A slightly smaller footprint

Check out my new energy saving device:





It also doubles as an energy expending device......all for about 40 bucks.

Happy Earth Day!

Today I savored the sugary smell of spring.

Just look at their eyes...

NPR is doing a week-long series on soaring food costs around the world. What I heard today was about the rising demand for meat and its toll on the environment.

(Listen to that report here.)

This isn't new information. It's one of the main reasons that ONO and I decided to be flexitarians (mostly vegetarian.) So listening to this report, and the results of a specific study, gave me one of those self-gratifying moments -- "Cool! Already doing that."

I know some of you are starting to glaze over and others have already clicked on to something WAY more interesting and sensational. But for the rest of you still reading, CHECK THIS OUT!

According to that study, reducing your meat consumption by 20% is like trading in your Camry for a Prius. Can you believe how easy that is?! That's SO easy!

Here's what reducing meat consumption translates into in practical, every day terms: If you eat two meals a day that include meat, that's 14 meaty meals. Reducing by 20% means dropping meat from roughly 3 meals a week. Not that hard. And, you have to admit that reducing meat consumption is a lot less expensive than buying a Prius. In fact, doing that will SAVE money -- maybe $10-$15 week by my rough estimate.

So if the soft, brown, innocent eyes don't get ya, maybe that "cha-ching!" of your bank account will.

For more info, check out this site.

In the not-so-cold ground

So my experiment with the milk jugs didn't work. They kept blowing over in the windy-ness of March and they didn't stay moist and warm enough for the seeds to sprout. Next time I'll remember to weight the bottoms and make sure I have all the lids for each container.

I would have re-planted long before now except that for the last week the weather was entirely uncooperative. Thankfully, today Mother Nature gave us a nearly cloudless day with temps in the 60s. All I can say lady, is.....IT'S ABOUT TIME!

We got a bag of mushroom mulch from our fave nursery and I "worked the soil." As always, there was a lot of "help," mostly in the way of finding big, fat juicy worms and telling me where I should put them. No, not in that sense -- Brennan just has a strong sense of where things should go ("Back in the garden, Mommy! Not in the compost bin!") This one apple sure didn't fall far from the tree!

Here's what should be poking their cute little heads up above ground in 7 - 10 days:

Sugar Peas



Spinach



Red Russian Kale


Radishes (one of ONO's favorite)


chamomile (I had no idea it was such a pretty flower. Gravy!!)


basil


cilantro

[If you're not a gardener, these probably all look like the same green stuff. Sorry to bore you.]

I'm a little disappointed that things didn't work out as planned, but even with this "traditional" planting we should be feasting on our own tasty, organic produce by late May to early June. Delish!

Celebrating resurrection

It was fitting that we planted seeds today, it being the first day of Spring. And the sun was shining, which truly seemed miraculous. It's been a long, LONG, winter.



















I had lots of help, which I'm actually quite grateful for. I'm always wondering which kid (or kids) will carry on the green thumb gene.

Here's the finished product:



And this, my friends, is what gardeners live for.....



the miracle and mystery of rebirth.

Looking into the future Part 3

This is the last installment of my planned 2008 "resolutions" posts. Yeah, yeah, I know it's March. But my heart just hasn't been in it, because this is a list mainly about gardening, which I equate with being outside, sunshine and warmth.

During winter I TRY to remind myself that the plants are hibernating and that humans can sort of hibernate too -- slow down, pull in, look inside, plan and become expectant for the coming growing season. Some days it works, some days it doesn't.

But now it's March and I'm starting to "wake up." My thoughts have turned to the coming growing season and how to improve and increase my "greenness." Here's what I've come up with:

1. Find a way to capture and store rain water for watering without selling a child to pay for it. (Hmmm...wait a minute...)

2. Find a better way to get the compost-able food scraps from the kitchen to the composter. (caption reads: "All I know I learned in the compost heap.")
Last year the fruit flies were horrible, not to mention the smell.

3. Plant a tree in the back yard near our air conditioner compressor. I hear, from the Arbor Day Foundation, that doing so increases the cooling efficiency as much as 10%. AND since ONO's and my anniversary is coming up, and the traditional gift for the 6th year is wood, we're giving each other a tree.

4. Take care of the nasty, evil Japanese beetles that have plagued us the last two years in a "green" way (notice I didn't say humane). I'm looking at some stuff called "Grub Guard" from Gardener's Supply that's supposed to kill the Japanese beetle grubs and continue working a few years down the road.

5. Grow more of the veggies that we use more of. For example, being mostly vegetarian we use a MEGA ton of beans in our meals, so we're including that in the list (see #6).

6. Use only heirloom and organic seeds in the garden this year. We bought our seeds from Heirloom Seeds on-line and I was thrilled at the variety of very interesting sounding choices.

RUBY RED SWISS CHARD
BLACK TURTLE BEAN
PINTO BEAN
LIGHT RED KIDNEY BEAN
AMISH SNAP PEA
GOURMET SALAD BLEND
MONNOPA SPINACH
RUSSIAN RED KALE
YOLO WONDER PEPPER
SUNBRIGHT PEPPER
GOLDEN DELICIOUS SQUASH
SWEET POTATO SQUASH
CUBANELLE PEPPER
ITALIAN HEIRLOOM TOMATO
OLD VIRGINIA TOMATO
AUNT RUBY`S GERMAN GREEN TOMATO
HONEY BEE MIX—these are flowers

7. Buy an energy efficient deep freezer to store the bounty produced by the above listed seeds. This will go in one of the new storage closets of our nearly finished basement.

And the biggest project of all…..(drum roll, please)……

8. Landscape the front yard.

Grow, baby, grow!!

Green it up

I get most of my news from NPR (although I confess that I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, mainly for the incredulous factor and to keep up with what the sadly misguided Conservatives are up to).

This morning on the way back from taking Carter to school, Market Place had a wonderful and surprising report on

sustainability.

Besides the usual, this site contains info on healthy toys, safe cosmetics, and a link to the National Green Pages.

Priviledged

Here's what I saw on my run today:

• a big pile of what looked like dryer lint
• a can of Cheez Whiz (I didn't stop to see if it was empty or not)
• a wadded, mud-encrusted blue and white dish towel
• a flattened PB&J sandwich with one bite out of the corner. Granted, it was made with that flavor-less, texture-less white bread.....I probably would have thrown it away too (or composted it)
• one blue tube sock covered with grass
• numerous piles of dog poo and fast food bags
• lots and Lots and LOTS of the typical trash (cigarette butts, beer bottles, plastic wrapping, the ubiquitous Wal-Mart shopping bag, etc.)
  

Only in a wealthy nation can people afford to throw away this kind of stuff. Maybe it's time to bring back this commercial

You'd think with our giant Cerebrums we'd learn faster

"And Man created the
plastic bag
and the tin
and aluminum can
and the cellophane wrapper
and the paper plate
and the disposable bottle,
and this was good
because Man could then take his
automobile
and buy his food all in one place
and he could save that which was good to eat in the
refrigerator
and throw away that which had no further use.
And pretty soon the earth was covered with
plastic bags
and aluminum cans
and paper plates and
disposable bottles,
and there was nowhere left
to sit down
or to walk.
And Man shook his head
and cried,
'Look at all this God-awful litter.'"

--Art Buchwald, 1970

Trying to change my color

Apparently being "green" is becoming trendy. I just noticed that Yahoo! has added "Green" to the list of services which include yellow pages, personals and shopping. Somehow that seems incompatible.....shopping and sustainability.......unless you're shopping for items that would sustain the environment. Fans of Pottery Barn will be happy to know that they have started selling organic linens and furniture made from wood grown in sustainable forests. That's great. But I have to wonder if those are token "green" items to soothe shoppers' guilt. How much of the rest of their stuff is made in China??? I'm sure I sound like one of those crabby liberals who is never happy with anything -- I just don't like hypocrisy.

Speaking of hypocrisy, I remember the day, over a year ago, that DH and I watched an Inconvenient Truth. I had not questioned the reports about global warming, but when I saw the evidence I couldn't even finish the rest of the movie. It scared the poop out of me. I knew in an instant what a hypocrite I had been for aiming my righteous indignation at the Republicans for calling global warming a hoax, while I was not really changing anything in my own personal, day-to-day life. I asked myself what sacrifices was I making to preserve the world for my kids? OK, I recycled (and was a bit of a Nazi about it), but what else? Soul-searching and action ensued.

I doubt many people are actually reading this, but if you are, what comes next may sound like a "Na-na-na-na-na-na! I'm better than you are!" That's not my intention AT ALL.

So, here's what we're doing so far:

fair trade coffee (grown in the shade!)
vegetable gardening
composting food and yard waste to use in aforementioned garden
turning off lights when not in use
long lasting light bulbs
thermostat set at 74 in the summer and 68 in the winter
alternative feminine products (there are quite a variety available)
buy food in bulk without all the packaging (and convenience)
using glass containers to store food
vegetarian (really more like a flexitarian)
re-use ziploc bags
buy locally grown/produced food as much as possible
organic as much as possible
RECYCLE, RECYCLE, RECYCLE
Freecycle (check out freecycle.org for more info)
buy used (yard sales) especially kids' toys and clothes
reel mower
no chemicals on lawn or gardens

What I would like to do if I weren't so vane and lazy:
buy less new clothes and shoes ***
no make-up
no hair dye
use cloths for cleaning instead of paper towels or those throw away wipes
use cloth napkins instead of paper
use less water
have less stuff in general -- we have SO much stuff
no TV
ride my bike to the office

So, I'm trying but definitely not REALLY green. We are some of the best consumers I know. I guess you could call us "good, red-blooded Americans." I have a real problem with the clothes buying. I'm hoping this book can help me out with this issue. But that means I have to buy it. Hmmmmm

One final thought: If you're not "green" then what color are you? Maybe brown because that would represent dirt. With no plants growing in it. Or maybe black because that represents evil and surely anyone who isn't for being greener is evil. Then there's red. That's the color opposite green on the color wheel. As far as my color, maybe I'm a paler shade of green, like the shoots that peek out of the earth in the earliest part of spring. I just need more time and growth to be that lush, mid-summer green.