Green Garden Gallery

While I love the fresh and healthy aspect of eating food from my own garden, I also appreciate the fact that there is no waste, no packaging, no travel/gasoline/petroleum or CO2 emissions involved in my food.  My blueberries don't come in a cardboard or plastic box, my green beans don't come from across the country, and my peas don't come in a plastic bag.  I save seeds from year to year, add some compost from our food scraps, water it with our rain barrel's water, and let the sun shine down on the wonderful tiny patch I call heaven.

These are the ultimate green goodies!

Here are some recent photos that my 6 year old took of me and my garden.  It's absolutely wonderful to go out back with the kids and pick our dinner for the evening.  I don't know if my girls will ever go back to store-bought produce after eating these crisp, crunchy ones!

We've had this blueberry plant for about 3 years now and this is the first year it has produced any fruit. 

Good things come to those who wait!  

Update: Slight problem - something has been eating my blueberries lately! When we go to pick them first thing in the morning, all the ripe ones are gone...could it be the birds? Or the squirrels? Or the resident groundhog?

Nothing better than eating green beans an hour after you pick them!

Just hanging around...

Me and my peas!

Here is our littlest one excitedly helping me de-shell some peas.  We'll see how long that lasts. 

Still more to go...

Snow peas getting ready for stir frying

Hope you are enjoying your own harvest so far this summer!  If not, then I hope you are at least enjoying your weekly visits to the local farmer's market to get some fresh produce.  Mine has been a great resource for things I am not growing yet (zucchini) or that have come and gone already (strawberries, spinach, lettuce).

Some of you have asked me to write a post about pesticides and what I do about garden pests/diseases.  I don't use any pesticides!  I let nature runs it's course and only interfere with water and sometimes water and vinegar when needed.  I'll write a more complete post about this soon with some more ideas of how to tackle your pesky garden pests.

Happy green gardening!

Inspiration from the Young

I read this article in this month's Biodiesel Magazine (http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/articles/9086/utahs-young-biodiesel-phenom).  In case you don't want to read the whole thing, it's about this intelligent, hardworking Sophomore young lady who has won tons of science awards, etc. from doing a variety of experiments on extracting biodiesel from things like used coffee grounds. 

After reading it, it did two things for me:

1) Made all my high school accomplishments (heck, even college ones) feel like diddly-squat compared to this girl!


and

2) Inspired me that our youth have not given up hope and in fact are smarter than we give them credit for.

They are out there trying to improve our world, to ensure sustainability of the planet and of humanity, to really make a difference.

So if growing up means giving up hope on bettering things, on making a difference, then I definitely do not want to grow up. 

After 14 years of working in the for-profit corporate world, and focusing so much on climbing the corporate ladder to prove to myself (and selfishly to others) that I can be a serious, successful corporate executive, I will admit the view from up there was not as nice as I had envisioned.
 

"Growing up" was not so attractive after all. Sure there were plenty of perks, but it lacked something crucial to me.  Something I had when I was in high school and college.  Something I always thought I'd have forever in my studies, career and continuous learning. 

Passion.  It lacked passion.

My passion, my hobby of "greening" our family, our home, our local community, was always just that...a passion, a hobby, something I did for fun. 

Until one day I decided to stop being such a boring grown up and try to get some of that passion back in my career.  I wanted a career that didn't just pay the bills but made me excited to wake up in the morning and thankful when I went to bed at night.  It's not as easy as it sounds to find a job that can do all of those things.

Maybe it was September 11 and seeing the smoke from the Pentagon from my office window or seeing the emergence of army personnel with weapons drawn on the streets and the Metro outside our office. 

Maybe it was sitting in a high level meeting complete with leather chairs and marble tables that screamed luxury in a beautiful downtown office and thinking "I'm helping rich people get richer while poor people get poorer and that just doesn't feel right." 

Maybe it was that my kids started asking me what I did for "work", where I went all day, why I came home so late, or why I had to travel to that city or this one, all the while looking at me with those eyes that said "I miss you" and the hugs that felt like "Don't ever let me go." 

Maybe it was a combination of all these things that made me realize I had to do something about it.  Things don't happen by themselves.  I'm all for going with the flow, but I realized I had been going with the flow for far too long.

It was time to push my limits, just as this young girl, only a Sophomore in high school, has already done. While I wish I had figured this out at her age, you are never too old to push your limits and follow your dreams.

Trash to Treasure

I was very excited to hear that Alexis' Kindergarten teacher gave the children a "Trash to Treasure" project for Earth Day.  She gave about two weeks notice (awesome!) which allowed us to think about alot of potential projects.  The problem was narrowing it down.  Here are some of the ideas Alexis and I initially considered:

Cup holder from large yogurt container
Magazine holder from cereal box
Nature wreath from things found outside with cardboard box backing
Flowers and other decorations made out of recycled boxes and paper
Purse made out of recycled containers
Garden irrigation system from soda and milk bottles
Handmade cards from recycled items around the house (boxes, mail packaging, etc.)
and more...

She finally got pretty excited over the pencil/crayon/marker holder idea.  Here she is with her three recycled items: a cardboard scrap from old box, cereal box, an old 2009 calendar that I had kept for the pretty pictures (we often use old calendars to make envelopes from or decorate things with).

Here she is marking the cereal box with a ruler to know where to cut.  We used one cereal box for all 3 pencil holders (and recycled the scraps of course!).

 She was a little too excited to use big scissors (first time!) but the little kid scissors didn't work very well on the cereal box.  Needless to say there was a lot of parental supervision on this part of the project to ensure all fingers remained intact!

 Maybe it's because kids just love Christmas so much but this Christmas scene for the month of December from the old calendar was the first picture she picked.

 She is starting to see her project take shape and is getting pretty excited about it and telling me how she is going to make one for everyone she knows for Christmas this year or for their birthday or "maybe you know, just because they are my friend".

 Posing with her completed "Trash to Treasure" project.  Very happy recycler indeed!

Do you have any fun "Trash to Treasure" projects to share?  Let me know!

Christmas Around the World

In a stand against Black Friday, I'm posting this instead of going shopping.  :)

Ok, Thanksgiving is over, it's time for Christmas season!  Check out this blog (click on image below) which is hosting a month of Christmas Around the World.  If you have kids, this is very cool--each day she will add a new country with links to information about that country.  You can tailor it for younger kids or make it more complex for older kids by adding library books to read about the country for that day, etc.

Anyway, thought I'd share because this is a great way to learn about other cultures around the world instead of focusing just on Christmas presents this holiday season.