Earth Day 2009

Earth Day is this Wednesday. This is an excellent time to show
our children how their actions affect the Earth, our lifestyles,
and our future. Some Earth Day events and activities were this
past weekend. Some are still to come.

Please share what events or activities your family will be doing
to honor the Earth this week/month.

Also, I enjoy starting new "green" projects or activities which
usually develop into family habits. This year we are beginning vermicomposting and a few other fun things to help us reduce our
impact on the earth.

Please share what new green ideas your family will be
incorporating this Earth Day.

Idea of Compacting

I just read about a cool thing that a group of San Franciscans did a few years back. The initiated a Compact with each other. The agreed to basically not buy anything new (with exceptions of course) for 12 months. Check out the guidelines. Care to try it with me? I am really liking the idea. Of course, I do have a list of things I am searching for used already and it really frustrated my dear son. Not sure what to do about that ...

The Better World Handbook

Another one my new reads from the Green Festival in DC in November is The Better World Handbook. My favorite paragraph is all about how the world is and how we mistakenly think it is. It really resonated with me so I wanted to share it with you ...

Our culture teaches us that we are each autonomous individuals who are only responsible for our own well-being. We end up believing that we are independent creatures who should make our own way in life without depending on others. In reality, we all rely on each other for our daily existence. We eat food that grows in soil nurtured by microscopic organisms. We drink water that has vaporized from the oceans. we breathe oxygen respired by the trees and wear clothing made by people across the planet whom we will never meet. We rely on our friends and family for support and create a sense of belonging and meaning within our communities. Our personal well-being is inextricably linked to the well-being of our families, our friends, our communities, and our planet. And the well-being of others, in turn, is shaped by our own well-being.

That's all I wanted to share with you now. Enjoy the rest of your day!

Local Food For New Friends

Last night we acted as couchsurfing hosts for the first time. It was really fun. We hosted a family of four traveling from Florida to their home in Ottawa, Canada. They stayed just one night, but we all enjoyed each others' company - adults and kids alike. They were due to arrive after dinner, but we wanted to have a nice local dish for them to enjoy when they arrived. So we made our local dinner for us and then made dessert to share with our guests.

Dinner was pasta (not local), homemade tomato sauce which I canned from our 15 mile tomatoes and herbs, and separate local (10 mile) pork sausage. Simple but yummy. Dessert was homemade pies. The crust was made from butter (25 mile), home ground wheat, and salt. The pie filling was butternut squash (15 mile), local milk (15 mile), local eggs (5 mile), and spices from lots of places.

Being away for the holidays was really difficult on the local food front. We were guests in my mother-in-law's home and she really enjoys entertaining. That includes cooking for us - in her own style. So I had nothing to really post for my Dark Days Challenge ...

New Wheels

Wow, is it hard to choose a vehicle to drive these days. First there's safety to consider. If you have an accident like we just had (rolled, spun, and skidded the car), safety is a main priority. I felt like I wanted the exact same car (in my case - a VW Jetta wagon) because it kept me and my kids so safe.

Then there's gas mileage. The higher the better for this environmentalist.

I wanted to purchase a used car because when well cared for and well built, cars have a much longer life span than many people take advantage of. It is also much greener to reuse something and extend its usable lifetime.

There is cost to consider as well. Sometimes life would be so much easier without money!

And then the kicker for me -- availability. You see I want to still drive a stick shift (manual transmission) car. There just aren't a lot of them around. And I want a station wagon for carrying bikes, bins, and other stuff.

So a used station wagon with a stick shift, the highest safety ratings, and the highest gas mileage. There are not a lot of choices.

Have I mentioned that I also do not want black interior (living in Maryland black interiors are rather like ovens in the summer) or silver/grey/white exterior?

Yes, that leaves me with precisely zero choices. Not even worrying about the price yet ... So I have to give something up. Stick shift? Hell no. If I have to drive around, I might as well enjoy it and not fall asleep :-) Wagon? nope. I gave up on color. After all, just last week I had a blue car -- and I distinctly remember not wanting blue. I wanted green. But in 2002 when we went to the dealership the green one sold while we were driving there. So blue we got.

Just yesterday I drove home my new car. It is silver. But, it is a 2002 VW Passat station wagon with a stick shift, grey leather interior, great safety ratings, and with the lowest power engine has the best gas mileage I could find in this type of car. She is happy in our garage. I even baked a birthday cake for her yesterday. After all, she was build in Dec 2001 in Germany. It is really her birth month!

Dark Days Challenge Meal #3 or 4

I missed a week of blogging for the Dark Days Challenge. I was so obsessed with the whole car accident finding the ideal replacement car, that while we did eat locally the whole week, I did not even think of blogging about it.

But this week I am back! We enjoyed sausage from a local farmer (10 miles), roasted potatoes (15 miles) tossed with olive oil and salt, and a mix of (15 miles) veges including leeks, carrots, napa cabbage, vitamin green, and chickpeas (not local but delivered with my other natural coop food from Phili. We seasoned the veges with homemade gomasio (sesame seeds and salt) and a bit of dulse.



Persimmon cake was our dessert. I made it yesterday as a birthday cake for my new (actually used) replacement car. The persimmons were deliciously sweet and from my favorite farm 15 miles away. I ground the wheat and spelt which came from Pittsburgh, PA (well beyond my 25 miles goal). Local honey sweetened the cake. Do those pesky baking ingredients count? You know - the baking powder and baking soda? Anyway, it was yummy...



Here's the persimmon cake recipe although as usual I modified it ...

A Day of Firsts and Lasts

Yesterday was an exciting and eventful day. A day of firsts and lasts.

Son got his first pair of shoes repaired. He now knows how easy it can be to fix something you love.

Son used his debit card from Young Americans Bank for the first time. He paid to have his hiking boots repaired so he can have them for his next boy scout excursion.

Daughter did a forward roll on the balance beam in gymnastics class and did not fall off.

Both Son and Daughter were in their first car crash. I totaled my car. First time. Hopefully last as well. Here's my wonderful car:





You can see that we were hit by a car coming perpendicular to us - right in the driver side. We rolled over 3/4 of the way (yes we were upside down and on the roof for a short time) and spun around. We landed facing the wrong direction, up against a curb, and sideways on the driver's side of the car. Some nice gentlemen stopped and yanked open the car doors and helped Son and Daughter out. They had already unbuckled and were trying to get out. Daughter was on the passenger side in the back and was completely unharmed. Son was on the drivers side in the back and banged the corner of his eye on something. He has a small cut and a black eye. I have a few cuts on my hands but nothing that a standard size band-aid won't cover. The young woman that hit us and her toddler daughter were fine as well.

I love my VW Jetta. It kept us safe. I am sorry to see her go. She was fun to drive (I still drive a stick shift). But I have driven her for the last time.

What to do now? Hmm... We'll have to see how living within my green values plays out for figuring out future transportation. Until then, we are happy to be so lucky. Our time here on Earth was clearly not finished. I can't wait to see what the future holds for me!

Want more pictures? Check out the annotated crash pictures - done by my loving physicist husband. Get out your little matchbox cars for some physics/mechanics modeling...