It's Easy Being Green

Termination seems like such a dirty word.  The societal stigma attached to it is enough to make you feel vile; rolled in the dregs of society and tossed out into the street for all to see and smell.  You, left to feel like nothing more than an offense to the olfactory and beyond.  Why is it I feel like I should embody that feeling, sulking further into my own self wallow?

There is this great aversion to getting fired.  Nobody wants to hear it and most don’t want anybody to know it ever happened to them.  That’s why our corporate forefathers came up with terms like “let go”, RIF (reduction in force), laid off, “opting out” and canceled contract.  Like wrapping a blanket around a Billy club, is it merely to ease the blow to one’s ego?  Or is it like a golden ray shining down from above, making employers feel at ease, almost angelic in letting you down softly and tiptoeing around the word fire or terminate.

This week, I’m learning to embrace being fired.  I was ambushed.  Walking back to my desk at the end of my shift late Friday night, there sat my boss.  He magically reappeared, wearing the same damn clothes he left the office in four hours before.  It wouldn’t have won him any awards for his performance but he tried to act sorrowful.  He wasn’t soft about it at all.  He didn’t even try to let me down easily.  It’s the only time he’s ever really truly had the balls to act like a real manager and he managed me right out the front door.

The kick in the ass brought an end to two years of this Midwestern misery.  They moved me 1800 miles away from home promising a long-term commitment.  From day one though, it’s been anything but.  I was sold a bill of goods and unfortunately drank the Kool-Aid.  Each quaff left a taste in my mouth that grew more and more wretched.  Luckily I choked and regurgitated the rotgut and am now cleaning house.  One chapter is ending.  Another one is beginning.

It’s ironic this has hall happened because just about two weeks ago T and sat down and made lists.  Not for grocery shopping or things to do around this half-acre homestead.  These lists were our priorities in life; a test to see where we each stood at this very portion of our lives.  Little did we know that these lists would come into play just a few days later.  Here is how my priorities panned out:

1)                  Make sure my T, my wife, and my darling daughter are taking care of emotionally, physically and financially

2)                  Find a job that makes me happy

3)                  Live life as sustainable as possible

4)                  Buy a farm, ranch or other plot of land to build a life on

5)                  Financial freedom: ditch the debt, save more

T’s priorities were surprisingly similar.  Our thoughts and notions on what we wanted to achieve together weren’t as far off as we might have expected them to be.  We never expected to be in the position of changing career paths this quickly.  I had a contract that would leave us a year to think about our next moves but now that has shriveled and died right on the vine.

So another chapter begins.  We have two months, possibly three, of funds to get us through until the next opportunity beckons.  We’re looking at ways to stretch every possible dollar and every possible resource we use on a daily basis.  It can only help us make it through and last even longer than some would anticipate.  It will be the true test of our skills and desires to live life in a more sustainable, environmentally friendly and happiness inducing way.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Welcome to our SFG

My square foot garden (I’m going to resort to calling it an SFG from here on out to save space) has reached an important milestone in it’s development this week. It’s 6 weeks old *tear, sniffle, sniffle* and my how it’s grown!

At this point every square is filled in with the exception of several dud strawberry plants that did not grow. I ended up purchasing these boxes of plant crowns grown by Van Zyverden at Sam’s Club this spring. I ended up with 80 strawberry crowns and not a one of them sprouted. While being disappointed, I’m not surprised. This green thumb hasn’t had a very good track record with Van Zyverden products and have had to write to them on several occasions to get replacement plants. A simple internet search shows the web awash with similar experiences. I have a letter off to them even as we speak and have resorted to giving up after 6 weeks of no life and have started planting over the top of the dud strawberries.

Peering over the gate at the SFG. Notice the rain water barrel against the house. It usually is full with only one storm.

Looking to the west in our SFG. The tepee in the center used for the snap peas and snow peas is made from the giant sunflower stalks I saved from last years garden. They're strong and light!

In the meantime, everything else is off to the races. We’ve been unseasonably cooler than normal around here in southwestern Indiana the past few weeks with a plethora of rain. Snow peas and snap peas are still doing wonderfully, climbing their sunflower stalk tepee and producing a handful of new pods every few days. It’s enough to whip together shrimp and snow pea stir-fry which is currently on the menu.

Snow peas and snap peas climb the sunflower stalk tepee, reaching toward the sky. The tepee would work great for any type of light, climbing plant like a flower, peas or beans. I saved and dried the stalks from my giant sunflowers last year and tied them together to form a tepee.

A half dozen mustard greens have produced non-stop this Spring and are still going as we race toward Memorial Day

Mustard greens will also find their way into this stir-fry having put on a new flush of growth every couple of days. It’s enough to fill up a colander and they’re delicious any way we’ve prepared them.

The broccoli plants are beginning to form their heads this week and the brussel sprouts look like they’re about ready to grow their hardy stalks too. Our summer veggies are beginning to take hold as our temps edged into the 80’s the past couple of days. The tomatoes are getting a good flush of first flowers while also putting on good top growth. The peppers, while still small, are flowering too. Sweet corn is about 3-4 inches already. Squash plants and melons are beginning to stretch out and ramble around. Potatoes look like bushes already. We got to pick our first two strawberries of the summer on our homegrown plants and they were delicious.

Little E and I picked up these great strawberry plants from the Southwest Indiana Master Gardeners plant sale. There are three different varieties growing. We're going to see who does the best!

Weeding the SFG is an amazing experience. The soil mix makes it so easy to pull out the weeds and grass. In fact, T and I can blitz the weeding chore every few days and it only takes about 15 minutes to get the whole garden done. I’ve never met an easier garden to weed other than the one that doesn’t exist! I can’t wait for the bounty to come and am so pleased with how well the SFG is growing. So how does your garden grow?

Popularity: 6% [?]

This past week the cacophony of lawn equipment has officially heralded in warmer weather here in southwestern Indiana.  The first warm and sunny day we had last week apparently awoke every neighbor’s desire to mow their lawn, even though most hadn’t even grown an inch.  With lawn work and garden cleanup comes a lot of waste and the question of what to do with all of it.

I generally mulch mow my lawn meaning I finely chop the clippings and leave them on my lawn to decompose and provide green manure for the rest of the growing season.  If the lawn is too thick or too long, I’ll compost the clippings.  Most of the time it just simply doesn’t make sense to throw grass clippings away.  It’s a great waste of time and resources to bag all those clipping, haul them out to the curb for pickup and watch all that water and fertilizer you bought get hauled off to the landfill.

That said, there are times when you do need to bag yard waste and there are greener alternatives to the normal plastic lawn garbage bag you might buy.  This past week I’ve been trying out some EconoGreen Plastics bags made by Jig-A-Loo.  The company has just released a line of trash bags and plastic drop cloths made entirely from recycled plastic.  They also claim the bags are “oxodegradable”.  Supposedly an additive in the plastic helps accelerate the decomposition of the plastic into simple organic compounds when it’s exposed to oxygen.

In my tests using a handful of bags the company sent me to try out, I found them to look, feel and hold up like most normal bags.  They weren’t any more puncture resistant to twigs and sticks but also weren’t like the thin, cheap trash bags you might find at the discount store.  If you do have some trash that needs to be thrown away and can’t be composted, these bags seem like a good option to help reduce the environmental impact at least just a bit.

The EconoGreen line includes large trash bags, tall kitchen bags, lawn and leaf bags, contractor bags, garage and automotive bags, wet/dry vac liner bags and drop cloths.  Home Depot is said to be carrying the full line of EconoGreen plastic products.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Imagine the joy of this past Saturday.  The sun was shining.  The sky was a vibrant blue.  Birds were chirping.  It warmed up to a positively balmy 50 degrees.  The snow had completely disappeared.  Now imagine today’s disappointment when I awoke to see another dusting of snow outside!

Mentally, we are definitely done with Winter.  I’m not sure what has all the sudden pushed us past the tipping point here in our household.  Maybe it’s the cabin fever talking but regardless of the reason, we want to see an end to our current season.

My "pile" of seed catalogs. It's one of my many piles that endlessly frustrates my poor wifey.

I’ve been trying to make myself feel better by burying myself with a pile of colorful and always enticing seed catalogs.  It makes me not only feel better but provides a little glimmer of hope that I will one day be back outside, enjoying the warmth and sunshine while laboring or simply enjoying our garden.

As you probably remember from previous posts, I’ve been toiling with my vegetable gardening “method” for the year.  Historically, our little family of three has moved just about every year, going from one rental to the next.  That won’t happen this year since we’ve actually solidified our existence and purchased a house.  Now we can put down some more permanent roots in our garden as well.

Last Fall, I took some time and read Lasagna Gardening.  I’ve known for awhile that no-till gardens are much more environmentally friendly and figured Patricia Lanza’s book might be enough to spur me in the no-till direction when planning our permanent veggie garden.  About halfway through her book though, I was frustrated.  What I needed to know, the way to lasagna garden, was literally two paragraphs worth of material in the beginning of the book.  Lay down a thick layer of newspaper to smother weeds and grass and then simply pile up loose, friable, organically supreme soil for your garden beds was the basic gist.  I’m glad I only checked the book out at the library and didn’t waste the money buying her book.  It was perfect for a beginning gardener who might be discovering this new found hobby but not for me.

I felt like I didn’t have many other options though and tried to mentally design how this lasagna garden would look in my backyard.  Our yard is already small and so I was really only looking to expand my vegetable space to about 19 feet by 12 feet, a little more than 200 square feet.  I started looking for cast-offs from everyone’s front yard, Fall decorations: straw bales.  Lanza’s soil mix suggests straw as a good component to help build your raised beds up above the original soil surface.  The idea is that the straw will compost with your other organics and produce a top-notch soil.

As Winter pushed deeper into the calendar, my straw bales sat untouched, well at least by me.  Dixie, our doofy but lovable dog, has been smart enough to use the straw bales as a warming perch this winter.  Every morning she sits with a yoga-like patience atop those bales, warms herself in the early morning sun and keeps watch for the mouser cat Haley to wander back from her early walk to eat breakfast.  The more Dixie sits, the more the straw bales break down making it easier to spread into future garden beds but frankly she seemed to be getting more use out of it as a makeshift sundeck.

Dixie sits atop her straw bale sundeck. It's a product of my procrastination and her keen, dog-like ingenuity. To the right you can see our composter, poorly visited bird feeder (which will be moved) and a torn up piece of trellis used to keep Dixie off of what was left of the collard greens.

Knowing my yearning to pick something, my wife gently nudged me in one direction with a little Valentine’s Day present.  It was Mel Bartholomew’s All New Square Foot Gardening:  Grow More in Less Space.  His concept, ditching the inefficient practice of gardening in long single rows, made much more sense for our tiny backyard.  I haven’t blogged a bit lately, in part because I’ve spent the past seven days reading Bartholomew’s book from cover to cover and embarked on the design process of our own square foot garden.  Check back tomorrow for more on how I designed our 2010 vegetable garden and what I’ve been able to get done so far.  Hopefully it will trigger you to start planning your own and make the most of your garden space and your wallet!

Popularity: 9% [?]

It seems like one of the many products consumers are bombarded with on TV commercials every day are the copious amounts of chemicals and cleaning products to sanitize and freshen your home.  So many of those products contain dangerous chemicals or volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) that may actually be doing us more harm than good.

That’s why green cleaning products like vinegar are so much more beneficial to your house and home.  Not only is it cheap, especially when you buy it in bulk like we do, but you can find it just about anywhere and it’s safe.  White vinegar has so many uses, I was surprised to find out all that it can do.

1)  Have ants?  Vinegar will actually repel ants and eliminate their scent trails so more can’t come looking for their lost friends.

2)  Have lime-scale or hard water spots in your bathroom or sinks?  Simply spray vinegar on the scale or stains and let it sit.  After a few minutes wipe clean and scale be gone!

3)  Coffee pot running a little sluggish?  Run a batch of vinegar through your coffee pot cycle to clean those hard water deposits inside.  Rinse with water when done.

4)  Stinky pit stains or smelly clothes?  Spray vinegar on your clothes before you put them into the wash.  Vinegar works as a fabric softener and deodorizer.

5)  Got pet stains on your carpet or furniture?   Douse the spot with a healthy dose of vinegar.  Not only will it eliminate the odor but it will also deter your animal from coming back.

6)  Chopping onions or cooking them?  Some people have said a bowl of vinegar set out in their kitchen will scrub the onion odor right out the air.

7)  Looking for a scrubby bubbles cleaner alternative?  Mix vinegar with baking soda and dump into your toilet for a clean scrub or pour down your drains to clear and freshen them.

Do you have more ideas for how to use vinegar around the house?  If so, leave a comment about how you put it to use in your green home.

Popularity: 4% [?]

It’s taken me a while to jump on the LED Christmas light bandwagon, mainly because the incandescent strands we have still work and the prices on the LED lights are still a little high for my liking.  Last year though, I noticed I had about three strands that weren’t working properly, so I began pillaging them for bulbs.

Mini-LED Lights

This weekend, Home Depot was running a trade-in deal that I couldn’t pass up though.  For every strand of incandescent Christmas lights you brought in to recycle, you got $3 off the purchase of a new set of LED lights.  I ended up picking up 3 boxes of LED lights for about $9 after the discount, saving me 50% off the original cost.  That’s what I call a heckuva deal!

I can’t wait to decorate for Christmas and see how these new LED light strands look and perform compared to their old outdated cousins.  It will be nice knowing I’m using 80% less electricity to light up my holiday display with LED lights, they stay cool to the touch and you can (if you’d want to) plug in dozens more strands to each other before you risk overloading an outlet.

Have you purchased any LED lights?  If so, share your experience with how they’ve performed and if you want to share a photo of your LED light display, that would be great too!

Popularity: 22% [?]

Are you looking for an environmentally friendly way to get rid of those tires that may be piling up in your Vanderburgh County yard?  If so, Tire Amnesty day is coming up, allowing you a free opportunity to drop off old and used tires and not have to pay a thing for it.

Each year we discard tires at about the rate of one per person.  Vanderburgh County alone throws out about 175,000 tires a year which is a huge environmental waste.  Instead of throwing them in a creek or letting them rot in your yard, have those old tires recycled at the Tire Amnesty Day on Saturday, October 3rd.  The event will be held at the Civic Center in downtown Evansville from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The first four tires will be accepted for free and recycled.  Any additional tire beyond four will be accepted with a nominal $1 fee per extra tire.  Make sure mud and water has been drained from the tires and remove from the rims if possible.  They will only be accepting car and light truck tires.  No business tires or commercial vehicle tires will be accepted.

It’s nice to see Vanderburgh County taking some steps to keep tires out of local yards and other places of beauty throughout the county.  Left sitting around, old tires are a detriment to the environment and people should take more care in disposing of them.  It appears this event is catching on with local residents.  At their event in the spring, the county collected about 2,000 tires for recycling.

If you have any questions about the event, contact the Vanderburgh County Solid Waste District at (812) 436-7800.

Popularity: 4% [?]