The Driving Dilemma

So many of the green blogs are written by folks who live in cities, and they are, rightly, huge proponents of biking or walking to work. I have read that you should not drive to any destination within 2 miles of your house. Here's my problem: there is no destination within 2 miles of my house. Because I live several miles outside a small village, in the boondocks. There are advantages -- lots of space to grow my own vegetables, harbor wildlife, plant trees, and enjoy the peace and quiet. My neighbors don't care if I have 3 yards of compost in a pile beside the driveway for a couple of weeks, in fact they don't care what I do at all because they can't see it from their houses. We have our own well that we have never been able to draw down, so there are no issues with the quantity or quality of our water.

But the driving dilemma... I actually work in the small village that is 5 miles from my house. And I could and do ride my bike that far during the two months of decent weather that is called summer in the Adirondacks. But since I'm a teacher, I don't actually have to commute in July and August. Technically, I could bike to work in September and June. 5 miles is far enough that I would get sweaty though, and there's no place to shower once I get to work, plus I need to be dressed up for work, so I'd have to carry clothes in such a way that they wouldn't get too wrinkled. I frequently bring home bulky heavy "homework" that needs to be transported. Since I'm a vegetarian, I also have to bring my lunch. And if I biked, I couldn't do many of my errands on the way home.

It gets worse from October through May. It's dark in the morning when I go in, and there are no street lights in the country. There are, however, roads with speed limits of 45 - 55 miles an hour without shoulders (or even lines down the middle), and a whole bunch of unleashed dogs that I hesitate to encounter in the daylight, let alone when I can't see them coming. Once snow falls (November - April) it would be downright dangerous to try to share the road with cars and trucks. The snowbanks make the road narrower and eliminate the possibility of moving into the grass to avoid traffic.

If this sounds like a litany of excuses, well, it is. But I have contemplated biking to work many times, and keep coming to the conclusion that it might work out a handful of days during the year but not often enough to make a real difference. I will continue to do other things to reduce my environmental impact and work harder at what I can do that folks in cities can't -- like growing more of our food.

The best thing I did to reduce my driving was to quit a job that was 30 miles from home for one that is 5 miles from home. I try to do business locally when possible and to combine errands whenever I can. But I won't be biking to work. Sorry.

Waste Not, Want Not

First, an update on the pumpkin post. I harvested four gorgeous pumpkins, left three to decorate the deck for now, and cut up the smallest one for culinary experimentation. I roasted the seeds to snack on and used some of the flesh for a spicy African pureed veggie and peanut butter soup. That recipe does a good job of hiding whatever veggies you use with its cumin, red pepper, ginger, and peanut flavors (delicious!) so it wasn't exactly a scientific test of the pumpkin's viability as food. But I baked the other half of the pumpkin and tried a spoonful plain. It was paler and waterier than butternut squash, with less flavor, but certainly not bad tasting, just bland. If you want to eat your Halloween pumpkins, I recommend using the flesh in a spicy or savory recipe. I scooped out the remainder of the baked flesh and put it in a non-stick frying pan with a little sesame oil and some soy sauce. I threw in some chard for color contrast, and the result was very tasty. I may have sprinkled a little bit of parmesan on top. Anyway, it was a satisfyingly successful experiment, especially considering that I didn't intend to grow pumpkins at all.

A week or so after the pumpkin taste-test, I bought a butternut squash to bake. As I was scooping out the seeds, it occurred to me that there is probably no reason to waste them. If pumpkin seeds make a good snack, why not squash seeds? This time, I sprinkled soy sauce on the seeds and put them in the toaster oven on a tray. Yum! The store-bought pumpkin seed snacks always have too much salt on them for my taste. These were much better, and they came "free" with the squash. Bonus!

The urge to splurge

What triggers your urge to shop? Do you regularly practice "retail therapy?"
I have been in school or teaching school for the past 35+ years, and my biggest spending trigger is that back-to-school time during the late summer when I anticipate what for me is much more the start of a new year than January first. The urge to shop at this time is a Pavlovian response, a comfort, and a phenomenon I never really examined before this year. But for the past year or so I have been trying to reduce personal consumption of the earth's resources by purchasing as little new stuff as possible. So when I felt the pull of the mall this time around, I stopped myself and tried to identify my needs instead of hopping in the car and heading for the shops.
As it turned out, I really didn't NEED anything. I am fortunate to work in a school district that provides office supplies and teaching materials, so my annual trip to Staples has been an unnecessary indulgence. I have plenty of clothes and jewelry. I pulled out the fall clothes and did some mending and ironing, and I'm good to go. But the idea of new clothes for back-to-school dies hard. It's as if part of the excitement of going back involves the new outfits I get to show off. I found a way to keep the tradition alive while sticking with my values by allowing myself to go to my favorite consignment store to spend an afternoon trying on clothes. I bought a couple of shirts and sweaters so that I can feel like I have something "new" to wear, but it was really cheap and nothing new was created, no resources were used; in fact, I supported a small local business and recycled someone else's castaways at the same time. I found new-looking, designer-label clothes for a fraction of the original prices! It was all the more exciting for being guilt-free, I must say. Then I made a new ID tag lanyard by taking apart some old necklaces and restringing the beads. Finally, I have plans to make a new quilted pocketbook. I have lots of quilt fabric scraps and some pocketbook patterns already, so there's no need to buy anything except for a zipper.

The Accidental Pumpkin

I didn't mean to grow pumpkins. But I had some trouble getting my eggplant seeds to germinate this past spring, so my friend gave me some of her extra seedlings in 3" pots, along with a cute little baby squash plant that she said was a compact butternut that would hardly take up any room at all.
Now, I have limited space in my veggie beds, so I don't grow ornamentals -- only stuff I can eat -- and I don't grow large sprawling vines such as melons and big winter squashes. But when I returned from a week-long vacation midway through the summer, this supposedly well-behaved plant had turned into a monster and was taking over the world. It had a very dark green round fruit the size of a softball which looked nothing like a butternut squash to me. A mystery plant! I vowed on the spot that whatever it turned into, I would find a way to cook it and eat it. Eventually, my friend apologetically identified it as a pumpkin. Unfortunately, she also told me that these pretty orange pumpkins we buy to make jack-o-lanterns are not the best for eating, and that pumpkin pie filling is actually now made from winter squash, not the Halloween pumpkins I was inadvertently nurturing. I, however, refuse to be deterred. I found a pumpkin soup recipe in my World Vegetarian cookbook, and I'm going to salt and roast the seeds for snacking. I drastically cut back the vines to keep them from shading my other plants, and saved only 4 pumpkins, some of which I definitely intend to eat! I'll let you know how it tastes.

Transitioning to greener products

I'm transitioning to greener products for cleaning and personal care. It's kind of a pain, because there's some experimentation involved and I have been doing a lot of research on the internet plus checking out products at the grocery store and three different small local stores. If it wasn't summer vacation, I wouldn't have the time, but when school starts this week, I'll have several new working products in place. Here's what I've settled on so far:
For the automatic dishwasher, Ecover tablets work just as well if not better than the brand-name liquid I was using, plus Ecover is biodegradable and phosphate-free. It's also not tested on animals. My husband gives this product the thumbs-up as well, and he's a skeptic.
For the laundry, I first switched to the Hannaford natural brand of liquid laundry detergent, which is biodegradable and phosphate-free, but I am also trying Soap-Nuts, which are literally nuts that produce a natural soap. You crack them and put them into a little cotton bag and throw them in the washing machine with the load of laundry. Just a few nuts will do many loads and after they're used up, you can just put them into the compost bin! So far so good -- the clothes are clean and there's no scent to it at all. In fact, that would be the only problem -- if you wanted scent in your laundry -- but I have been using unscented detergent for a long time, free of dyes and scents, even before looking for phosphate-free detergent. That was the issue for me with the Hannaford brand, actually, that although the scent is mild, I still don't want perfumed laundry. Plus, it doesn't have the leaping bunny logo or any indication that it's not tested on animals (which means that it probably IS) and it comes in that plastic bottle that has to be recycled. The soap nuts come in an organic cotton bag!
On to the personal products:
It took me a long time to find a natural shampoo and conditioner that I liked as well as the chemical stuff. The conditioner was the problem. I like that smooth feeling of chemical conditioner. I finally found Smooth As Silk by Giovanni, which my local natural food store caries. It is certified organic, with no animal by-products, and caries the leaping bunny logo (not tested on animals) but more importantly, IT WORKS. Hooray!
For moisturizer, I'm using Nature's Gate Skin Therapy lotion. I have dry skin, so I use it on my arms and legs daily. No animal testing or by-products, natural ingredients.
Jason makes a great vitamin E cream for intense moisturizing before bed. It's too greasy for daytime use for me.
Tom's of Maine deodorant is one I've used for a very long time. I like Honeysuckle Rose.
Here's a fabulous product I just discovered: Preserve toothbrushes and razors. They are made from recycled #5 plastic -- the kind I can't recycle in Saratoga -- the kind that yogurt containers are made out of. I have been collecting my Stonyfield Farm yogurt containers and (after reusing them to freeze garden produce) boxing them up and sending them back to Stonyfield Farm for their take-back program. But you can also send them to Preserve and they will make them into toothbrushes and razors! And what's more, you can send the toothbrushes and razors back to be re-recycled when you're done with THEM. You can even get a postage-paid mailer from Preserve. Isn't that amazing? And don't you wish more companies would do stuff like this? I love it.

OK, so here's what I still need a recommendation for. I need something to replace Oil of Olay Complete Defense. It's a light, non-greasy facial moisturizer with SPF 15 that I have been using daily. But I need to replace it with something natural and cruelty-free. Any suggestions? I'd also like a new toothpaste made by a company that doesn't do animal testing, but I'm afraid I really like the super-sweet commercial toothpaste (crest cinnamon burst -- yum!) and I hate the baking soda-y, gritty, yucky natural toothpastes... I know, it's bad. Any suggestions other than "grow up!" for me and my teeth?

Great Green Kitchen Ideas

Here is a great idea for the kitchen. My Dad made this bag drier from a block of wood, some decorative dowels he found at the craft store, and a couple of shells glued on for decoration. You could make a simpler one with just a block of wood and dowels, but I think the wooden tulips actually help hold the bag open to dry faster. I reuse zip-loc bags as many times as possible, washing them out and hanging them to dry. I also save the reusable plastic bags that frozen fruit comes in, the produce or bulk bin bags from the grocery store, and any others I can possibly hang on to. I keep the produce bags and tote bags I use for groceries in a milk crate in the trunk of my car so I remember to bring them into the store. I also bring my own bags to the farmer's market -- the folks there really appreciate it because they have to save or collect bags for their customers.

Another kitchen item I wouldn't want to do without is my ceramic compost holder. It is attractive, doesn't take up too much counter space (it's about the size of a gallon jug), and saves me from having to take scraps to the compost bin every single day. It has holes in the cover and a carbon filter to eliminate odor. I got it from Gardener's Supply, but Amazon carries them as well. There are stainless steel versions, but I got a cobalt one to match the rest of my kitchen.

I don't have a lot of counter space, but these two items are in constant use, so they definitely deserve their permanent place in the kitchen. The things I use less frequently, such as the food processor, waffle iron, bread maker, and crock pot stay in the closet until I need them.

Walking on Eggshells

My husband likes to have eggs for breakfast, so I had been putting the eggshells into the compost. I'll save my trials with composting for another post, and just say that when I spread out the "finished" compost this summer, there were a LOT of uncomposted eggshells in there. Some time ago I read that crushed eggshells sprinkled under hosta would deter slugs, the theory being that they wouldn't want to crawl over the sharp edges. Like using diatomaceous earth, but without the cost, and unlike DE, you wouldn't have to re-apply after each rainstorm. At that time I decided to save the shells in a coffee can under the sink. What I found then was that no matter how thoroughly I washed the shells, I ended up with a can that smelled like rotten egg every time I opened the lid. It became so unpleasant that I stopped the experiment.

I faced a dilemma. I still wanted to try the slug thing, but did not want to deal with "the stink under the sink" and the compost pile was not doing the trick. Brainstorm! I simply left the top off the coffee can, hoping that allowing the freshly deposited shells to dry out would eliminate the smell issue. It worked! It has been two months, including some fairly warm weather, and I have half a can of non-stinky eggshells under the sink. (I do wash the eggshells before depositing them in the can, mind you.) Next spring, I will follow the directions I read for slug control, crushing the shells into tiny pieces with a rolling pin and spreading them under the emerging hosta and other tender, slug-attracting perennials. I'll let you know how it works!

Cold and Rainy

Cold and rainy. That's the best description of the '09 garden season. A few of the perennials were happy -- particularly the ones in the dry shade gardens -- but most of my flowers have been leggy and floppy, sporting powdery mildew and brown spots and slug damage. Then there are the vegetables. I will first say that I have been incredibly successful with summer squash (zephyr) and swiss chard, in addition to onions, garlic, basil, oregano, cilantro, and parsley. But the losses have been devastating, including the loss of most of my large tomatoes to late blight. I have a wealth of sun sugar and sun gold tomatoes, which seem to be resistant to the blight. My first planting of pole beans drowned. The second planting is just starting to flower, so I'm hoping for a late frost to have the opportunity to freeze some beans. Peppers and eggplants were simply sluggish to produce fruit because of the lack of warm days and nights. I'm finally starting to get a few, but the yield will be disappointing.

I have had perennial gardens for much longer than I have been growing vegetables, and have attributed my success to the following philosophy: If something grows well, plant more of it. If not, 3 strikes and you're out. This approach has worked so well that I have gained somewhat of a reputation as a master gardener among my garden-minded friends. Unfortunately, this summer has taught me that vegetable gardening requires the exact opposite approach. With the fickle weather and unpredictable insect and disease patterns, it seems that the best strategy for veggies is to plant a wide variety and see what does well this year. That way I'll have SOMETHING to put in the freezer. My husband has already announced that he's getting a little tired of squash, which is a real shame since we have a freezer full of it!