Sunday, August 18, 2024

Brush and Bulky Directions

 Keep it out of the landfill! Please, donate before resorting to Brush and Bulky. 

TELL YOUR NEIGHBORS!

BRUSH AND BULKY TOMORROW

HAVE YOUR ITEMS FOR BRUSH AND BULKY

AT THE CURB BY 6 AM ON MONDAY!


There is no way of knowing the route the crew will take so you need to have your items at the curb by Aug. 19. Once they go down your street, the crew will not come back. Putting stuff curbside after they have picked up your street, will not get them to come back.  


Brush and Bulky uses a Bobcat to pick up items to put them in the truck, so make a single pile at the curb in an easily accessible spot. Brush and Bulky will NOT enter your property to pick up piles.  Be sure the pile is NOT near a fire hydrant, your mailbox, trees, power poles, your wall, gas meter, etc.  Items in the pile cannot be longer than 5 feet or they will not fit in the truck.

Brush and Bulky

Pick Up

Starts Monday,

August 19. 

 

Please make sure your neighbors are aware of

Brush and Bulky

AUG. 19  


The City discontinued the expense of the notification flyers, 

so no one will receive

a door hanger notifying them.

 

Brush and Bulky uses a Bobcat to pick up items to put them in the truck, so make a single pile at the curb in an easily accessible spot. Brush and Bulky will NOT enter your property to pick up piles.    

   

Be sure the pile is NOT near a fire hydrant, your mailbox, trees, power poles, your wall, gas meter, etc.  


Items in the pile cannot be longer than 5 feet

or they will not fit in the truck.

 

WILL YOUR BRUSH AND BULKY PILE BE PICKED UP? Channel 9 did a great segment a few years ago on making Brush and Bulky easy AND safe for the crews to pick up. Click HERE to view

https://www.kgun9.com/news/local-news/keeping-tucson-clean-how-to-help-make-brush-bulky-crews-jobs-easier?fbclid=IwAR2Dsfbj4nOE1ln790I0aPIyqcnITFyaLO1NKjv-b9ke81KQkyiij_GOETU


Brush & Bulky will collect:

  • Brush, tree trunks, branches and other green waste (up to 5 feet long and 24 inches in diameter)
  • Lumber (up to 5 feet long and stacked in a separate pile)
  • PVC and metal pipes (up to 5 feet long)
  • Railroad ties (limit 5)
  • Furniture, carpet, and doors
  • Lawn mowers with fuel tank and crank case removed
  • Scrap metal (bicycles, swing sets, etc., broken into 5 foot lengths)
  • Cacti (must be contained - up to 25 lbs.)
  • Appliances (remove freezer/refrigerator doors)
  • Car tires (limit of five automobile tires)
  • Metal drums (empty and cut in half)

 

Brush and Bulky will NOT collect:


  • Any excess over the 10 cubic-yard limit
  • Any items other than those listed above, such as
  • Stone/bricks/concrete/aggregates
  • Construction debris
  • Hazardous waste like paint/oil/pesticides/solvents/liquids
  • Glass/mirrors
  • Television and computer monitors
  • Compressed gas/air cylinder(s)
  • Vehicle parts
  • Commercially generated material

DONATE ITEMS INSTEAD OF SENDING THEM TO THE LANDFILL

BUY NOTHING FACEBOOK PAGE or REALLY, REALLY FREE MARKET at Himmel Park - on the third Saturday of every month.


BRINGING OUT THE BEST THRIFT SHOP on Speedway. Beyond what they can sell, they recycle everything: rags, old shoes, appliances, etc. etc. They don’t even have trash service for the shop. 

 

TUCSON REPAIR CAFE - check with them first through their Facebook page, but they often accept electronics and appliances, small household items, etc, that can be repaired or be taken apart to use for parts.

 

SUBURBAN MINERS is near Garden District neighborhood and located one block west of Alvernon They repurpose and recycle all kinds of electronic equipment. They also accept other household items and have a "Free Store" open to the public. Suburban Miners is located about a mile away on Blacklidge just a block off Alvernon.


ELECTRONICS RECYCLING:

SWS Computers on Speedway, just west of Alvernon quite near us, recycles nearly anything electronic for free.


A few of the many Charities where you can make donations:


Thanks to Meg for sharing this in the Garden District e-letter. 

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Climate Tucson: New Heat, New Diseases

Friday, July 19, 2024

Storm to Shade Across Tucson

 by Blue Baldwin, Storm to Shade Program Manager

Grabbing the water off the road to grow a healthy tree.

In the cool early hours of a midsummer morning in Barrio Kroger-Lane, long-time resident and community organizer, Josefina Cardenas, prepared breakfast burritos to share with her neighbors to fuel their morning’s work. With the support and expertise of Tucson Clean and Beautiful’s green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) maintenance team, Josefina and her neighbors took to their neighborhood streets to care for the GSI assets built there over the past decade. As they pulled weeds, collected trash, and spread native seed mix, nanas and tatas worked alongside younger generations, sharing their knowledge of desert plants and their healing properties and memories of the nearby river that once flowed perennially.

Tucson Clean and Beautiful is one of six maintenance contractors deployed seasonally by Storm to Shade (S2S), the City of Tucson’s GSI program housed at Tucson Water, to ensure the safety and functionality of some 450 GSI assets located throughout the City’s six wards. This cohort of specialized contractors provides routine maintenance as well as certified arborist services, invasive plant control, reconstruction of assets, community outreach, and stipends to pay community members who wish to be involved in caring for their neighborhoods’ assets. With this workforce in full effect for almost two years, Tucson’s GSI is thriving—providing shade, cooling, habitat, and beautification—thanks to the energy and resources being invested in our City’s urban infrastructure. To view a map of GSI assets throughout the City, see https://climateaction.tucsonaz.gov/pages/s2s-about.

In another neighborhood, over a dozen children and a handful of adults gathered at the intersection of Holladay Street and Santa Clara Avenue in the Elvira Neighborhood to celebrate the completion of a brand new GSI project with Eegee’s and a native plant give-away. Among them was Beki Quintero, a lifelong servant of the Tucson community. For years Beki had advocated to decrease the size of this awkward and potentially dangerous intersection situated in a neighborhood teeming with kids. When Ward One’s Budget de la Gente Program launched, this project was selected for funding and Beki and her neighbors’ dream was finally realized. To minimize project costs, S2S collaborated with the Department of Transportation and Mobility’s special projects team to accomplish much of the work in-house--removing pavement, excavating basins, and re-striping the intersection. S2S contracted local GSI experts, Productive Patches LLC, to add the finishing touches--microbasins and swales--and a landscape contractor to plant native trees, shrubs, and succulents. These days if you drive by after school, you’re likely to spot a gaggle of neighborhood kids hanging out near their new green space.

Intergenerational stewards of Barrio Kroger-Lane celebrate work well done.
Intergenerational stewards of Barrio Kroger-Lane celebrate work well done.


To date, Storm to Shade has constructed six new GSI projects, most recently at Ironhorse Park, El Rio Neighborhood Center, Lower Lincoln Park, the intersection of 11 Ave. and Flores St., and the traffic triangle at Holladay St. and Santa Clara Ave. The Aviation Greenway between Kolb and Calle Polar, a collaboration with TEP, will be complete July ’24 and an additional handful of projects are set to break ground by year’s end. Many more are in the design pipeline. For a complete list and story map of projects, visit https://climateaction.tucsonaz.gov/pages/gsi  

S2S is also celebrating the completion of several large-scale projects funded by Pima County Regional Flood Control District, which serve primarily as flood control facilities but also provide the greening, cooling, and beautification benefits of GSI. S2S provides landscape maintenance for these facilities, which include Cherry Avenue Park, El Vado Basin, Sunland Vista Wash, and soon-to-be-completed Alvernon Park Basins, as well as several others constructed by the District over the past years. 

In the shade of the mature mesquites in the GSI area of Highland Vista Park, a dozen participants in the Pima SmartScape GSI course practice proper pruning techniques under the exacting eye of certified arborist, GSI expert, and SmartScape instructor Emma Stahl-Wert. The group consists of S2S maintenance contractors, a newly minted City Parks project manager, and other landscape pros and community members interested in expanding their knowledge of GSI. This GSI course is one of three new courses offered by SmartScape (funded by Tucson Water’s Conservation Program) developed in partnership with City of Tucson. The others are a one-day SmartScape “Bootcamp” designed as a crash course in best practices for landscape maintenance, and an Urban Forestry Management course. The goal is for every City employee who touches landscape to complete all three courses. This investment in staff significantly reduces unintended damage to landscapes, boosts morale, and creates a ripple effect as folks transfer knowledge among their peers in the field.  

Emma guides SmartScape participants through proper pruning technique.
Emma guides SmartScape participants through proper pruning technique.

Looking forward, S2S hopes to better align with the City’s equity goals by evaluating new models for prioritizing capital investment that center equity as the primary driver for investment rather than equality. Currently, S2S capital investments are divided equally across the six wards and the Mayor’s Office. Given vastly different demographics, green space, and climate vulnerability across the wards, equal investment is not equitable investment. Tucson is not alone in grappling with this issue. The conversation around GSI and equity is happening at fever pitch across municipalities and utilities in North America and is the central theme of myriad conferences, webinars, and publications. S2S, the Urban Forestry Program, and other Tucson programs’ use of Tree Equity Score as a tool for prioritizing investment within wards has positioned us a leader among our peers in North America, and we are excited to continue to lead by making S2S a truly equity-driven program.  

Path to tree equity
path to Tree Equity 

-reshared from the City of Tucson Climate Action Report

#lovemyrainbasin

Sunday, July 7, 2024

Celebrating the start of purslane season


So excited that purslane season is finally here. We celebrated with a yummy smothered purslane and potato breakfast burrito. 

Purslane season officially begins at our house after the second monsoon downpour. But my story doesn't start there. I am always on the look out for purslane to relocate into my yard. (Why does everyone get purslane before we do?) So I planted some I found in front of The Loft Cinema. But I guess I really jumped the gun this year. Before it could spread, it was eaten by the critters in our sun burnt, barren desert food forest. (Honestly, I'm glad they found something to eat.) 

But did that stop me?  More recently I planted a few sturdy purslane that already had some little yellow flowers. Since they were about to go to seed, I hoped that they would spit them out. And spit they did!  Check out the baby purslane that spouted round the mother plant! Once the monsoon rain started they spread like crazy! 

Purslane seeds get caught in the gravel


Success! See them sprouting along our gravel path.

I usually try to plant them near something I am already watering. But in my enthusiasm to get them going, I have been known to water them with rainwater from my cistern. Yep. I water my weeds! 

Here I am harvesting some for a celebratory brunch. They are best harvested in the morning before they wilt in the hot July sun. Notice that I leave some of the branches intact so it will grow back! 


Next I rinse them off  3 or 4 times. The little black seeds fall to the bottom of the bowl. I pour the seeds and water where I want some more purslane to grow.


Full confession. I was anxious for the horse purslane to start growing in our shallow basin, so I had planted one in the middle of said basin - that was immediately eaten by a hungry critter. But I needn't have worried. After a couple of big rains the horse purslane came back on its own. I am looking forward to it becoming living mulch

Here I am taking a pic of the first horse purslane growing along our gravel path and in the remaining poppy stem mulch. 


Back to what you all are waiting for... I chopped the purslane stems and leaves and sautéed them with some onion then added them to some home fries and scrambled eggs. Seasoned with garlic salt. Yum!  You can also add green chilis. But we were all about celebrating the purslane today. Wrap it up in your favorite tortilla. 


We cooked some more purslane in half a small can of green chili sauce and doled it out on our burritos!
 
Dan likes a lot of green chili sauce

Cheers to the start of purslane season!  I hope you enjoy one of our favorite purslane recipes. 

You can find that recipe and another favorite recipe here

UPDATE June 14: Baby purslane is starting to get big! 


Check out the horse purslane coming back in our rainwater basin. Soon to be living mulch!

The start of living mulch to nourish our basin! 

Horse purslane spreading at last on July 30th! 


#lovemyrainbasin

Saturday, June 22, 2024

New Windows on the World


I've noticed that in our sustainability community there are several camps that concentrate on different aspects of sustainability. Some excel at recycling or zero waste, others avoid fossil fuels by installing solar and driving an electric vehicle, yet others choose a vegetarian lifestyle. We fit snuggly into the rainwater harvesting, water conservation camp, but we try our best to practice a well rounded sustainability lifestyle. We take alternate transportation, enjoy a mostly vegetarian diet (though we occasionally eat fish), we  have reduced our plastic and food waste and participate in low-water desert gardening and native tree planting. We do what we can. But if I'm honest, we have fallen behind in one area - solar power.

Some years ago, Robert Bulechek conducted an enlightening presentation at a Sustainable Tucson meeting. He suggested that when it's time to replace gas powered appliances, replace them with electric ones. Then they can be run off of solar power.  Well, some of our appliances are on their last legs, so we will be replacing them soon. We have already replaced our air conditioner with a more energy efficient heat pump. And we finally got on the list to get solar from our respected local solar installer Technicians for Sustainability. But our progress was stalled when they asked how much energy we will be using. We needed to factor in energy efficient windows that we hadn't installed yet.  

We are excited to announce that we finally got our old leaky windows replaced. It was some effort to remove the furniture 3 feet from the windows. 


But it was so worth it. We just love them! Since they block UV light and people can't see in as easily, we were able to get rid of our hard to dust blinds and heavy curtains. What a view!  It's almost like being out in the desert habitat (that is our yard) without enduring the extreme heat. 

Now we can watch a variety of birds splash in the birdbath or rest in the shade of our native plants and trees in our rainwater harvesting basin while enjoying breakfast in comfort.
 

I wish my phone could catch our lovely view out the dining room window.


I look forward to watching the rain fill up our slimline tanks - when the monsoon storms finally roll in. Who am I kidding? I will be out there in the rain! 


Here is the view I get to enjoy out of our kitchen window while doing the dishes. I look forward to getting a better view of the baby squirrels wrestling in our greywater basin.


Every morning I greet the day by watching the birds out of our bathroom window. So glad that we didn't put in privacy panes! 



One unexpected benefit of the energy efficient window is that they lessen the noise from the traffic on nearby Speedway (which is living up to its name lately.) So we get a better night's sleep. 

And because of the UV protection we got to remove the old, dusty blinds behind our black out curtains that were needed to block out the sun in our south facing room. 



And now we are able to easily open up the curtains to enjoy the light of the day instead of being stuck in a dark cave or turning on a light! And we can actually open up the windows to cool off naturally in the evenings. 

l
It's not a bad view from outside either...


Quality windows weren't cheap, but at least we will be getting a break on our taxes. 

Next up...replacing our kitchen appliances with (hopefully) energy efficient electric appliances and having solar installed. Then we will be proud members of the energy efficiency camp! 

What Kind of Climate Champion Are You?

https://www.sustainablelivingtucson.com/2020/01/what-kind-of-climate-champion-are-you.html

Later this afternoon...


I took this out of the bathroom window 3 days later. 


#lovemyrainbasin

Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Work Parties Build Sustainable Homesteads and Community

We used hyperadobe to berm an earth-sheltered geodesic dome which will be a massive aquaponic greenhouse.

Guest Blogger: Christian Sawyer

Howdy. I’m Christian Sawyer — an organizer and homesteader in the Douglas Basin of Sulphur Springs Valley in Cochise County..

In the early Fall of 2021, I went on a three-hour bike ride to a potluck. My car had broken down but I *really* wanted to be at that potluck. I was invited by a family whom I had only met once, briefly, and wasn't sure if I'd get another invite if I turned this one down.

The reason I was so dead set on attending that potluck was because I had come to the conclusion that, living rurally and somewhat remotely, building community relationships was going to be one of the most valuable investments of my time and energy. You don't get invited to potlucks every day out in the valley. So, I popped in the Google map address and rode off into the sunset.

I did get to meet some great people that night who were building their own homesteads and were deeply invested in doing it sustainably. Some new friends even offered to give me a ride home when it started to rain.

I got another message from the hosts a few months later. They wanted to start a local group to help each other build sustainable housing, a shared interest among many in our mutual friend groups. Some had already begun such projects; others had been involved in the practice professionally. This was right up my alley as a sustainability nerd and someone looking to put down roots in the area.

Our inaugural meeting, January 2022

I brought five people with me to the inaugural strategic meeting for this project. About 14 people attended in total. We sat in a circle and traded ideas. Thankfully, we didn't get bogged down with endless ideas and paralysis analysis. We decided on a simple scheduling structure. Every first and third Sunday of the month we would meet up at someone's property to help them build. The host would organize the tasks for the morning, tools needed, and make lunch for everyone.

Our process hasn't changed much since then. The only big difference is the size. We recently set our record for most attendees at a work party, 75 people - including children. (See pic on top of page.)


Our community most commonly builds with geodesic domes, hyper-adobe, and strawbale. Hyper-adobe is the most common material/technique. It's a recent variation on the "super adobe" technique made popular by CalEarth where bags or tubing are filled with dirt, compacted, and then secured to each other with barbed wire -- a kind of low-tech rammed-earth process. Hyper-adobe instead uses mesh tubing that allows the dirt in each layer to congeal with the other layers, creating monolithic earthen walls which don't require barbed wire and use less tubing. As a building material, it doesn't get much more sustainable than dirt. It's local, there's lots of it, it's cheap, and it can decompose right back into the ground if needed. Earthen walls are also highly fire-resistant; but they don't provide a high insulation value, leading local home builders to increasingly pursue submerged or "earth-sheltered" homes which are typically four to eight feet deep into the earth and capped with a geodesic dome. This greatly increases the insulation of a structure, and the surrounding earth provides passive temperature stabilization. (At twelve feet of depth, soil is typically a stable temperature year-round, which is around 67 degrees in our area.) The academic literature typically claims a roughly 75% reduction in energy demands for earth-sheltered houses. Our anecdotal evidence in the community, comparing the energy efficiencies of different homes, supports this.

Geodesic domes are popular because they're incredibly fast and relatively affordable to construct. The steel-bar frame is put up in one day, then covered with fabric and sprayed with insulating foam in one or two additional days. The basic shell of these homes is roughly $10,000-20,000 depending on the size.

earth-sheltered greenhouse addition to a tiny home

After our first couple of "work parties" (that's what we call it when we get together to build homesteads), I had heard that there was a similar group of homesteaders in the Willcox basin, the larger northern end of the Sulphur Springs Valley. At that point they were only meeting to discuss alternative homesteading at potlucks. I got myself a potluck invite, drove up, and introduced their lead organizer to the "work party" concept we had adopted in the south valley. The north group immediately began hosting their own work parties on every second and fourth Sunday.

A key factor in this story is that, over the last five years, Cochise County has begun to attract increasing numbers of people interested in sustainable home building because of our county's "Rural Residential Owner-Builder Opt Out Amendment.“ This special permit was created in 2006 when the county transitioned to the International Building Code standard and some locals petitioned the county to create an allowance for building outside of existing code in rural areas.

The key lines from the amendment read:

“The purpose of this amendment is to exempt a Rural Residential Owner-Builder with a Category D property of four acres or more from compliance with the Cochise County Building Safety Code."

By allowing owner-builders these options, this amendment is intended to encourage the use of ingenuity and personal preferences of the owner-builder in allowing and facilitating the use of alternative building materials and methods.

As the lead "political guy" in an area that is often skeptical of political activism, and in a world where politics are so broken, I find respite in my work party community. It's a group of people from all walks of life, various political attitudes, social issue positions, religious backgrounds, and lifestyles. People avoid talking about contentious issues and focus on what we have in common: a desire to build and live in beautiful ways, in a beautiful place, with beautiful neighbors. These people give me hope that we can heal the cultural wounds and afflictions which seem to only grow more severe every year. I hope to see more such communities popping up around the country. That may depend, of course, upon securing the liberties to build alternatively and sustainably, such as we have down in Cochise County.


Today you can find many popular YouTube channels of alternative builders in Cochise County. The most well-known is probably Tiny Shiny Home by the Longnecker family. Although my friends Mark and Heather might be up and coming YouTube favorites as their most recent video garnered over 1 million views in just a few days.

Find out more information by joining a Facebook group, like Cochise County Alternative Home Building, Supporters of the Cochise County Opt-Out Permit, and Cochise County Homesteaders.

I've recently begun publishing a newsletter for the alternative/sustainable homesteading community called The Ground Party Papers, covering groundwater issues, local politics, and, of course, alternative building. groundparty.beehiiv.com

You can contact me at: StewardsOfTheSprings@gmail.com