I don't know about you, but I could use something kind of soothing this morning. Please enjoy this 4-minute video journey through the entire Appalachian Trail, and have a happy Monday.

Via Minnesota Public Radio's News Cut

A disused tube station is up for sale in London for the bargain price of £180,000 ($290,000). Formerly Shoreditch Underground Station, the 1,600 sq. ft. single-level property would make an unusual home for someone willing to put in some elbow grease—and willing to tolerate living immediately next to train tracks. Rooms include a ticketing office, lobby, plant area, and a toilet. Andrews & Robertson [via BLDGBLG]

A group of urban activists known as The Mower Gang have cleared the half-mile Detroit Velodrome track of weeds, beer cans, and other trash that kept bicycles away for decades. "It's really not about getting some 45-year-old guy a better place to ride his bike," said the Mower Gang's founder. "It's more about getting 10-, 12-, 13-year-old kids a better place to spend an afternoon." (freep.com, via Mr. Jalopy)

Via the BB Submitterator, reader kentbrew says,

Here is an instructional Flickr set that shows you exactly how to turn the carrots you allowed to grow way beyond the point where they were edible by human beings into something verrrry close to bacon.

As an herbivore, I heartily approve!

How to Turn Carrots into Bacon! (Flickr)

"I love the expression on people's faces when they come here," says "Bamboo Charlie" Walker in this Los Angeles Times profile. "A homeless man with toys? Whoa!"

For the better part of 18 years, Charles Ray Walker, a homeless man from Houston, has made his home near the junctions of the 5, 10, 60 and 101 freeways in Boyle Heights, on a plot with a shock of green bamboo trees. There, he grows nectarines, peaches and strawberries and displays a collection of found objects.

Here's video, here's a photo gallery of his amazing abode and meticulously arranged found object collection, and here is the interview.

The White House has a very nice beehive. But I think the President should invite my daughters over to teach his daughters how to process the honey themselves!

This beehive on the South Lawn is a first for the White House. The busy bees pollinate the kitchen garden, flora all over Washington and provide honey for the White House kitchen. Take a look at this year's colony, estimated at about 70,000 bees, and listen to how the idea for a beehive on the South Lawn came about.

Inside the White House -- Bees!

(Watch video: YouTube, Dotsub, or download MP4.)

A quick little goodie from Boing Boing Video. Last night, I sat in on a live recording session at Santa Monica's Village Studios with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, described as "African-American string band revivalists." They were amazing: I have never been so emotionally moved by someone playing a musical jug (and banjos, fiddles, cow bones, and kazoos). Their performance was witnessed by a handful of music biz folks and oldtime music enthusiasts, and made me feel deeply homesick for Appalachia (I'm also craving cornbread and butterbeans today - there's a song for that).

The Chocolate Drops have a new record coming out in 2010, and Boing Boing will be all over it like gravy on grits. If you dig R. Crumb, Smithsonian Folkways recordings of pre-blues and pre-bluegrass banjo music, and love folks who bring new life to authentic American music, you will flip out.

So, the video above: after the Drops' performance and recording session ended, Dom Flemons (of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, seated in center in the video), Blind Boy Paxton (seated at left in the video), and Frank Fairfield (seated far right) sat down together and jammed pure, sweet magic for a spell. I wasn't prepared with a proper camera or crew, but I grabbed my iPhonetraption out of my pocket and got to shootin'. I hope you enjoy it as much as everyone in the room did. Pure magic, these guys.

Read the rest

GOOD reports on the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization that hires out goats to people who want to clear brush on their property.

[R]ather than spending tons of money and time on diesel-powered machines, filing the proper permits, and administering dangerous herbicides, the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization will loan your a team of 100 goats for all your brush-clearing needs--all at a very modest rates. As Serious Eats explains, the benefits of goats are numerous: they eat just about anything, they can work on uneven ground, you don't need permits to use them, and they can clear a quarter-acre in about three days.

Rental Goats Clear Brush Better, Beat Cosmonauts in Space Race

A face mask with which to attract hungry, curious hummingbirds, $80 from heatstick.com. The masks do look silly, and the website is nothing if not homebaked. But if the maker's YouTube videos are to be believed, these contraptions do attract the little buggers and make for amazing eye-to-eye encounters with one of the most magical winged creatures on the planet. I'm kind of dying to try one out.

Using and enjoying the feeder is a two step process. The first is to acquaint the hummingbirds with the feeder. We set an old can of paint on a small shelf on the side of the barn and slipped the feeder onto the can. It wasn't long before the hummingbirds found it, and after a little searching, found the feeding station. Then we let them get familiar with the feeder for a few days. Finally we set a chair next to the shelf, removed the feeder from the can, slipped it on and waited. One never forgets the first time a hummingbird suddenly arrives at the feeder right in front of your eyes.

Video embedded above: "Chris Makes a New Friend" [YouTube]

Product: "Eye to Eye Wearable Hummingbird Feeder." The guy behind it lives in California's Humboldt County, and has invented some other neat earth-gadgety stuff, too, like the Veg-a-Lot growing shelter [heatstick.com].

(Thanks, Dean Putney!)