Greensboro Daily Photo

Z is for Zen Cat

Today is ABC Wednesday and Z is for Zen Cat Bakery. Zen Cat, is a gluten-free and vegan bakery, located on Grove Street in the heart of the Glenwood neighborhood. To end our ABC Wednesday series, we have chosen Zen Cat Bakery, not just because it starts with Z but for the following reasons:

Owner Angie Kenny started Zen Cat Bakery a few years ago because of a wheat allergy and her need to eat gluten free. Her personal journey led to the creation of a bakery that would accommodate sensitive digestive systems as well as people who have consciously chosen to eliminate wheat and animal products from their diet.  According to Angie, she chose the word 'zen' because it  signifies what it means to change one's way of eating, be it by choice or need.  One strives to be balanced and "zen like" in order to give up the foods once consumed and loved: pasta, breads, pizza, eggs, cheese, etc.

When asked what measures she takes to be environmentally friendly, she offered the following examples. she buys in bulk and works hard to minimize packaging; she uses biodegradable packaging (cellophane); and, perhaps best of all, she walks to work! Some days, she has been known to skip to work. As feasible, Angie buys and sells locally. However, she also has an etsy site. Unfortunately, the Grove Street storefront is not yet open to walk in traffic. That might be in Angie's plans for the future. However, for now, you have to call to order or buy from the local establishments that already stock her goods. Local delivery is available. Hats off to one woman's dream has become a delightful, Greensboro reality.

If you enjoyed this zen ending, please visit A-Y of our Go Green Greensboro series.

Y is for Yards

Today is ABC Wedsesday and for our GO GREEN Greensboro series, Y is for Yards. Yards are a key factor in our efforts to live greener lives. Keepers of an eco-friendly yard must be mindful of the following: 1) water use, 2) use of fertilizers and pesticides; 3) types of plantings; and 4) pet waste.

This photo was taken in northwest Greensboro, from a wooded area looking out through to a golf course. Natural plantings are kind to the environment; golf courses; not so much so. However, man needs to find a way to strike a balance with nature. And, golf is a great way to get exercise and nurture friendships. These are ways to make golf courses eco-friendly. The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island Resort in South Carolina and the Mirimichi course in Millington, TN are said to be eco friendly. With as many golf courses as we have in Greensboro, perhaps we could pursue seeing if we can do something to make our local golf courses more eco-friendly. As for our own Greensboro yards, filling them with edible plantings and natural areas,  as well as minmizing manicured, grassy areas, is a good place to start. 

Well, the sun is beginning to set, not only in our photo, but also  on our GO GREEN series as we only have Z-week left. Thank you, as always, for reading. If you have a suggestion for our next A-Z round, we'd love to do another for you!

X is for Xenobiotic

Today is ABC Wednesday and X is always the dreaded of all letters. For this round, we're featuring GO GREEN Greensboro, all things related to the environment-  and X is for xenobiotic. Xenobiotics are substances foreign to a biological system* which is what unused prescriptions are when they find their way into the water supply.

While the above photo is not readily identifyable as one from Greensboro (althought it was taken in here), we do want local residents to know that unused drugs should not be flushed down the toilet. Please find a way to dispose of drugs properly. Last fall, Greensboro had a drug take-back day for unused drugs. Sounds like this would be a good community-service event for an organization. Happy ABC Wednesday and thank you for keeping drugs and other unwanted chemicals from finding their way into Greensboro's water supply.

(And thank you to the Grimsley High School environmental science student who helped us with the never-easy X word).

*find the reference and learn more about the term, here.

W is for Water

Water is such a precious natural resourse. Greensboro doesn't have a river, but we do have some great manmade lakes: Townsend, Jeanette, Brandt and Higgins are the largest. We need to do everything we can to keep our lakes clean. Greensboro must be doing something right because in 2008, we were the recipient of the Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 Safe Drinking Water Excellence Award for Large Surface Water Public Water Supply Systems. The above kayaker was enjoying an outing on Lake Higgins in northwest Greensboro. Lake Higgins is great not only for on the water activities, but also for the surrounding nature trails.

Today is ABC Wednesday and, for this round, we're celebrating everything that is green about Greensboro. W is for water, good clean drinking water, full of fish, and just waiting for us to use for recreational purposes. Let's all do our part to keep our water supply clean.

V is for Visitor Center and Volunteers

Greensboro is so lucky. Greensboro Beautiful and the City of Greensboro are building a visitor center at Gateway Gardens on East Lee Street at the entrance to Barber Park. The venue is situated on eleven acres and will cost approximately 8 million dollars. The visitor center, photographed above, will be LEED certified. It sounds like the more funding they receive, the "greener" they can make the facility. It will be surrounded by 1) a wedding & rose garden; 2) a Japanese garden; 3) a white oak forest; and 4) will include the above facility where lots of learning, sharing, and celebrating can take place. 

Greensboro Beautiful is an organization with many volunteers who work to keep Greensboro's public gardens beautiful and scheduled with events.* Please support this worthwhile organization in any way you can. At the very least, give a big thank you to the volunteers manning events when you see them.

Today is ABC Wednesday and we're almost through the alphabet.  For this round of ABC Wednesday, we've committed to the theme of going green. V is for visitor center and volunteer.See A-U GO GREEN Greensboro posts here. 

*The Tanger Family Bicentennial Garden, The Greensboro Arboretum, The Bog Garden at Benjamin Park and Gateway Gardens are all Greensboro Beautiful projects. If you want a copy of Greensboro Beautiful's newsletter, the SEED, go here. Who knows, you just may become their next VOLUNTEER (or VISITOR)!

U is for Urban Horticulture

Urban Horticulture is now a major at Greensboro's NCA&T University. Through this major, students learn techniques for producing horticultural crops in the limited space of urban environments. You learn to plant as much as possible in these often wasted spaces: herbs, flowers, and crops in spaces. Cement and barren patches of dirt become lush and green. The A&T curriculum is geared towards food production; however, the ornamental component of urban horticulture is also addressed.

The above photo was taken at the corner of Wright Avenue and Kensington Road, down the street from UNCG. As you can see, the property owners take advantage of that strip of dirt between the city sidewalk and the road by filling it with greenery. They have been practicing urban horticulture for twenty years or so, long before most people were talking about it, much less practicing it.

Hats off to NCA&T for being trend setters in their Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Systems. Today is ABC Wednesday and for GO GREEN Greensboro, "U" is for Urban Horticulture. It isn't too late to go outside and plant something. Consider requesting permission to plant something in an unused space beside your favorite coffee shop or retail store. The price of a pack of seeds could bring the community great joy.

T is for Triple Bottom Line

Ron McNair Elementary School on Yanceyville Road in Browns Summit has several factors that make it an ideal school for teaching children how to decrease their carbon footprint and to have sustainable practices. To name a few:

"The 88,900 square-foot school building features sustainable materials, natural lighting in hallways, solar panels for water heating, light sensors, a light-colored roof to reduce heat gain, an integrated fresh-air system, sun shades for large windows and low-flow plumbing fixtures. All classrooms have access to outdoor learning environments. Vegetation has been planted to grow up green screens that will provide shade over outdoor patio areas. Additionally, the art and science labs are equipped with movable exterior wall systems, allowing the classrooms to literally open up to the outdoors when weather permits and facilitate an indoor/outdoor classroom space."*

This state-of-the-art learning environment is an example of what is known in environmental (green) glossaries  as triple bottom line. The triple bottom line concept asserts that for environmental practices to be sustainable, they must be aligned with 1) economic prosperity, 2) environmental quality, and 3) social equity (reference). McNair Elementary does just that; the sustainable practices contribute positively to the environment, they are not cost prohibitive, they are "for all," (open to any child living in the district). Therefore, for "T" day on ABC Wednesday, "T" is for triple bottom line. We hope that the children who attend this fabulous school generate even more ideas for protecting the earth's limited resources.

See GDP's A-S Go Green Greensboro entries here.

 

* Robert Nemitz

S is for Solar Panels and Sustainability

Contemplating our environmental theme for the Go Green Greensboro series for ABC Wednesday, we've been driving around Greensboro looking for solar panels to photograph. We did find some out in the county; however, as far as in-town residences, this house on 16th street is one of the few.

Solar panels use light from the sun to generate electricity, decreasing the use of less renewable forms of energy. There are several companies in the Greensboro area that install solar panels. We were interested in Honey Electric Solar, Inc. because Rebekah Hren advises and trains for them. She teaches classes for the NC Solar Center and has written a book called the Carbon Free Home. While Hren lives in Durham, not Greensboro, our state is lucky to have people like Hren working to make our communities greener. Sustainability of one of the most important concepts of the 21st century. We need to find ways to sustain everything from our natural resources to our standard of living.

If this tiny house on 16th street at the base of the Billy Crash Craddock bridge can have solar panels, why can't more of us? Today is ABC Wednesday and S is for solar panels and sustainability. 

R is for Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Whole Foods in Friendly Center is making an effort to educate the public about disposing of trash. Before us, we see three bins: 1) trash/landfill, 2) recycling, and 3) compost. This sorting helps us reduce, reuse, and recycle. Some items inevitably head to the landfill; however, there is plenty of waste that can be recycled or composted.  The City of Greensboro takes yard waste that can be composted. They now takes all plastic bottles and jugs numbered 1-7.* This is a more generous policy than we had in previous years, Whole Foods helps educate us on what exactly can be done with which items.  Greensboro has learned that nobody wants a garbage dump in their neighborhood, so the less trash that we have, the better off we all are. Every composted or recycled piece of trash makes a tremendous difference in what gets sent to the dump.

Today is ABC Wednesday and for our GO GREEN Greensboro series, "R" is for reduce, reuse, recycle! We can also add, "repurpose," that great effort to make something useful out of something that has outlived its usefulness. If you look closely on the wall, you can see that Whole Foods made decorations out of old wooden spools from local textile mills, a local, repurposed touch. 

 

*view the city's plastic recycling page here.

Q is for Quantity and Quality

The yard sale season is upon us. Increasingly, people are painting, repurposing and reselling surplus items from their homes. The above photo features a sale from a while back when the Thrill of the Hunt was still on Battleground Avenue.* It is amazing what one can accrue over the course of a year. As college students move home for the summer, household items and tchotchkes can grow exponentially. With Craigs list, community sales, and personal yard sales, one person's trash becomes another's treasure.

Today is ABC Wednesday and for our Go GREEN Greensboro series, we're featuring "Q" for quantity and quality. Websites abound with suggestions for decluttering and paring down to owning things that really matter for us. If you spent a week considering the items that brought more quality to your life, what would you get rid of? Quality over quantity is a good first step in going green. If you don't mind quibbling over price and you need to get out from under the quagmire of stuff, consider organizing a sale in your neighborhood...... or ours!

*The Thrill of the Hunt is now located downtown across from the Mellow Mushroom on South Elm Street.

P is for Plants

This past Saturday, an Edible Plant Sale was held in the Edible Schoolyard in the backyard of  the Greensboro Children's Museum. The Edible Schoolyard is a gem of a place that is fun for children and adults alike. As communities make more of an effort to eat local produce and to teach children how food grows from seed to plant to produce to table, events like the Edible Plant Sale bring children one giant step closer to their food source. Our regular readers know that we at GDP urge everyone to plant edible items in their yards and flower beds. Chard and lavender and rosemary make great bed fillers. Blueberry bushes are as beautiful and their non-berry producing counterparts. We hope that the Children's Museum continues to hold the plant sale every spring. They should have families come back late summer and bring their harvested vegetables to sell as a museum fundraiser. 50% to the children and 50% to the museum. The children could use their profits to purchase plants next spring. 

Today is ABC Wednesday, a favorite with many of our readers. "P" is for "plant" in our GO GREEN GREENSBORO series. May you plant many plants this spring and reap the fruits of your labor later this summer, possibly even turn some profit!  Plant, plant, plant.......

O is for Organic

The above photo features the organic produce section at Whole Foods in Friendly Shopping Center. With three supermarket-sized natural food stores in Greensboro, as well as numerous farmers' markets,  organic food is getting easier and easier to find. From Ashevilly to Kitty Hawk, here is an organic food store finder Google "ap" for North Carolina. Organic foods do not contain synthetic inputs, nor do they have pesticides. The organic, Green Food Revolution took hold in the 1940's and has been growing ever since. While there is controversy about whether organic food is better for you than commercially grown, conventional food, there is something wholesome about knowing your food hasn't been genetically modified or sprayed with chemicals. Let us remember, until the 20th century, the majority of farming was organic. Organic is the ORIGINAL, old-timey way to grow food.*

Today is ABC Wednesday and for this round, we're featuring A-Z GO GREEN Greensboro and "O" is for original, ordinary, and ORGANIC, the way grandma, and nature intended food to be. Yes, we know there are two sides to this story. AND, Greensboro has several businesses that rely on chemicals and chemical processes. Maybe for the next round of ABC Wednesday, we'll feature science of Greensboro. In the meantime, we're off to plant some organic chard in the yard! Happy ABC Wednesday!

*Wiki organic food reference.

N is for Nature, Nurture, Natural

This past Sunday, the Yanceyville Farmers Curb Market hosted its first plant sale and earth day celebration. Unfortunately, many booths were unfilled and the normal rush of customers were not there. Perhaps attendance was low because it was the day before tax day; perhaps because people are not yet familiar with the event; perhaps because the giant arts and crafts festival was taking place at the coliseum complex; just maybe the event could have benefitted from more advertising. At any rate, we hope that the event continues becaue the plants offered were great and seemed to be a good money value. Plus, vendors were very knowledgeable. One farmer and his wife took the time to explain three different kinds of thyme to us.

We're using the above photo of the event to help with this week's ABC Wednesday post. Today is "N" day for "N" is for nature, nurture, natural. Natural produce helps keep us and the earth healthy and nature is our most important resourse. We must nurture it. From insects to trees and everything in-between, nature keeps us healthy. "N" is the second most commonly used consonant in the English alphabet; second only to "T".  We hope you are doing somethi-N to make today special. We hope the plant/earth day event will happen again next year. In the meantime, if you still need plants, consider the Herb Society's event at the Greek Orthodox Church this Thursday. Here is a write-up from four years ago.

M is for Mulch

          Marshall Stone is a landscape business on Sandy Ridge Road, near the Farmers Market in Greensboro. They specialize in stone installations and outdoor living areas; however, they also have plenty of mulch. From what we can surmise online, the company is about seven years old and their primary markets are Virginia and North Carolina. The above Sandy Ridge location is fairly new. It has an attractive stone and water feature in the front of the business; however, today we are interested in their mulch piles.

         As you prepare your yards and gardens for the summer, remember, mulch is a fabulous addition to your landscape. Mulch keeps out weeds (which compete for nutrients) and it helps retain moisture in soil.  A good layer of mulch also optimizes root temperature-- cooler in summer and   warmer in winter.*  We are lucky in Greensboro. If you leave yard waste by the curb, the city hauls it away and converts it to mulch that can eventually be purchased. The Ingleside Facility in High Point accepts yard waste from private residences for free. Today is ABC Wednesday, and for this round of GO GREEN GREENSBORO, M is for mulch because it is a fabulous, recycled, organic material.

         
*If you want to learn more about mulch (types, advantages, concerns, money value), consider consulting 'Mulch for Dummies'. Not that we are dummies, but those catchy-titled books are now websites too (see here).

L is for Light, Landfills, and Learning

Today, we bring you a Big Belly smart/solar trash can.*  The one photographed above is located on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in front of the student union. The can on the right, that opens like a mailbox, is the solar operated one. It compacts trash and sends an e-mail alerting the cleaning crew that it needs to be emptied. While the compactors cost about $5,000 per can, they can pay for themselves in labor costs saved by not having to be "checked" by humans. 

It is so wonderful that these cans are located on a university campus. Universities are a place to foment ideas. If we are going to transform education and prepare students to generate new ideas and products to enhance our quality of life, we have to surround them with innovation. Gone are the days when we teach for the future. Today’s expectations are that classrooms impact the present. It takes a blend of good teaching, student motivation, state of the art materials, and authentic, real-world projects to grow these great idea like the Big Belly solar trash compactor.  

We share this photo today as part of our ABC Wednesday, GO GREEN GREENSBORO series. L is such an important LETTER in the green world. L is for life;  living- with minimal environmental impact; lawns- and conserving water;  leaves- that Greensboro collects for mulch;  and land and landfills. Also, L is for LIGHT to compact trash and make it take up LESS space in the LANDFILLS. Finally, L is for the LEARNING that has to take place to make these innovative devices possible.

 

*Amanda Lehmert wrote an informative article about them for the News and Record on April 1st 2012 p. A1 & A6. Her informative article about the cans, located at the downtown greenway, sent us out in search of a smart trash can to photograph!

K is for Kids

The above photo was taken at the tennis courts in Sunset Hills; last year, when it was warm at the end of March. The children look so unencumbered with their absence of shoes and winter garmets.  It is heartwarming to see children enjoying the out of doors. At first glance, you will see a trio of children. Look closer and find the fourth.

Yellow, blooming forsythia in the forground frame the photo and distance the children from the street. Forsythia are flowering plants in the Oleaceae or olive family. Befitting to photograph children with this plant, given the olive branch is a symbol of peace- dating back to the 5th century BC.  As Jews enjoy Passover and Christians prepare to celebrate Easter, let us hope that the world can become more harmonious and peaceful and that children and nature alike can be nurtured. Today is ABC Wednesday;  for this A-Z round, our theme is GO GREEN GREENSBORO and K is for KIDS, happy, healthy kids, playing outside and enjoying nature in all its glory. Peace...

J is for Juice Shop

Anybody who is trying to maintain a healthy diet, likely has participated in some sort of juice regimen for the purpose of cleansing or  providing nutritional supplements or adding antioxidants for health. Juice can be healthy or junky, depending on the quantity and quality. Today is ABC Wednesday. We've selected J for juice for our Go Green Greensboro series and have photographed the Juice Shop in Friendly Center. While there is not any stand out green factor from the Juice Shop (no solar panels,  recycled building materials, or LEED certification, etc. that we know of), they are worth mentioning for the following reasons.

Their business model is simple, one fairly-nutritious product, one size, cash only, good money value. The shop provides college scholarship money to employees who have worked there a certain number of hours. This is a locally owned business that has been giving back to the community and to employees way before all of those concepts were trendy. The Juice Shop opened in 1997 and is owned by Colin and Rick Streng. They have three stores: One on Lawndale; one in Friendly Center; one in Winston-Salem. Please stop by if you like smoothie/juice drinks that are yogurt-based. While you are there, look at the scholarship wall and thank them for this fine tradition. Hats off to Juice Shop and thank you, dear readers, for stopping by on J Day for Go Green Greensboro. See A-I here.

I is for Individual

Yesterday, at Geeksboro Coffee House, we ran into our young, old-friend, Elizabeth Perrion. We first met Elizabeth several years ago when she was a Page High School student working at Earth Fare Supermarket. As a teenager, Elizabeth was health-conscious and loved talking about health and well-being with the store’s customers. Today, as a young adult, she is still passionate about healthful living. Now, Elizabeth works at Deep Roots Co-Op and is so excited about the opening of the new store. When she isn’t working, she attends GTTC, finishing an associates degree and hoping to continue her studies in nutrition, health, and wellness. 

 If you get a chance, stop by Deep Roots on North Eugene and let Elizabeth help you with your healthful living needs. With individuals like her, the younger generation may break the death-by-food cycle. For this round of ABC Wednesday, our theme is Go Green Greensboro. Greensboro can only be “green” and healthy if we have individuals who take health and wellness seriously. I is for individual citizens all doing what we can to keep our community healthy in every way. Elizabeth is one such INDIVIDUAL!

 

H is for Hybrid

This hybrid beauty, a Toyoto Prius, commanded a little section of Friendly Center all to itself this weekend. The Prius is one of the most environmentally friendly vehicles sold in the USA. The first mass-produced hybrid Prius was first sold in Japan in 1997 and has been available worldwide since 2000.

The word "Prius" comes from Latin meaning "before" because it was released before the environmental awareness craze (reference). The Prius is currently in its third generation and keeps getting cleaner and cleaner. Have you considered joining the hybrid generation? They get even better gas mileage around town than they do on the highway. The best numbers we've seen are 95 miles per gallon.

Today is ABC Wednesday and "H" is for "hybrid". See our A-G "go green" Greensboro entries, here.

G is for Golf

Golf is to Greensboro as basketball is to Chapel Hill. According to Golf Link, there are 33 golf courses within 20 miles of downtown Greensboro. One of the cover stories featured in the March 1960 Golf Digest was one entitled, North Carolina Wonderland of Golf." The first course in Greensboro opened in 1909 at the corner of Summit Avenue and Deway Street out near St. Leo's Hospital, ( reference). Since the early 1900's, Greensboro has contributed significantly to North Carolina's being associated with golf.

Today's post takes us to the Farm Course of the Greensboro Country Club at Carlson Farms off Carlson Dairy Road. This private course represents 18 holes with a par of 72 and over 7,376 yards, making it the longest in Greensboro. It was redesigned in 2013 and remains a beautiful, hilly course. We're using golf for our ABC Wednesday "G" entry. "G" is for "golf."  GDP's theme this round is GO GREEN.  (See our A-F GO GREEN entries here).

 In one way, golf courses are tied to the perception that a community is green. The courses provide lovely, open space that appear natural and are protected from commercial or residential development. Unfortunately, the un-green aspect of keeping golf courses green is their excessive use of water. On a positive, environmental note, the US Golf Association is keenly aware of this issue and is making an effort to decrease water use to irrigate golf courses (read here).

F is for Fresh Fish and Fresh Food

Greensboro is a great place to fish for bream. The above fish was hooked locally in a private pond, when the weather was a little warmer. Lakes and private ponds are filled with these edible panfish. Americans are trying harder and harder to eat local food and Greensboro is involved with that initiative. One way to eat local is to fish. Greensboro's Parks and Recreation Department is very involved with the Community Fishing Program. As one example, they deliver fish to lakes (read one example here).

Another way to help sustain our feed supply is by planting more edible landscaping (see here). We hope you are making some effort to eat fresh food. Today is ABC Wednesday and for our Go Green Greensboro series, we're saying F is for Fresh... fish and food! Let's all take one day a week and try to eat completely from food that is grown locally.

E is for Education and the Environment

This weekend, we were at Bur-Mil Park and stopped by the Frank A. Sharpe, Jr. Wildlife Education Center. It is conveniently located on the edge of the greenway and along the birding trail. The center is a great place to step in out of the elements- not to mention a place to get a drink of water and use the bathroom. In addition to being a great rest stop, they offer wildlife education programs for people of all ages. Two free classes, particularly relevant to this post, are Growing the Green Way and Living the Wildlife.

The renovated barn, that houses the above education center, was originally owned by Julius W. Cone and was known as the Owl's Roost Farm and Poker Club (reference). Julius was the brother of Clarabel and Etta Cone and son of Herman and Helen Cone. His stepdaughter's husband was local architect Edward Loewenstein. So, yet again, a facet of Greensboro's history takes us back to the prominent Cone family.

If you get a chance, stop by Bur-Mil's Wildlife Education Center. It is a fine example of a free, resource available to all. Today is ABC Wednesday and for our GO GREEN Greensboro, "E" is for 'Education and the Environment'.

D Is for Dirt

Last February, we featured this very plot of land as E for Environment on ABC Wednesday. This round, our Go Green Greensboro series, we're featuring the lot on the edge of Old Asheboro and next to Musicgarten as D for Dirt. The city lot, formerly a gas station on 1.3 acres of dirt at the corner of Lee and Arlington Streets, is about to become a park thanks to the Piedmont Land Conservancy. Last year, the land was in a "scruffy/limbo" state. Today, the natural setting park with a garden for children is about to become a reality. The fresh dirt above is the foundation for a great public space.

Kathy Treanor, Founder, Board of Advisors Member and first Executive Director of the Piedmont Land Conservancy, must be beaming. She has been working for years to see this conservation effort to fruition. Dirt may seem insignificant; however, clean dirt and good quality soil are paramount for producing good food. Dirt keeps humans connected to the earth. Dirt is an important habitat. Author Margaret Atwood says, "(i)n the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." Well, soon, we will have a wonderful place in downtown Greensboro to allow our children to know what it is like to be clean, yet smell like dirt. 

See our A-C Go Green Greensboro series, here. See ABC Wednesday around the world, here.

C is for Cycling

The City of Greensboro and Guilford County have made great strides in helping our community become more bicycle friendly. In the above photo, we see a bike rack full of bicycles on the hill near Curry Building on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.*  Spring Garden Street, the horizontal ribbon of road in the background, now has a bike lane extending most of it's length. Also, our greenways have been extended to make cycling around town easier. Not only do our greenways make walking, running, and cycling easier, the greenways themselves are being constructed in cleaner and greener ways (read more here). We are proud of our city!

The more bicycle lanes, paths and greenway trails we have, the more conducive it becomes for people to use bicycles for commuting. The more bicycles are used for commuting, the greener our city becomes. The North Carolina Department of Transportation is on board with this concept. They even have a website outlining bicycle maps and routes, one of which is a Murphy to Manteo trail with a route that seems to go through Greensboro (or at least pretty close).

For this round of ABC Wednesday, our theme is "Go Green" Greensboro and we are showcasing ways to keep the Green in Greensboro! Today is ABC Wednesday and C is for CYCLING (and COMMUTING by CYCLE) especially on CAMPUS where CAR parking is COSTLY and at a premium. While we still have roads with heavy bicycle use that aren't cyclist friendly  (like Horse Pen Creek Road), every year, Greensboro gets a little more friendly to people on two wheels. Here's to increased bike use and zero fatalities for cyclists in 2013 in Greensboro and beyond!

 

*For those of you familiar with the UNCG campus, Jackson Library is the white buildng in the background.

B is for Bog Garden

Yesterday, we featured a bronze statue of Dr. Joe Christian. Today, we share a photo of his beloved Bog Garden at Benjamin Park. Dr. Christian dreamed of turning this formerly blighted parcel of land into a place for native plants to thrive is a natural setting. The wetland home is nestled on seven acres between Hobbs Road, Northline Avenue and Starmount Drive. The Bog Garden is open year round from sunrise to sunset. It has, numerous wildlife species, native plants, and a recirculating waterfall that Dr. Christian himself helped construct. The trails and boardwalk, visible in the upper left corner, allow visitors to travel through the natural bog, disrupting it minimally. This photo shows the Bog Garden at its brownest, most dormant time of year. However, without excessive foilage, one can get an idea of just how easy it is to explore the area. We were expecially curious about the duck in the middle which one little visitor dubbed "tuxedo duck" because it looks it is wearing a black tuxedo. The white strip if feathers on the inside of its neck and chest looks like a white dress shirt. This is the kind of creative expression that emerges when parents take their children out to explore nature. If you want to combat nature deficit disorder, head to the Bog Garden and explore!

For this round of our beloved ABC Wednesday  GDP's theme is "Go Green" Greensboro. Today is ABC Wednesday and B is for Bog Garden. We are delighted that Greensboro has natural areas for present and future generations to enjoy. Here's to keeping the "green" in Greensboro!

A is for Air

This past weekend, most of North Carolina was covered in fog. Greensboro was eerily foggy. The above photo shows a street scene on Guilford College Road where it crosses Hilltop Road and becomes Piedmont Parkway. We share this photo in relief that, in Greensboro, we are talking about fog and not smog and air pollution like they are in China this week.* China's air is keeping people inside and, in Bejing alone thousands of people a day are being treated for respiratory problems.

If you want to keep up with Greensboro's air quality, our city givernment maintains a page here.   If we consider what keeps a community healthy, air quality is a key component. For this NEW round of ABC Wednesday, we're going with another theme, "Keeping Greensboro Green." Today we are featuring A for air quality. Let's do everything we can to keep Greensboro green and to keep our air clean!

 

*see a fascinating NASA photo and read more here.