In the Thank God I Live in a Friendly, Helpful Town category.....
kswl2
7 years ago
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Comments (18)
bpath
7 years ago
gsciencechick
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Moving. NY to SoCal. Help me find a town!
Comments (12)Air quality in Claremont definitely sucks in the summer, as smog collects against the mountains and has no where to go unless strong offshore winds blow it back out to sea. The landscape possibilities in the San Marino/Pasadena area are also good, but it is not a coastal climate, and it gets much hotter/smoggier in summer, and has potential for freezing in winter, although parts of this area have exceptional microclimates that don't get nearly any frost. The Huntington Botanic Garden and Los Angeles County Arboretum are both in this area, and well worth checking out to see the diversity of what can be grown there. The Norton Simon Museum gardens in Pasadena are also worth checking out. I think you have a huge learning curve ahead of you in getting familiar with the plant palette of southern California, although you will also notice that given what can be grown there, most landscapes are actually pretty pedestrian as to planting choices and design, not nearly as interesting in general as what is being done here in the San Francisco Bay Area. There is a lot more uniformity and reliance on the same basic 20 plants in Los Angeles. Best wholesale nurseries in southern California for more variety tend to be in San Diego's north county area, or in the Santa Barbara/Carpenteria area, in my opinion. If you are located within the southern California area, close proximity is not as critical, as most of the larger nurseries will ship throughout the area. If the intrinsic beauty of the region is the highest criteria for selecting where you will relocate, I would suggest that it is very hard to beat Santa Barbara/Montecito, but it certainly is not affordable by any consideration, and professional design competition is pretty tough, particularly for someone who may still have a lot to learn about the plants. It would also be hard to find something really nice for less than a million......See MoreI bought a house in town
Comments (22)I'm so glad the inspection went so well for you. That is indeed very good news. It's evident from the pictures that the house has been well taken care of. I love the idea of decorating with your MIL's china. It will look wonderful in the kitchen. I also like the idea of a grayish aqua. Sounds really nice and soothing. Perfect for a bedroom. I'm so happy for you! I wish we could all be neighbors. I'd be glad to come and help you if I could. MeMo...See MoreSmall town living
Comments (33)We chose this town 26 years ago when our 3 children were approaching school age because of it's small town feeling, excellent schools and character. It's just across the river from Philadelphia which makes it a suburb in the typical sense and I guess technically it's a township, a subdivison of a county. Our region is so built up that for the most part you can't tell when you leave one town and enter another. My town is 15 square miles and the population is under 20,000 with about 5000 families. In spite of recent development we still have farms which have been preserved from sub division. The town was founded in 1682 and has a strong Quaker heritage, the Quaker Meeting House is at the main intersection in town. We still have many beautiful old homes lining the tree shaded streets. In fact we're officially a Tree City and in 2000 Money magazine named it the number one town. We're only 20 minutes from Philly, 30 minutes from the airport, an hour from the ocean, 90 minutes from Manhattan, and 2 hours from the PA mountains. I love the fine old homes, huge trees, small town center, the old cemeteries, the local farm stand, and the history. The Lenni Lenape tribe were the original inhabitants attracted to the area because of it's natural springs. During the Revolution Hessian soldiers camped just off Main Street while retreating from Philadelphia, Lafayette stayed at a farmhouse and one beautiful old home was a stop on the Underground Railway. I appreciate the fact that our school system is a manageable size. There were about 200 in the senior class when my kids graduated. That was the primary reason for moving here. We wanted a town with its' own school system where our children would go to school with the same kids they went to church with or sat with in the orthodontist's office or played baseball with in the summer. It's a town where many of the children who grew up here and went off to college moved back when they had families to raise. I love the strong community spirit and the volunteers who who organize the activities in town - Candlelight Night, Town Day, the parade, the charitable 5K runs, scarecrow making on the community center lawn, Easter egg hunts, the Strawberry Festival, the Blueberry Day, Family Day at the park and all the sports for kids etc. But it is the people who live here, my neighbors who make this a wonderful community. It's a town that I'd love to live in until I die and with any luck one of my children can purchase our home for their own family some day....See MoreI tested 10 eco-friendly detergents and this is what I found...
Comments (90)Larisa - Thanks for posting this. I think you do have to take into consideration that a company that receives an “F” has got to say something in response. Their explanation, that Borax takes up 1% of their formula and they don’t believe EWG takes that into account, is not correct. I just read that on the EWG site, that they definitely do take it into account when giving grades. Have you looked at the review of Puracy on their site? They do list Borax [sodium borate] as an ingredient with an F. It is reported to be HIGH concern, because it causes developmental/endocrine/reproductive effects. And based on their explanations of what they consider in their grading, that 1% that is in the formula still ranks enough to cause high concern. Perhaps the company is saying that due to not wanting to give away trade secrets, they do not want to reveal how much borax is in their product. But - they just did. So it doesn’t add up that they didn’t want to tell EWG how much was in the formula before the grade was given. For me that category of concern about developmental and reproductive toxicity is really on my radar, so I don’t even want to use a product with moderate concern about these effects, let alone high concern. Here is EWG’s position on Borax… https://www.ewg.org/enviroblog/2016/05/watch-out-borax#.Wl5yCa2ZNGU Look at the whole review. This product has one F ingredient, 8 ingredients that get a C, 9 ingredients that are a B and 5 ingredients that get an A. That’s a lot of ingredients. The company in their statement, said “there are ONLY 19 ingredients”. [g]. That is a lot to me. Compare that to the products that receive an "A". They also have Benzisothiazolinones which are of moderate concern for acute aquatic toxicity. They have 4 ingredients that have no data on them. They do have a good rating for ingredient disclosure, which is a good start. I’ve noticed a number of recent reviews have upgraded some of the grades on products that changed their formula to remove some ingredient that was problematic. Or provided EWG with better information. The company is claiming that there is no exposure to these chemicals. That they are completely rinsed away from clothing in the rinse cycle. I don’t think they can guarantee that. Nor does that address what happens to them when they are dumped into the waste water and the effect that eventually has on the environment. If the chemicals that are of concern are not in the product in the first place, then there is no concern. The company is saying to you - as these companies have for decades - we have done OUR OWN testing and we say the risk from this product is a 1 or a 2 on a scale of 0-4. I’m sorry, I am not going to rely on what the company that makes the product tells me is the risk. They have too much at stake to be an objective source of that kind of information. The only way to have a chance of getting objective information, is to have an independent organization like EWG. If a company disputes their findings, then they should have their scientists meet with the scientists at EWG and work it out. Instead of getting their PR department to make an attack online of EWG and what they do. In this response from the company, they criticized everything that EWG does and didn’t take into account anything they are doing right. It’s a one sided, PR effort to avoid the consequences of a bad review. I'd be interested in seeing EWG's response to it. They explain that you have to have borax in a product that has enzymes in it to stabilize it. Yet Grab Green Pods has enzymes and no Borax and many of you here are happy with that product. So, that’s not right either. That's just my take on it. I know you use the product and like it and it's not simple and clear cut to weigh everything. But, I really support having an independent organization like EWG to protect the consumer and I don't think a manufacturer should criticize what they do, in defense of their product, especially when their defense has some inaccuracies in it. EWG is not singling them out. They are very anti-Borax, no matter who is using it in their formula, including DIY recipes....See More
Holly- Kay
7 years ago
MagdalenaLee
7 years ago
blfenton
7 years ago
maire_cate
7 years agoUser
7 years ago
cattyles
7 years ago
cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
7 years ago
Funkyart
7 years agokswl2
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoroarah
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7 years agoFunkyart
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7 years agoHolly- Kay
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kswl2Original Author