Environment

Satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, courtesy of Phytoplankton Dynamics Laboratory, Texas A+M University

It’s been a weird growing season in the Twin Cities this year. We had a hot spell in spring, then crazy rain, then a dry but cool summer. Not so much fun for my flowers, but good material for grousing with fellow gardeners. It puts me in mind of that old saw, “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Nobody says that very often anymore, perhaps because it’s no longer true. Most of us do, in fact, contribute to the root causes of unstable weather, the climate change it heralds, and the general planetary degradation that marks our age.

This Saturday and Sunday, May 2 and 3, the St. Paul State Fair Grounds is host to the Living Green Expo, billed as: ... a free, family-friendly event that inspires people to lead healthier and more sustainable lives. The focus of the event is living green, of course - not specifically food - so the many vendors and providers (250+) include those in industries as diverse as transportation, building, arts, and music. Here are the details:

A recent post on Organic Food Now entitled "How Much Poison Do You Want to Eat" provides a bunch of great information related to eating organic food, including whether it's really better for you or not and which foods are most chemical free. It's a discussion that has remained relevant for years, and has recently become even more heated due to the recent peanut butter recall that miraculously impacted several organic food companies (which had been buying non-organic peanuts, apparently).