If you want to go all feng shui with your garden, a fountain can let you bliss out to the sound of trickling water. (Sort of like being at a spa, but without all that awful New Age music.)

To keep your garden green as possible, adorn it with a sun-powered Cascade Solar Fountain. It requires zero electricity to operate, and there’s no wiring to ugly up your pristine plot of land. You can even keep it in the shade, since the solar panel works up to 16 feet away. And since the pump is constantly recycling water, you’re not being wasteful with the H20.

The four-tier cascading “solar system” features glazed terra cotta bowls: My favorite’s the bright and cheery cobalt blue, but there’s also lovely lilac, antique brown, and blazing inferno red.

The title of the blog says it all: Practical Environmentalist. And a recent reference to building solar generators from auto parts crystallizes the concept. “The design uses readily available parts and tools. As a result, the complete system for generating one kilowatt of electricity and 10 kilowatts of heat, including a battery for storing the power generated, can be built for a couple thousand dollars —less than half the cost of one kilowatt of photovoltaic panels. Looks like this technology is based on the ideas of Matthew Orosz, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer who served in Lesotho.”

Tim Willard of The Future is Green stands apart from many other ‘green news’ blogs in one very good way: he is relentlessly positive. In just the last few days, he’s summarized and referred to articles about new processes to make cheaper ethanol, how the demand for organic food is now so great it’s outstripping supply, that California is about to build the largest solar power plant in the world, about breakthroughs in using the tides to generate powers, and the remarkable concept, touted by the city’s mayor, that Chicago should become the world’s greenest city.

Whenever we feel weighed down by the bad news from every quarter, this blog reminds us of the inevitable: the future MUST be green (or there may not be a future at all).

Photo credit: Mike Gustafson 

Low-energy windows, the environmental nightmare of the Yangtze dam, an interactive map of hydrogen filling stations across the U.S., new of the world’s first toy car powered by hydrogen…news of the advances (and retreats) of alternative energy worldwide – hydrogen, solar and nuclear — are displayed regularly on IfEnergy, including info at the widest international level to practical apps that can improve your green living quotient right away.

Solar Dweller s filled with the nuts-and-bolts (as well as the economic, sociological, and political/legal) details of going solar, either in a new home (as some some recent Habitat for Humanity homes they helped build) or as personal retrofit on existing property.  And they don’t miss the really important stuff, either, like links on solar-power-created beer, cookies and — most important — chocolate.  It really is the center of the solar universe.

Who says you can’t be stylish and environmentally responsible? JC Winnie’s After Gutenberg offers up a whole rainbow of information and links, links, links on electric transportation…including news on EVT’s Ion, a very hip little scooter, with a very respectable range of 250 km on a single charge, and a maximum speed of 70 kph.

Now here’s a blogger who is truly committed and connected to green business. A marketing expert, a green business consultant, a committed participant of his own, Ivan’s clearly one of the “connectors” — somebody who knows everybody, and can hook you up pronto. How can you NOT like a guy whose three guiding principles are “hire smarter than yourself” , to simply “leave things better than when you found them”, and “design ecstatic experiences”…and who titles enthusiastic coverage of a recent green biz networking event as “One time, at Wine Camp” …

Going “green” on a personal, daily, household basis sounds like a great idea…but the nuts-and-bolts of it are pretty daunting. Steve Spence of WInthrop, NY, has actually been doing it, piece at a time, and his blog (despite its boring name) is crammed full of practical information on converting to wind power, solar power (PV), and biodiesel. Steve’s already done it: he’s living “off the grid”, and is ready to show you how it can happen. (Did you know there are even instructions for converting a school bus into a veggie-eater?)