Every other Sunday, Bluedot Living Martha's Vineyard will share stories about local changemakers, Islanders’ sustainable homes and yards, planet-friendly recipes and tips, along with advice from Dear Dot. Did your friend
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE / STORIES
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A BLT from the MoGlo Food Truck comes with fried green onions and MoGlo lettuce.
– Courtesy of Morning Glory Farm
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We love these Island businesses that are open through the winter. Morning Glory Farm’s store, as well as their food truck, have been supplying us with produce and prepared meals all year. The food truck has “popups” every Saturday in March. Next week’s is “Be a Hero” (like a sandwich…). Read Lucas Thors’ story on the truck and the farmers who bring you the food. And if you’re hungry for more heroes, click here for profiles of local MV heroes such as Jennifer Randolph, John Abrams, Julie Pringle, and Jonah Maidoff.
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Apparently, because it’s (almost) spring. And according to a helpful alert we got from the Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, amphibians such as salamanders and frogs have a bit of, ummm, spring fever: “For many Massachusetts residents, spring rain is a reminder of the changing seasons. For smaller
Massachusetts natives, like amphibians, spring rains signal it’s time to emerge from winter retreats and migrate to breeding sites … Unfortunately, many of those animals will face the daunting task of having to cross roads to reach their destinations.”
You’ve probably already heard pinkletinks (the MVTimes carried a story the other day about the first peepers of spring), but many of these tiny creatures are actually quiet and hard to see.
Mass. Wildlife suggests driving slowly, or not at all, on rainy nights after dark. Matt Pelikan, who keeps track of Vineyard creatures for the MV Atlas of Life Project (read our story here), sent us this photo of a bullfrog. While I had Matt’s attention, I asked him about something else I noticed while visiting South Carolina: signs about alligators formerly used words like “Danger” or “Beware.” Now they say “Alligators may live here.” “There’s a trend to recast dangerous or potentially problematic species as legitimate occupants of the land,” he told me, “to encourage people to adapt to their presence, rather than assuming the dangerous species should be eliminated.”
In other wildlife news, the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror (and many other papers since) reported that scientists from the New England Aquarium spotted an “incredibly rare” gray whale 30 miles south of the island, repeatedly diving and resurfacing. The species has been extinct in the Atlantic for more than two centuries — they’re more typically found in the Pacific these days.
Have a lovely final few days of winter.
– Jamie Kageleiry (and Leslie Garrett)
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Planning a party? Don’t invite plastic!
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And Dear Dot reminds us that balloons blow. For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.
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Paid Advertisement
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In A Word: Autobesity
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Wow! That's huge! We generated this painting of a Ford F150 truck using Chapt GPT's AI-assisted image creator.
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“Ours is a supersized world,” Leslie Garrett writes in this In a Word column about “Autobesity.” “We live in houses three times bigger than those our parents and grandparents lived in during the 1950s. We scarf down hamburgers twenty-three percent larger than they were originally and quench our thirst with soft drinks bigger by fifty-two percent.
And we get into the driver’s seats of enormous cars. The most popular vehicles in the U.S. are the Ford F-Series trucks, led by the F-150, which is just shy of 17.5 feet long, with a width of 6.6 feet (not including mirrors). First coined in The Guardian newspaper, the term ‘autobesity’ gives vocabulary to our penchant for these large vehicles.”
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BUY LESS/BUY BETTER: Happy Houseplanting
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The Bluedot Marketplace includes affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of our links, we may earn a commission, essentially a small digital finder’s fee.
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Living plants in the home grow and change, sparking wonder and appreciation for the natural world. And we could all use a little more of that, right? Here, a few finds for your indoor gardens.
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Houseplant Helpers
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Our marketplace editor purchased a few brass plant animals from AnotherStudio on Etsy and testifies that they’re as charming in person as they look on screen. They make great gifts and arrive in biodegradable packaging.
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Buy now or
read our
review.
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Marvelous Microgreens
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Microgreens pack tons of beauty, flavor, and nutrition in a tiny package, but buying them usually involves lots of money and plastic. True Leaf makes it easy to grow them yourself.
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Buy now or
read our review.
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DEAR DOT: How Can I Smell Good Without Toxic Chemicals?
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– Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
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Dear Dot,
I like to wear fragrance. Is there a company that will make me smell great but has healthy ingredients for both me and the planet?
– Bobbi
Dear Bobbi,
Spritzing on your signature scent before you leave the house is luxurious, confidence-boosting, and … carcinogenic? As you mention, the ingredients in your perfume bottle might really stink — there may well be some dark secrets lurking in your perfume bottle.
If you’ve ever checked out the ingredients on a bottle of perfume or cologne — or for that matter any number of scented products from shampoo to detergent — you might have noticed one ingredient simply labeled “fragrance.” Well, it turns out that there are over 3,000 chemical ingredients that could be included in the “fragrance,” but there are no current laws in the U.S. requiring manufacturers to list fragrance ingredients. The EU, on the other hand, requires the individual labeling of certain ingredients listed as allergens when they appear in concentrations greater than 0.001 percent in leave-on products and greater than 0.01 percent in rinse-off products. And among these fragrance ingredients are some harmful chemicals that have been linked with
endocrine disorders, cancers, and other adverse health effects. …
What’s a perfume lover to do? Dot has the good scents to help out.
See more Dot here. Got a question for her? Write her
at deardot@bluedotliving.com
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Sign up here for Your Daily Dot newsletter! Get a daily dose of Dot's eco-friendly wisdom when she answers your sustainability questions.
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Garden to Table: Your Spring Garden
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“‘My goodness!’ a guest remarked at dinner, looking out through the windows of my screen porch toward my vegetable garden,” Laura Roosevelt writes, “‘It’s so lush! What are you growing?’ “I didn’t hesitate. ‘Weeds,’ I replied.” Lucky for us, Laura moved on from cultivating weeds to creating a garden that could feed her family year-round. In her inaugural column from last spring, she outlines how to get started.
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HANDBOOK
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Doing some spring cleaning? Or seeking out some second-hand finds? We’ve got you covered. And for more Island eco-resources, consult Bluedot MV’s Ultimate Simple, Smart, Sustainable Handbook to Martha’s Vineyard.
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What’s Behind the Name “Bluedot”?
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“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” astronomer Carl Sagan wrote in 1994’s Pale Blue Dot. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” Sagan’s humbling words inspire us to deliver stories to you that reflect his and so many others’ work to cherish this blue dot. Please consider forwarding this newsletter to your friends and family to share and inspire real-world eco-actions we can take at home and in our Martha’s Vineyard community.
Thanks for being part of our Bluedot community!
–Jamie Kageleiry and Leslie Garrett
Editors, Bluedot Living Martha’s Vineyard
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