Nylon bags of human hair or soap bars hung in trees, scarecrows, motion detectors that turn on lights or create movement, cayenne pepper sprinkled in flower beds, moth balls tossed under plants. Any of these things may work to deter our hungry critter neighbors from munching out our gardens and bits of landscape.

“I don’t kill healthy animals. Relocating, almost never,” says Jack Murphy, owner of Aurora-based Urban Wildlife Rescue, Inc. “You need a permit to relocate a wild animal, and most of the time that permit is denied because the chances of a wild animal surviving in new territory are pretty low.

“Everybody wants to be a beekeeper these days. Well, you don’t keep bees; you’re married to ‘em,” he says. “And not everyone wants to be married to bees. People think they’ll take care of themselves, but it’s not like hanging a birdhouse. It’s more like having a dog or a garden.

Ki Kim, owner of The Tea Spot in Boulder, buys organic tea leaves in bulk and often mixes them with other plants for tasty drinks. He struggles to find a name in English for his steepings leavings, but agrees that they make fine compost. He also offers them for free.

It`s high noon at Frog Belly Farm near Longmont, and the interns are busy tending newly born goats, chasing escaped piglets, checking beehives, picking and washing herbs and vegetables in addition to all the other daily chores, such as milking cows and goats, mucking out pens, feeding animals and preparing farm products.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s APHIS (Animal Plant Health and Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine) survey of 17 states last fall, high numbers of adult grasshoppers were found in parts of Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Idaho and South Dakota.

The easiest was demonstrated to me by Dan Moore, whose blog is called Boulder Vermicomposting. On a recent day, we met at his former home, a condo he rents out. The patio had a large plastic composting bin bought on sale in 2006..

Environmentalist and author Bill McKibben says global warming has accelerated to the point that it's no longer about stopping it, but about slowing it down and mitigating it as much as possible.

adventurer Jonny Copp. Copp's life is the embodiment of the festival's motto, 'Make your own legends.' Born in Singapore in 1974, Copp's work as a climber, photographer, videographer and writer has been featured in numerous magazines, books and movies..

Which is why she limits that activity to about a couple of hundred pounds of grapes a year. Otherwise, she crushes them through mechanical means. This year, she expects to produce between 5,000 and 5,600 bottles of wine, out of a space smaller than many convenience stores in an industrial-business strip off north Broadway.