Join the work party at Orchard Ravine this Saturday, March 13.

Hey, it’s Spring ;>)))

It looks that way too!  If you haven’t taken a walk in the ravine you’re over do. There are lots of blooming shrubs – Ribes in pink and white, Indian Plum and various types of Mahonia. The birds are arriving too.

It will be great to get together with friends in the Ravine again.  Join us, visit with neighbors and friends, get some exercise, have some coffee and treats, make a difference in your neighborhood and the environment for wildlife and a Greener Seattle!

Bring your gloves we have tools.  Oh, and wear old or garden clothes.

This last week two volunteers from Lewis Natural Area on North Beacon Hill came for a tour, as Cascade Conservancy recommended they see what we’ve done in just a few years. They were very impressed!

For questions email Carol Schultz.

The Institute for Sustainability presents the First Conference on Sustainability for the Pacific Northwest Region at Seattle University on Thursday and Friday, March 25 and 26.  More information is available at both the Seattle City Green Building website and at the Institute for Sustainability Conference website. The technical program is available at this link http://pugetsound.aiche.org/TechProg, and abstracts for the conference papers are available at this website http://pugetsound.aiche.org/sites/pugetsound.aiche.org/files/webfm/Proceedings.pdf.

The Institute for Sustainability is an American Institute of Chemical Engineers Technological Community.  The Puget Sound local chapter is sponsoring this.

You must RSVP to attend which you can do at this websitehttp://pugetsound.aiche.org/webform/regional-conference-rsvp

What: Grow Great Garden Soil

When: March 27; 10:00 am – 1:00 pm

Where: South Seattle Community College, Olympic Hall Room 105, 6000 16th Ave. SW.

Tasty and nutritious plants require healthy soil that is full of life and nutrients. This class will introduce techniques that enhance the life of your soil so that you get the most out of your garden. We will cover four seasons of soil building methods including cover crops and nitrogen fixing plants; fertility rotations, no dig methods, soil testing, animal manures, sheet mulching and using organic amendments.

COST: $30 for Tilth members, $40 non-members. Advance registration and payment is required. For more information and to register, visit: www.seattletilth.org.

When: March 27; 10:00 – 11:00 am

Where: St. James Annex, 9421 18th S.W.

Learn different techniques for taking out that old, boring sod and putting in your new garden beds. This class will cover the tools and materials needed to either dig out the sod or sheet mulch over existing lawn. You will also learn what veggies you can plant now to fill your salad bowl later this spring.

COST: $15 for Seattle Tilth and Community Harvest of SW Seattle members, $18 non-members. Advance registration and payment are required. For more information and to register, visit: www.seattletilth.org.

When: March 27; noon-2:00 pm

WHERE: St. James Annex, 9421 18th S.W.

Use of season extension techniques is one of the best tools gardeners can use to extend their growing season and harvest year round. With the use of cloches, cold frames, row cover and other techniques gardeners can warm the soil and air allowing plants to grow and thrive earlier than they would unprotected. This class is perfect for beginning gardeners who want to learn techniques for planting earlier in the spring, later in the fall, and growing better heat crops in the summer. Learn what you can plant now to get a jump on the season!

COST: $25 for Seattle Tilth and Community Harvest of SW Seattle members, $35 non-members. Advance registration and payment are required. For more information and to register, visit: www.seattletilth.org.

Tues. March 9th at Uptown Espresso, at Edmunds, just south of the Alaska Junction. We are starting the very important work of developing our operations manual, procuring tools and other important tasks to get our West Seattle Tool Library ready for a Late Spring launch. We are looking for folks to help out on this effort. Our working group meetings are open and welcome your participation. If you are unable to attend the meeting, please contact “library@sustainablewestseattle.org“, if you are interested in participating

Interested in learning how to build raised beds for your garden?  Cascadian Edible Landscapes is offering a class on how to build raised beds on March 6th in White Center.  The class will be held at a house, and there is no charge to attend.  Come get hands-on experience with starting a garden.
For more information or to sign up, please contact Christina Hahs at christina.hahs@gmail.com or 206-307-4860.

Join us at the Senior Center for West Seattle on Monday, March 15, at 7:00 pm, for an evening of permaculture with Laura Sweany, a member of SWS, the owner of Terra Flora Farm, and a certified permaculture instructor.  You will learn how to prepare an area, what to consider planting, how to manage sun, water and other environmental elements, and how to enjoy the fruits (and vegetables) of your efforts.

We will be meeting at the Senior Center of West Seattle, at 4217 SW Oregon St., around the corner from California Ave. SW.  This is a temporary location necessitated by the renovations being made to the Lodge at Camp Long, our long-standing meeting location and a West Seattle landmark.

Come earlier at 6:30 and socialize – consider bringing fruit, veggies and other potluck munchables.

Fields of interest include

• Energy (see Andy Silber’s blog here on the SWS website)
• Transportation
• Food and fitness
• Permaculture
• Bee-keeping
• Waste and rain water containment and systems
• Wind power
• Solar power
• Electric vehicles
• Sustainable cultural components of a society such as reusable art
• Or, just about anything which has a sustainable link or edge to it.

If you are interested in being one of the guest bloggers, please contact Sustainable West Seattle at blog@sustainablewestseattle.org and tell us a bit about yourself, your experience and area (or areas) of expertise and what you would expect your blog to explore and how often you would like to or expect to post.  Submissions for continuing blog entries should also be made to the blog@sustainablewestseattle.org email.

SWS is continuing to respond to community input and suggestions about evolving our website from members of SWS, from organizations  such as Sustainable Ballard, SCALLOPS, Sustainable Seattle and from many others.  If you have suggestions, use the comment feature and leave them here.

Seattle Parks and Recreation will hold an educational session on coyotes at the Discovery Park Environmental Education Center, 3801 W Government Way, at 7:00 pm Thursday, March 4.

Nature correspondent and blogger Denny Ryan will talk about “The Urban Coyote” and its not-so-secret urban life.

Learn about the behavior, biology, and habitat of coyotes. Find out why they have been able to adapt to urban life unlike many other predators. Learn what you need to know to avoid conflicts with coyotes and keep your pet safe. Explore the relationship between wolves and dogs. Ask questions and share stories.

The recent presence of coyotes in Discovery Park and in the Magnolia neighborhood have led to some uncertainty about what to do to live side by side with native wildlife, and what to do when you encounter it.

There were coyote sightings in the Discovery Park area  in January of 2008 and in January of 2010. In the latter case, after a coyote attacked an unleashed dog, the Washington Wildlife Services Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture caught a coyote in a leg trap and killed it.

Denny is a nature correspondent who writes the BLOG ‘Knowing Nature with Denny,’ www.gotodenny.com. He is also the Okanogan County field representative for the Grizzly Bear Outreach Project (GBOP).

For more information on urban coyotes, please see the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife web site: http://wdfw.wa.gov/wlm/living/coyotes.htm.

• First education. My studies have been as a physicist, with a bachelor’s from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. from MIT. Physicists look at energy they way that accountants look at money. We track it, we count it, and when the numbers don’t add up, we know that something interesting is happening (though it usually isn’t embezzlement in our case). Even in high school I was interested in energy policy, devouring articles in Omni Magazine on how micro-fusion plants were only 20 years away. Thirty years later they’re now 40 years away, a sign of the progress we’ve made in estimating how difficult a problem fusion is.

• Next experience. In 2001 the Cheny Energy task force was meeting and purposing very stupid ideas. During the ENRON driven energy crisis Cheny was actually discouraging conservation, while the people of California cut power consumption 10% overnight. I felt that action at the state level was our only hope for the near term and that led me to found the Energy Committee of the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club. We worked on supporting windfarm development in the face of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) opposition, commenting on utility Integrated Resource Plans, and building connections with other groups. A major effort for us was Initiative 937 that requires most Washington electric utilities to get 20% of their energy from renewables by 2020. We were involved from the decision to try for an initiative, to writing the initiative, to collecting signatures (my infant son and I got 1,400 signatures), to working for its passage.

Until recently energy policy has been a hobby, not a profession. In September I accepted a position at Seattle City Light in the Conservation Resource Division. At some point I’ll write a blog posting about my project. I’m learning a lot about what it takes to actually make things happen and what the barriers are. Sometimes there are good reasons why good ideas are harder to accomplish than they should be. That’s also something I’ll be writing about. One thing I want to make abundantly clear is that I’m not writing as a representative of Seattle City Light. The thoughts in this blog are my own.

I’ll be writing about energy conservation, renewable energy, policy, and maybe even politics. If there are particular issues you’d like me to write about, drop me a line at andyds11@me.com.

(Editor’s note:  Andy Silber is also a founding member of Sustainable West Seattle and has a long-standing interest in both energy systems and transportation systems.  This is the first of what will be a continuing Blog on Energy.)

Are you ready to take your passion for environmental action to the next level? We are looking for community leaders to help Seattle continue to lead in the field of sustainability — and we have a great opportunity for you!

Seattle Climate Action Now is currently recruiting for our next class of Carbon Coaches. This is a free training program where you will learn about reducing carbon emissions from transportation, waste generation, home energy use, and materials purchasing as well as how to teach those lessons to others. Download the application at this link http://www.seattlecan.org/downloads/Carbon_Coach_Application.doc.  Deadline to apply is Friday, March 12.

The course objectives are the following:

• Educate Carbon Coaches on the fundamentals of climate change science.
• Increase understanding of local impacts of climate change and potential actions related to energy-use, transportation, solid waste, green purchasing, and citizen action.
• Secure commitments to change behaviors related to mitigation or adaptation to climate change.
• Increase awareness of climate change and social justice and the value of public engagement.

Class instruction will be delivered by the course trainers and by guest presenters. Class materials and resources will be provided electronically. A combination of lectures, group activities, in-class exercises, optional “homework” assignments, video clips, and reading assignments will reinforce concepts presented in class.

Course Participation includes full participation in all six sessions and one Saturday field trip. In-class activities as well as homework are expected of all trainees.

Carbon Coaches also are expected to conduct outreach projects in their community and as well as work with individuals to conduct a carbon footprint analysis using the City of Seattle’s Carbon Calculator.

For more information, contact seattlecan@seattle.gov.