Photos! Yay for photos. This is my stag beetle shirt. I’m still pretty chuffed with myself but would add that the bold, shiny effect in the final photo didn’t survive washing. The final effect on the t-shirt is more like a strong stain.
Mock freezer paper:
Ironed on:
Final result:
I spotted a new magazine at the supermarket today and I would have bought it except I’d already filled the grocery budget with more non-perishable items to ease my jittery feelings about the food and oil stuff (etc. etc…) Jittery feelings that were not helped by a sign at the supermarket announcing that due to the world shortage of rice that some of their normal lines would be unavailable, and even though the shelves were still stacked full of bags of rice I couldn’t help feeling like I should be at home planting stuff in the garden*.
Anyway, luckily the new magazine has a website: Good: New Zealand’s Guide to Sustainable Living
Maybe next week I can find the cash to buy it, although I have the feeling I should start a collection of one of the DIY magazines instead. Perhaps something that would teach me how to build my own wind turbine…
*That would be planting the 12 silverbeet seedlings which I impulse bought (hey, $2.95!) and will have to plant in the space I cleared for the garlic! Nevermind, must get onto digging out the new garden bed. And then planting the garlic.
Maybe it’s just winter, maybe it’s because I’ve started reading the peak-oil sites again, maybe it’s the looming New Zealand election, or maybe it’s because I’ve just received the largest power bill we’ve had in a while*, but I just have to bake. And plant things. Yesterday I planted about 50 onions despite my resolution that I was going to make a plan and stick to it. No more impulse buying seedlings at the supermarket and cramming them in where ever, I am going to make a plan and stick to it. Yesterday though I saw they had onions for the first time in a while and well, I like onions and we use a lot of them and what the hey, I had space where the zucchini and the capsicum plants had come out and it’s only $2.99 for a packet of 30+. So I bought them and planted them and then felt very stupid when I woke up this morning and saw the frost covering them all. Needless to say, my garlic has still not made it into the ground. Priorities? Planning?
*sigh* oh well, back to the baking. I’ve been trying to find the perfect cinnamon scroll recipe but might have to abandon that because I’ve been eating far too many cinnamon scrolls. Baking makes me feel better though. As if I’m doing something concrete and practical and nurturing and creative at the same time. I think I might just turn my effort on to finding the perfect sourdough routine which will simultaneously save me buying yeast from the supermarket and send my earthmother-y credentials soaring.
Just quickly, sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I have some great harvest ones I will share when some technical issues have been resolved.
Keep warm ;>
*We haven’t had one over $100 for a long, long time, and we’re both in shock. I’ve been roaming the house searching for an appliance left on standby or a hot tap dripping. It will be just a couple of winter things adding up I know - the dryer used to dry sheets or that my husband has been sick and so showering at home rather than at the gym - so really nothing requiring drastic action. Yet I think this might the day we start turning off the hot water cylinder for 12 hours a day. The something-or-other law of thermodynamics means (proves? states?) that it takes the same amount of power to heat a water cylinder from cold as it does to keep that same amount of water at a constant temperature, so in theory turning it off for 12 hours a day should save quite a bit of power. There is some debate about this though. I’m going to go and look it up.
Well, the first frost finally finished off my zucchini plant so that’s the end of eating from my garden for a while. I’ve retreated indoors to plan for next spring. Not my indoors though. It’s been too cold for that! Also, I’m far too cheap to heat my own house when I can take a train to town and hang out in public buildings that are being heated anyway. It’s lucky that the boys and I are unlikely to run out of things to do at Te Papa and the Library.
I’ve been meaning to link to these people for a while. Matthew and Waveney are a couple living in Christchurch (NZ) who have committed to living rubbish free for a year. How cool is that?
I’m sure I could live rubbish free for a year too, but the greater challenge for me would be to get my children to live rubbish free too. Cue hysterical crying/laughing as I picture the fights over homemade crackers and corn chips. In the meantime I’ll just keep plugging away, reducing, reducing…although, as I tie myself in knots trying to avoid packaging, I’ve started wondering “Hang on, why does it have to be my problem?”. Why should I contort my grocery budget into increasingly eccentric shapes just so I can afford to buy the bread* which comes in paper? Why can’t the people that make the bread just stop putting their loaves into plastic bags which my local council will not recycle? Why shouldn’t they be the ones to deal with the legacy of their plastic bags? It’s not been too long since all bread came in paper (and milk in glass bottles that were actually *gasp* washed out and *bigger gasp* reused). Wouldn’t that be nice?
At least I’m not the only one thinking about this. Anne Else writes much better than I do on this and The Greens are way ahead of us both with their Waste Minimisation Bill currently before Parliament.
*(Bake bread? Yeah I did that, but my kids won’t eat it. I should start again and just put up with the moaning I guess)
Michael Pollan agrees with me! Well, not with me so much as, well ok. It’s more that I agree with him. But it’s still a happy thought that I’m not the only one that thinks that gardening really is the answer.
This is the quote that really caught me:
But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.
The whole article is here and really worth a read.
Just in case you’re interested, the “It’s not just because I have a sad little garden” page to your right has been updated (finally). There’s a pretty picture ;> …
A slow week for us. The whole family has been brought low by colds and ‘flu and so we’ve had a long week inside. The house was small to start with and after seven days seems to have shrunk to the size of a caravan.
On the plus side, our driving has been greatly reduced this week as we haven’t gone anywhere bar a couple of trips to the supermarket and the library for more books and DVDs. I’m not going out into the rain to check the odometer on the car though.
On the minus side, our power consumption must have leapt up with the increase in DVD viewing. Most afternoons have been spent with the kids lying on the floor in front of the TV and the adults lying around trying to doze through the millionth veiwing of whatever the favourite Thomas episode is. I’m not going out in the rain to check the power meter either!
I’m still working out my baselines for the 90% Emissions Reduction Project. I know it’s very slack to be taking this long but I keep tripping over myself in my quest for exactness. That, and I keep distracting myself in the quest for information relevant to the New Zealand situation.
Oh, and it must be admitted that, once again, I’m spending far too much time reading about other people’s efforts rather than concentrating on my own.
My husband tells me I need to stop going to the library.
This week I’ve brought home Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World by Richard Heinberg. It follows on from the Party’s Over and while I couldn’t call it optimistic, it does “explore alternatives” to “war, economic collapse, and environmental catasrophe”.
I really need to start bringing home some truly light reading. I tried a couple of weeks ago. I read the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery but all the way through I kept dwelling on the little domestic details of a world before cheap oil.
Did you know that a Jumbo Jet can use over 18,000 litres (4,000 gallons) of fuel just to take off? (from 1000 Fantastic Facts written by Anne McKie and Angela Royston)
How many trees do you think I’m going to have to plant to compensate for that? When I return from two weeks polluting Malaysia with disposable nappies I’ll have to total up the amount of carbon my family have added to the atmosphere and figure out how many cabbage trees I have to add to the local reserve.
As the for the disposables, I don’t know how I can get past the shame of it…my babies have both been in cloth from birth and the thought of my baby using them for two weeks makes my stomach churn. I’ve done my best though. I trotted along to Commonsense Organics on the weekend and forked out $75 for two packs of Moltex, the German made eco-disposable (we’ll just ignore that oxymoron…). I restrained myself from buying some of the nifty Nap-Naps covers that they have in stock there now and I also restrained myself from telling the cashier in a loud voice “I don’t normally use these things you know. I use real nappies!” He probably couldn’t care one way or the other but I felt like he was taking 100 points off my eco-cred. Oh the shame. And it’s actually Real Nappy week this week too! Next time I shop there I’m going to have to buy 20 new real nappies to make up for it.
(BTW if you’re wondering why real nappies are cool, Sharon has written a very helpful post here. And if you want to read more about the downsides to disposables in general, then try this post by Melanie at Bean Sprouts. Sara goes all the way and tells why she chooses cloth in all areas!)
cheers!
