I feel so very blessed to be able to intertwine my art with such a beautiful venue as the Gallery at Texas Discovery Gardens at Fair Park. Not only is it beautiful, they work very hard to support our environment. My work will be on exhibition beginning March 22 and ending July 31, 2010. There will be an Opening Reception for the Exhibit on March 26th from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm at the Gallery. Texas Discovery Gardens’ 7.5 acres offer a wonderful diversity of garden styles and botanical collections. The Gardens feature native plants and plant species from other regions of the world that are adapted to the challenging climate and soils of North Texas. Plants are also selected for their benefits in providing habitat for native wildlife, including butterflies, bugs, and birds. You can also enjoy more than 15 native species of butterflies in the Rosine Smith Sammons Butterfly House and Insectarium, as well as many new tropical butterflies. They offer many fun, hands-on environmental education programs for children and adults. What a great place to spend a Saturday enjoying art, flowers, butterflies and fun! www.sharenchatterton.com

Pink Penta

Organic in the City

I am beginning a new painting called “Zebra Longwings” which I will be donating to the Texas Discovery Gardens for their Charity event Organic in the City Fashion Show and Auction. This event is one of the major fund raisers for the Texas Discovery Gardens. Texas Discovery Gardens is an educational organic garden facility in North Central Texas, that advances the knowledge and skill set of the community to restore, conserve and preserve nature in the urban environment. They accomplish this using their conservatory, greenhouse and 7.5 acre outdoor gardens in urban Dallas along with a full array of teaching programs developed for children and adults.  Their reach begins with small children and adults new to gardening and continues up to and through the Master Gardener level.  Texas Discovery Gardens serves thousands of inner-city students each year.  With the opening of the new Rosine Smith Sammons Butterfly House and Insectarium and the new indoor children’s classroom, Texas Discovery Gardens is now able to offer its EarthKeeper’s® Children’s Education Programs year round.  These programs are educational and fun and they promote excitement and interest in learning math and science via the natural world, they expand student knowledge and understanding of living sustainably, and help youth appreciate and embrace nature. The Organic in the City Fashion Show and Auction is an exciting, fun event eagerly anticipated by fashion, gardening and green living advocates.  Through this event Texas Discovery Gardens will raise thousands of dollars for the expansion of the children’s EarthKeeper’s programs and to bring Butterfly Gardens to schools across Dallas. For more information on Texas Discovery Gardens and this event, click on the link below.

http://www.texasdiscoverygardens.org

"Zebra Longwings" the beginning

To see more of my work, click on the links below.

www.sharenchatterton.com

www.lunaazulstudio.com

Green Kids Game by Play Green

Our gifts at Christmas this year had a distinctively green theme and one particular fun gift was this spinning top game by “ImagiPlay Play Green Spinning Tops“. This toys is made with all natural sustainable rubberwoods and managed-forest pines which are fast growing. Even the packaging is green, it is made from the same sustainable farming wood and doubles up as the “arena” for the spinning tops.

Play Green Spinning Tops - All Natural Eco Game

The top of the packaging slides out and can be reversed and slotted back into the box to create a battle field for the duelling spinning tops!
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Zebra Longwings Butterfly photo by Sharen Chatterton

According to an American Indian Legend – If anyone desires a wish to come true they must first capture a butterfly and whisper that wish to it. Since a butterfly can make no sound, the butterfly cannot reveal the wish to anyone but the Great Spirit who hears and sees all. In gratitude for giving the beautiful butterfly its freedom, the Great Spirit always grants the wish. So, according to legend, by making a wish and giving the butterfly its freedom, the wish will be taken to the heavens and be granted.

Most People just like butterflies, whats not to like, they are graceful, beautiful, colorful creations. I don’t think any other insect has been the inspiration for so many, artists, writers as well as naturalists.

However butterfly populations all over the world are being threatened by loss of habitat. Butterfly gardening, is a great way to provide additional habitat for butterfly species in your area. The species of butterfly vary by region, but by doing a little investigating and planting both nectar plants to attract the adult butterflies and also planting larvae foodplants for the caterpillars, you can increase the local population of butterflies in your area. Not to mention increase your gardens beauty with these colorful winged flowers. Throughout the country, the general requirements for butterfly gardening are the same: full sun, nectar source plants, larval host plants, a pesticide-free environment, and knowledge of the local butterflies. Many butterfly-attracting plants are natives and require little attention, as they are naturally adapted to the region in which they live. Butterfly gardens are best planted in the spring with younger plants or in the fall with mature plants that will become dormant quickly and re-emerge in the spring.

Butterfly Attracting Plants

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I got a Sony portable reader system for Christmas, and I have to say, I love it! It is easy to download books on, easy to read (you can enlarge the print) and it’s lightweight.

Now that I own an e-reader, I started to wonder if it is eco-friendly to use one of these or better to buy the books. Here is what I found out…

The current book ordering system in the U.S. encourages bookstores to order more books than they could every really sell. This certainly increases the number of published copies but it also creates more returns. You not only have all the resources that go into producing the book, as in the printing , packaging , shipping and the paper (from trees), you also have the cost of shipping, gas and packaging to return it back to the publisher. For some Publishers, it isn’t worth the expense for the bookstores to return the books, so they have the store strip the covers and return only that for credit, they then throw away the rest of the book. That leaves about a third of the mass market paperbacks that are printed being dumped in a landfill without ever being read!

Here’s an excerpt from an article about reading on a computer vs. printing out an article to read it;

“The contrast is quite convincing, one-tenth of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions from reading the document on the computer, versus almost one-quarter of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions for printing it out!”

Another article lays out the environmental impact of reading a newspaper on a reader and reading the New York Times on an e-reader. Their conclusion;

“Reading the physical version of the NY Times for a year uses 7300 MJ of energy and emits 700 kg of CO2. Reading it on a Kindle uses 100 MJ energy and emits 10kg of CO2.”

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How about using a living tree as your Christmas Tree this year. I am talking about an in the pot, alive when you decorate it, alive at the end of the holidays tree. Living Christmas trees are becoming more popular because of their many advantages over other types of Christmas trees.

Some of the biggest advantages of using living Christmas trees are the lessening of fire hazard, their future use in the landscape and the fact that they may often be used more than one year as a living Christmas tree in the home. Living Christmas trees offer year-round beauty when planted in the landscape after Christmas and can also serve as outdoor Christmas trees for many years to come. Planted in the landscape living trees also become a yearly source for cut greens to use during the holiday season.

Left planted in containers, the living Christmas tree may be moved from one area to another during the holiday season. However, because most living trees used for Christmas trees are fast growing, they should not remain in a container for more than two years.

The fragrance of many of the living trees is very pleasant when they are used in the home. The varieties of pines have an especially nice aroma.

There are a few important steps to follow for best results in caring for a living Christmas tree in the home.

1. Line the tub or container in which you place a living tree with plastic, waterproof paper or foil to keepexcess water from dripping through onto your floor or carpeting.
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Have you ever wondered whether you could track how efficient your driving style is? Well now you can! It was my birthday today and my beautiful wife bought me a Garmin 1350 GPS system, and I love it, partly because I always get lost here in Texas but also because it features Garmin Eco Route which calculates how “green” my driving is for each trip.

The idea behind the technology is that the Garmin GPS unit can track how fast you accelerate / decelerate and how fast you are driving, how much fuel you have used based on your vehicle MPG rating and then it can give you feedback on how efficient your driving style is…

Garmin Eco Route

The whole idea behind the Garmin Eco Route is to promote a greener driving style and actually give the driver constant feedback on how efficiently they are driving…

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