I met two heroes of mine. Mel Bartholomew and Amy Stewart. WOW. For those that don't know Mel invented Square Foot Gardening which is one of the keystones of my urban sustainable lifestyle, so when I saw him I almost fainted but ran over and gave him a huge hug, and thanked him for changing my life. We had dinner at The Billy Goat (SNL Cheezeborger).

I also met author and Garden Rant contributor Amy Stewart and thanks to her this actual proof that I was at the trade show, who took this picture. We hung out and got to talk about all things garden and poultry.

My next shows will be at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas September 9-12 at the Garden Market Expo, and I will be attending the Garden Writers Expo in Oregon following that. Hope to see you there.

Thanks to my healthy soil there was no lasting or permanent damage. The harvest has been great, my heirloom tomatoes have been tastier than ever and my cucumbers have been coming in by the bushel.

My Straight Eight variety has been producing eighteen inch cucumbers since July. Luckily cucumber is a universally loved vegetable because I have hundreds of them.

My neighbor and friend Edgar Milford has turned me on to Musa Oronoco banana tree that is cold hardy! So I will be adding these trees into my city orchard this month. They come from the Oronoco river valley and grow and thrive under very tough conditions in South America.

It isn't local, but if it works my CARIBBEAN spirit will be greatly lifted. Even if it doesn't fruit, and that is something we don't know, just having banana leaves for cooking fresh and all sorts of Caribbean dishes.

Eggplants are coming in nicely, can't wait to taste them.

I am a voracious viewer of all things media in relationship to our environment and the natural world and I recently watched the PBS show Nova on global dimming. Now we have all heard of Global Warming, that human activity on the planet is responsible for global tempatures to rise, but global dimming is a study that shows that as we have been raising the temperature we have also been reflecting a large percentage of the sun's energy back into space.

Most human activity can help create clouds, from contrails from our airplanes to the vapor and wastes from our cars and industrial activity that hang in the atmosphere causing sunlight to reflect back into space. What this has done is mask the true effects of global warming, in fact, It is off setting a large percentage of the effects.

Sounds great, at first, except that as we get more effiecient and cleaner in terms of our air pollution, the "protective" elements of global dimming will be reduced. A seemingly once in a life time study was done during the week that air travel was grounded in the United States (September 11, 2001). Scientists tracked the temperature and found that there was a startling spike during that brief period that Jets weren't covering the sky with contrails. This has dire implications for all of us. Please check it out and learn more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

This has been years in the making, but this is the complete Season One of Garden Girl TV, featuring over three and half hours of video, a two disc set. You can't buy it yet, you can only win it right here.

The contest rules are simple, all you have to do is sign up and leave a post on my brand new message board. I will be giving away THREE DVD's as prizes, so sign up now. I am also looking for help moderating, so if you are interested in moderating and helping out with any of the Forums, please let me know!

The winner of Augusts contest is Ali Hanrahan. YEAH, GO ALI!

Check out the Gardening Coach Susan Harris's (also a Garden Ranter) new web publication www.sustainable-gardening.com.This is a great new web resource you should all check out.

This is a great small space gardening site that I truly enjoy. It has inspired me to shoot more small space gardening myself. www.lifeonthebalcony.com

From my own backyard, I managed to get a picture of this young Possum who has made me part of his territory. We are in a live and let live equilibrium.

And speaking of urban wildlife....

This was sent in from Lauren, my Highland Park neighbor:

Just so you know, Urban Gardener that you are, we trapped a groundhog living in our backyard behind the garage. It ate Charles Williamson's broccoli and nibbled on my squash leaves. Charles had a 'have a heart' trap and lured it in with beet leaves and celery. When we called the Animal Rescue, we were told to let it out of the trap; it seems that its against the law to relocate these vegetarian critters because it would be removing it from its 'adapted' habitat. Strangely, the groundhog seems to have moved on to other locations on its own... There have been no further groundhog sightings which leads us to believe the groundhog was working alone. First a wild turkey, now the groundhog. You might want to keep an eye out.

Remember to send me your pics and share them on the new message board as well.

With the help of indoor plumbing, automatic washing, and detergents from the store, our washdays are no longer as physically demanding as they were a century ago; even so, the synthetic ingredients in detergents can damage us as well as our environment. From huge and sometimes wasteful water usage, to harmful chemicals that leach into our ground water, the ocean and our environment it is time to look at alternatives to help preserve the environment;

• Wash full loads to get the most out of water and energy use.
  
• Use cold water when rinsing laundry; when washing clothes, most of the energy used goes to heat the water.
  
• Use natural detergents—plant-based, biodegradable detergents; avoid those with chemicals such as phosphate, chlorine, and petroleum, as well as those with fabric brighteners, fragrance, and dyes. There are great options that include products by companies such as Seventh Generation and a new product I am trying out Soap Nuts.
  
• Line dry what you can; it saves energy and money and extends the life of your clothes.

Rain Washing (Alternative to dry-cleaning chemicals)
Utilize Mother Nature to clean your delicates or large woolens; works for items ranging from baby sweaters to large carpets. This is the gentlest way of washing. The beauty of these methods is it preserves fresh water, which will be a premium as global warming continues.

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/onblack.php?id=2476518945&bg=white&size=large

• Look for a rainstorm in the forecast
  
• Hang soiled woolens outside over sheets on a clothesline, or lay out on a clean, flat surface; let rain waterwash through through it.
  
• Shake forcefully before bringing in woolens hung on clotheslines in order to remove any insect eggs that may have been laid in the wool, or use the tumbling action of a dryer Snow Cleaning (Alternative to dry-cleaning chemicals) Used from woolen garments and done in dry snow rather than wet snow.
  
• Hang clothes outdoors during a snowstorm (not a blizzard); hang clothes as open as possible.
  
• Let falling snow sweep off the dust
  
• Shake the garments and bring indoors

These methods are not appropriate for all situations, but just a little bit goes a long way towards preserving our environment.

http://www.soapinanutshell.com/