Mom is Just a Nickname

I’m eating Dora the Explorer vanilla yogurt. That’s better than the banana kind I’ll be eating before too long. I got them for X, hoping that the colorful cartoon character would convince him to eat some. No such luck. Now I’m stuck eating it. (I prefer my plain yogurt, nice and tangy and not laden with sugar.)

Eating his yogurt now is about more than just not letting the food go to waste. I need the yogurt containers! They are by far the easiest container to convert into pots for my seedlings! I’ve got loads of seedlings and I’m trying to transplant them over to pots now, to give their roots more space.

I’ve got yogurt cups, a cut up two liter soda bottle, a frosting container, a margarine container, cut up water bottles…the list goes on. Anything I’ve been able to scrounge that is the right size and I can poke holes in will do. I’m so desperate I’ve eaven asked Toph to keep watch for things at work. Steal the co-workers’ trash so I can recycle it into pots for my baby plants!!!

How did this happen? How did I forget to plan ahead and save yogurt cups ahead of time?

So, do you have any water bottles, yogurt cups, or ANYTHING I can use?!?!

As a teenager, I like to think I had a rather green thumb. I had my own plot of garden in my parents’ backyard where I grew bleeding hearts, clematis and ferns. I had a multitude of houseplants and bonsai growing on a shelf in my bedroom. I read all I could about growing things, I talked to everyone I could find who could teach me more. I also helped in my parents’ vegetable and flower gardens.

Between caring for my kids and the house, the garden fell to the wayside after I got married. My house plants all died. I decided not to get more because we have mold allergies in the family and the soil in the house plants can harbor mold. My garden only survived if I managed to get perennials and pot them in as soon as I brought them home.

So, for years, I’ve said I have a black thumb. I could kill whole flats of seedlings just by blinking. I killed almost every potted plant I had over the course of the last 6 years or so.

But still, I’m intensely interested in plants. I am fascinated by herbs for cooking and medicines. I’m intrigued by other people’s lush gardens. I love the way a home feels when there are live and growing plants throughout.

So, I’m trying to turn my black thumb green again. Thanks to plants shared by family and friends my garden and house are starting to perk up. I’ve only killed one plant, a strawberry, through neglect so far this spring. I almost killed a rosemary bush, but it has greened up since I got it in the ground.

Now, the kids and I are sprouting seeds and I’m hoping I don’t manage to kill those. We planted forget-me-nots, moss roses, thyme, basil, oregano, catnip and johnny jump ups. So far, the basil, moss roses, thyme and forget me nots have sprouted. It’s fun for all of us to watch the green sprouts push towards the sunlight each day.

I’ve got mint waiting to be potted and a few houseplants I’m trying to go without soil (hydroponically) to avoid the mold. So, here’s to turning my black thumb green! The kids are enthusiastic helpers and I’m relearning how fun digging into the dirt can be.

Kermit was always my favorite Muppet, so I’ve aspired to “be green” for a lot of my life. Now, I guess that’s taken on new meaning for me. Now, I’m just doing my best to make my family’s footprint on the Earth smaller, rather than trying to live in Kermit’s swamp!

We’ve taken a few more baby steps in the last few months. I’m using tote bags instead of plastic ones when I grocery shop. Sadly, they aren’t homemade bags, like I was hoping. Still, they are sturdy and handy. I always feel good when I remember to bring them along and use them. I’m remembering them more than I’m forgetting them these days, since I now keep them stashed by the passenger seat of my car. Any that are brought into the house after shopping are set under my purse so that I grab them on my way out the next time I leave the house.

We just changed another of our light fixtures over to CFL’s this weekend. There is only one light fixture left to change out now. All of the rest of the light bulbs in the house are CFL’s or regular flourescents. As expensive as the CFL bulbs can be, they last so much longer than incandescent bulbs! We are still using some that we got as a gift back in 2006 (or was it earlier than that?) and they are in heavy usage light fixtures! (Thank you, John, for making the investment on our behalf. We teased you at the time, but we really do appreciate them!) We have moved them with us twice now and they will continue moving with us as long as they last.

I think the next “green” step I will take is composting. I’m still weighing what kind of composting I want to do. I’m pretty intrigued by worm composting, or vermicomposting. Toph’s not all that keen on having a worm composting bin in the house though, and that’s the only way we could do that. I like the idea of having a composting pile outside, but I’m not sure the neighbors would think it was so cool! So, I guess that leaves an enclosed pile. I just have to figure out the best way to do it.

Composting has two huge benefits: For one thing, it reduces the amount of waste going into the landfills. So much of what I throw away, I guiltily realize could be composted or recycled. We do recycle, but our city’s recycling program only accepts a few different types of things. So, other things that seem perfectly recycle-able to me end up pitched. The second benefit for me is that compost provides excellent nutrients for my garden. My garden is growing in leaps and bounds right now, and not having to buy fertilizer or other things to improve my soil would be a definite bonus.

What do you do to save resources, to be “green”? Do you vermicompost or have a compost pile? What have your experiences been with composting?

Also about my adventures in Greener Living: Disposable World

I’ve been making bread at home more often than I usually do. I use my bread machine, so it’s really a matter of dumping in the right ingredients and hitting some buttons. No big deal. It is amazing to me how a few hours later, my whole house smells of yeasty goodness though.

Then I think of when I have made Easter Bread. It’s a whole different process. Things have to be the right temperature, you have to know the right textures of the dough at certain points in the process, you have to know if it’s risen enough or not enough…the list goes on. It’s so much more involved. It’s so much more satisfying to eat the rolls at the end of the process!

On the other side of the spectrum is buying a bag of bread at the grocery store. No work involved, right? Just shell out some cash and pick your loaf. There’s a wide range of choices for size, taste, and texture. No muss, no fuss, no real thought or effort involved.

No muss…no fuss…no real thought or effort…That applies to a lot of modern convenience foods. We no longer have to think about dinner too far ahead of time. Even something as easy to make as a pasta sauce comes in a jar. Salad comes ready in a bag!

But consider what we lose when we use these foods of convenience. We lose the connection with our food. We lose the knowledge of the steps that food took, from raw to edible. We lose the anticipation that builds as that product goes from many individual ingredients to one cohesive, aromatic whole. We lose the magic of every day creation.

“Every Day Creation.” To take some tomatoes, some spices, some herbs, maybe some veggies and/or meat and combine it into a pot. To let the contents of that pot simmer on the stove all day, stopping to stir it occasionally as if you were a witch stirring the contents of your cauldron. To see those ingredients meld into a spicy, aromatic sauce fixed just the way you like it: chunky or smooth? Lots of garlic or none at all? Onions?

“Every Day Creation.” To take some flour, yeast, milk, an egg, some honey, some salt and combine it all into a lump of unappetizing dough. To knead it, to let it rest and rise as it fills the air with rich, yeasty delight, to shape it into a loaf and then bake it….it’s magic. To take such ordinary ingredients and have a perfectly shaped loaf of bread at the end. What else could it be, but magic?

I love making food “from scratch”. It puts me at the heart of the creation process and makes me feel powerful, like a Goddess in my kitchen, putting order into my world. How powerful we humans can be when we put our minds to it…to use this magic of every day creation.

I have a cold right now. I have gone through piles of tissues while trying to tame the congestion. I stare at the trash bag full of used tissues and I can’t help but feel bad for the sheer amount of them piled there. It led to me thinking of what people used to do: they had handkerchiefs, right? That led to me wondering if using handkerchiefs was a viable option for me today.

I already use cloth napkins at the dinner table rather than paper. I use kitchen towels rather than paper towels whenever possible. (There are some things I still use paper towels for, I admit it. Until I find some good rag towels, that will continue.) It’s no big deal to throw the napkins in with the tablecloth, and the kitchen towels go in with the other towels. It doesn’t add any new loads of wash to my weekly list.

I used cloth diapers on X when he was a baby and would have for J and Sullivan if I had been brave enough. I was too bewildered by the many choices at that point. From disposable diapers to cloth diapers to elimination communication the choices for dealing with infant waste are abundant. Using cloth diapers added a load or two of wash, but it was less of a drain on me than the guilt I experienced when I threw an entire bag of dirty disposable diapers into the trash can on pick-up day. Plus, I’ve worn disposable pads for my period and I know how uncomfortable they were. I’d rather wear cloth against my skin and I figured my kid would too.

Not only do I just hate the feel of disposable pads, but I hated the guilt when I throw them away. So I began looking at other options. There were some things out there that I didn’t even know existed! I mean, I knew about disposable pads and tampons. I had no idea that cloth pads existed (no idea of the variety of styles either!) and I had certainly never heard of The Keeper or other similar creations. That research was illuminating.

Going “green” is all the rage these days. Big stores offer tote bags with their logos sprawled across them as an alternative to plastic or paper. Replacing regular lightbulbs with Compact Flourescents is an easy way to be more energy efficient, which people like because it saves them money in the long run.

I try to do small things to make a difference because I believe that many small things can add up to big changes. I admit that many of my changes were made for economic reasons and not environmental ones. But, you know, when a choice can be positive in both ways, it seems like a winning combination to me!

So, I may one day give in to the urge to use hankies instead of tissues. The thought doesn’t gross me out as it might some people, so long as I have enough of them around to handle the kind of cold I’ve had the last few days! Germs are killed in the laundry, right? Did people stop using hankies because they didn’t like washing them or because they weren’t as sanitary? I wonder.