog home page, so you'll have to simply check out the Garden Events page by clicking the link on the left hand side of the blog. I hope you enjoy, and that it helps the businesses and organizations involved!

I may have an ugly garden. Depends on what day you look.

The past few days, there's been a disturbance in the garden blogging 'Force.' It all stemmed from a post made, perhaps with the best of intentions, about ugly unkempt gardens, mostly of the vegetable type. We’ve had a lot of sometimes heated talk in the past few days about ugly gardens, and messy gardens, and gardens with no design to them, and WEEDS, my dears.

There’s been twittering. There’s been blogging. There’s been myriad comments in defense and in umbrage of the original post, and I’m not gonna name the blog nor the blogger, but I am gonna confess my own sins.

Well, to begin I have this thing about weeds. The worst weeds in my estimation aren’t ‘weeds’ at all, but naughty ornamentals gone out of control. Like the bane of my existence, goutweed (Aegopodium). But otherwise...I really like most of the plants that many would call weeds.

I grow milkweed (Asclepias syriaca AND A. incarnata along with butterfly weed, A. tuberosa). I do this to help out the monarch butterflies, which cannot survive without milkweed. I also let a honkin' big patch of nettles grow up by the spruce trees, because there are the food source for red admiral butterflys (in cat form). I let a lot of wild plants--daisies, goldenrod, asters--do their own thing MOSTLY outside the garden beds, but if one or two plants creep into the perennial borders, no biggie. Bees, songbirds, butterflies, and other benign creatures depend on these plants to help them survive.

There are also gorgeous, glorious wild orchids on our property, some species of Platanthera (fringed orchids) and Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium), a hugely important butterfly plant. And spruce trees, and young firs, and mountain ash, and scubby wire birch, and carex and juncus and many species of wild grasses, many other shrubs and trees, growing in a blissful and healthy riot in the upper parts of the property.

Along the lower border, edging the paddock and a swampy ditch, there are willows, which many people decry as being bad plants. They take up some of the swampiness and create habitat for my beloved frogs. There are major numbers of cattails in the pond; perfect hiding places for small reptiles and amphibians, nesting places for my beloved redwinged blackbirds. There are alders all along the edge of our pond, bounding much of our property, and creeping into the lower pasture where we haven't mowed for several years. Alders are despised by many people. But they are excellent plants for securing stream and creek banks, filtering out toxins from water, providing food and shelter for wildlife.

There are dandelions in my lawn. Lots of clover. These both feed the bees, while all the perfect lawns at the McMansions a few miles off with their lethal doses of chemicals don't feed anything except the wallets of lawn care companies and big chemical.

All these things would give the average suburban home association a massive attack of the pearlclutching vapours. I'm blessed, however: I live on 7 acres, with a woodlot to the north of me, hayfields to the south, and a benign neighbour up the road and across about 200 feet. However, those driving by can't see what I'm up to, and you know what? I don't care if they do. (Oh, but Grace, I did finally get the Christmas wreaths and the swagging off the house and arbour. Today. The snow finally was gone from the base of the arbour that we could move it.)

This time of year, everything is a mess. As you'll see from the photos, even today, there is still snow in some areas. As it melts, it makes parts of the yard very squishy. In an effort not to compact things down more, we're only working around the edges of the drier gardens. I test a lot of plants, and so we don't always have big drifts of perennials because I'm trying a new shrub or perennial and things are accordingly spotty. But colourful.

In our family, I'm the primary income earner, which I do as a freelance writer, photographer, editor, sometime speaker. A lot of my income comes from talking about/writing about/taking photographs of gardens and gardening. And my mantra is "We can all grow great gardens.'

What that term 'great garden' means to you may be totally different from what it means to me. Here, my great garden is a mix of natives and introduced, heritage and hybrids, brand new and old faithfuls, trees, shrubs, perennials, grasses, ephemerals, annuals, bulbs, herbs, even a wee few vegetables. Yours may be three scarlet geraniums in a clay pot on a deck. They're both awesome, because they bring us joy.

In being a freelancer, rather than working for some company as a writer, things can be challenging. I have one client who is always significantly behind in paying me, and others that are occasional clients, others who are awesome and regular, which help me to build cushions for when I'm waiting to be paid by the big client who likes to hang onto their money til the last moment. So I don't have the spare cash to, say, hire a designer to deal with levelling some of the land or building me the stone wall I dearly want or doing any of a hundred other things that could be done. So we do them ourselves, what we can. This year, I am adding more soil as soon as I find some that is decent. I want to join a few beds, top up some areas, raise one section for an idea I have. Due to health issues, mostly mine, we can't do a whole lot in the run of a day, either. A couple hours for me and I can barely move, and I'm in constant, tedious, pain. But I work away at it, and LSS helps when he's not cutting firewood or doing some odd job elsewhere, or working at his own passions (his boat).

So it's not designer-perfect. But it's ours and we love it. If you don't love it, well, then send me some of your spare cash and I'll hire a friend of mine to improve it. Or, just don't look at it. We won't be offended.

And you, whether you have a balcony of succulents or a 20,000 landscaping job, whether you live on a suburban plot or revel in wide open spaces like we do...I hope you love your garden too. Just as long as it's yours and it makes you happy, it's all good. I won't criticize, but I will cheer you on.

I just want people to plant gardens, and plant things they enjoy, and enjoy what they do. Beyond that, we're learn as we grow together. It's NOT all easy, for sure. It can be strenuous, expensive, timeconsuming, frustrating. It can also be heaven on earth.

So just bloom where you're planted, have fun. If something doesn't work, try again next year, or use something else.

Like me. This afternoon, I go to say my last goodbye to my friend Dick. Tonight, if it's not snowing, I'll plant two American chestnut trees in his memory. That's what he wanted: for people to honour the earth in his memory by planting a tree.

Namasté, fellow gardeners. Onward and upward.

Spotlight Saturday: Have you visited This blogger? Introducing Cindee

I have endless amounts of admiration for those who have the ability to maintain more than one blog. My brain feels like it's turning to 3 bean salad some days with only ONE blog to maintain, so for those with two or more, wow, my writerly hat is off to you for your dedication. It also gives me two or three times as many posts to read from them, so that's always good.

With that in mind, I would like to introduce Cindee, who writes about gardens past and present, about crafts...and about cats, too. I found her first at Moonstone Gardens, which is, a she puts it, a "gardening blog based from a 17-acre resort garden." The resort is in Oregon, one of those places I dream of visiting because it's home to many great gardens and garden centres/breeders. For now, I content myself with reading about these places via blogs.



From there, I traipsed over to the wonderful and whimsical Our Grandmother's Gardens, where Cindee celebrates not only gardening but a variety of crafty endeavours, some of them based in garden-inspired art.

And how lucky are the cats who share life with Cindee, because they have their own blog at The Cat House! This one isn't updated quite so often, but it's lovely to visit Cindee's feline friends. My only worry is that OUR cats will demand their own blog. You know what Mungus is like. And Spunky too. I'd have to create a blog for each of them, and put little kitty cams on their heads, and they'd want to write the blogs themselves, and I'd have to share my laptop with them...

Whew. Like I said, one is enough for me.

So that's a bit of a look at Cindee's blogs, and you can see how they'd appeal to me. I think they'll appeal to many of you as well, so I hope you'll pop by one or more of them and say hello!

Spotlight Saturday: Have you visited This blogger?

First of all, thank you so much for your good wishes and thoughts. My health issue is an ongoing one, annoying and incapacitating at times but not lifethreatening, for which I'm deeply grateful. I've reminded myself of that especially this week, as we across the gardening blogosphere have had thoughts and prayers focused on our dear blogging bud Katie, who is fighting a serious illness. We send her much love, virtual tulips and healing thoughts across the time zones, states, provinces, countries, continents. (#fightkatie!) The sun is out here in lovely Nova Scotia this morning, so I hope that when it wakes on the far West Coast, it streams in Katie's window and helps her healing.

Two of my favourite things in the world are plants, and the pollinators that help their life cycles, especially bees. A third favourite thing is botanical/nature art. I can't draw or paint. At ALL. But I have a huge appreciation for and love of good botanical themed artwork, from the time of Pierre-Joseph Redoute to the artists of today.


Through the wonderful world of the Internet, I've found some amazing garden artists who blog, and have been following a few of them faithfully over the past several years. One of my favourites, and this week's Spotlight on Saturday choice, is Valerie Littlewood of Pencil and Leaf. I don't remember exactly when I discovered her blog, or by which means--I always figure it's synchronicity when I tumble upon a new blog that really hits me in the heart--but I love her work and especially her current area of interest.


Lately, Valerie has been combining two of my favourite things in her recent work: bees and plants. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of bees (one of my favourite twitter-peeps is @HelpSaveBees) , and it's even less of a secret to the wider world that bees of all kinds, both wild and domestic, bumble and honey, are in trouble due to a number of factors. So I figure anything that educates us more about these gentle, essential creatures and about what we can do to help save bees, is a very, very good thing. So I hope you'll buzz on over to Valerie's site, check out her paintings and sketches and her Flickr page of more of her work.

Skywatch Friday: Cheatin' with Summer Skies, Grateful for Gardening Friends...

A brief post for today, because I'm having an ill spell and am actually writing this in the middle of the night during the insomnia session that goes along. Since March came upon our shores, we haven't seen the sun, nor the moon for that matter. A full moon came and went but other than a lighter shade of pale in the clouds one night, we wouldn't have known. Such weather is tiresome, typical, and shared by others across the northern latitudes, so I thought a summer sunset might make us all feel better for this Skywatch Friday.


It's really hard for me to do my work-writing when I'm dealing with one of these illness sessions, so I do things that need doing but have been put off. Like tidying my paperwork and finding the top of my desk and tables in my office. One thing led to another, as so often happens, and I had some things to put in a special memory box of letters, cards, and other treasures. I spied my bundle of delightful treasures from last year's Gardening by Letter project, and had to look at them again, as I hadn't had them out for a while. I always seem to bring them out when I'm having a rough patch, as they arrived here last year while I was in the midst of some challenges, and they lifted my heart immeasurably then. They still do that now.

As I wrote last year, I've never met any of my gardening blogger friends face to face, and while I hope to get to Buffalo this year, we'll see how my other obligations go. However, when I talk of my gardening friends, I am often referring to friends such as these; people I've yet to meet, or haven't even talked to on the telephone, yet who I consider friends thanks to the joys of the Internet. You all give so much, and you have no idea how much you're a joy and encouragement across the miles. You're like a spring day in my heart. A real spring day, not these tiresome grey interminably cold with sideways-snow days.


And dearest Anna, thank you again for having hosted the Gardening By Letter project. Like this project, you're a priceless, joyful gift across the miles.

That's it for today, friends. Y'all come on back tomorrow, please, because it'll be time for the next Saturday Spotlight.

Spotlight Saturday: Have you visited This blogger?

We have had some amazing participation in encouraging people to visit new, or new-to-them bloggers since we all began the conversation about encouraging our fellow bloggers about a month ago. There were some very good suggestions and actions made by people who left comments here, and once again, I thank you all for being such good blogger-neighbours around the world.

I took up Teza's method of promoting other bloggers, but I've found two problems in it for me. One has to do with my blog template, which has some flaw in its code so that titles of widgets etc on the sidebars often run into the widget, photo, etc. I can control that with some sidebar items, but with the 'Have you visited this blog?' photo/link on the right side, I can't make it any larger or space it better than it is. And being a chickenheart when it comes to template code...I don't dare tinker with that, or I'm apt to warp the whole thing into Tralfamadore, and I'm not ready to go there yet.

More importantly than that wee bit of tidiness quirks, my brain is somewhat cluttered with a lot going on right now, as you know from reading previous posts. And like I forget to take something out for supper some days, or where I've put my iPhone, or that I was supposed to finish writing a letter I drafted two weeks ago to a friend...I am afraid that I'll forget just who all I've put in that side 'visit' link, and put the same person in twice, or neglect to put up someone because I think I've already done so.

This is my solution. Once every couple of weeks, I'll do a 'Spotlight Saturday' post, introducing you to a fellow blogger who I've encountered and whose blog I really enjoy. That way you'll get to 'know' them a bit before you pop over to visit (and I KNOW you'll all visit because you're awesome that way) and I'll have a regular record of who I've spotlighted. And of course the blogger will get some new visitors and then go visit other bloggers and it will all be good.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to Ceara, who lives and gardens on the beautiful Gaspé peninsula in eastern Quebec. Ceara's garden is zone 4, so you can imagine the various climate challenges she has to deal with in her gardening adventures. She just started her blog a few weeks ago, but she visited here and left a comment about sea holly, so I returned to write a comment in answer, and was delighted with her blog. So please go visit.


One other thing you might be able to help with. Ceara wrote in her comment on my Eryngium post that she has been unable to get seed or plants of this genus to try in her garden. I've offered to send her E. planum seedlings, but I'm also curious: has anyone in a zone 4 garden been able to grow any of the Eryngiums? I've seen various zone reports on E. planum as being hardy to zone 4, others say zone 5, so I'm throwing it open to what Mr. Subjunctive always calls The Hive Mind: what say you, fellow gardeners? Can Ceara find happiness with one of the sea hollies in her Gaspé garden?

Oh, I'm sure you're wondering what the sunflowers have to do with this post. Not a whole lot. The bucket of sunflowers WERE at a market in Montreal that I visited in October during my visit, and I just thought we could all use some cheerful colour on what's another dreary weather weekend here.

One MORE thing. (sorry, I told you my brain sometimes is like swiss cheese.) If you haven't done already, please consider taking part in Jan's (Thanks for Today) Sustainable Living Giveaway challenge. She's extended the deadline and got some very cool prizes to give out (sadly, only in the USA, boo to companies who won't ship outside the US). But even without being eligible for prizes, I hope you'll take part in her challenge. There have been some very wonderful posts about living sustainably already, and that in itself is reward enough for many of us--if we find even one small way in which to make our lives more green, it's a very good thing.