Midnight in the garden of books

I check on my vegetable garden nearly every day, and every day I come away a little sadder. The storm that rocked us so heavily last weekend left most of my plants in tatters. I mean that literally, the leaves of my cabbage looked like the clothing of a poor orphan in 18th century London. My tomato plants, while miraculously still standing, look battered and war torn. One plant is growing two tiny tomatoes, but otherwise not a single new growth as far as I can tell. I wonder if they will grow at all.

My pepper plants are doing alright, I suppose. Some of them are growing peppers, though some of them remain tragically barren. Some of my basil plants struggle just to remain up right, while some are still growing, plodding along with strength and guile. I haven’t harvested any of them yet, though I very much want to.

I admit, I was not fully prepared for the life of a gardener/farmer. It is taxing. I cried over my damaged garden more than I think some of my neighbors cried over their broken fences, damaged houses and uprooted trees. Perhaps I am too emotionally invested. I don’t mind eating their fruits, but I am sorely wounded when mother nature gets callous.

The Fourthof July came and went this year with little, excuse the pun, fanfair. I’m not big into fireworks, I find them noisy and annoying as most of the people in my city set them off for a week before the holiday and at least a week after, so you’re always entreated to banging and booming. The cats get fidgety, and there is always so much debris and waste littering the sides of the road. I don’t get it, I’d rather just grill food and celebrate that way, if at all.

I have purchased a few new books that I will aprise you of.

Two of them are by Jane Austen. “Sense & Sensibility” and “Pride & Prejudice”  I have seen many a-movie that these books have been made into, but I haven’t read them, which I deeply regret and feel a sense of shame at having not even tried to read them. I love the time period and all the authors in it, and I love Jane Austen. So I have no idea what took me so long. I have read “Northanger Abby” which is a real treat to read. Parodies of the time period are funny and I enjoy them. I can’t help it.

The other is a surprising find. When I was at The Bookworm getting my new David Sedaris book signed, I looked over their sci-fi section while I was waiting. It was ridiculously small, smaller than any of my bookshelves at home and embarrassingly understocked, but they did have one new book that I was curious about. I liked the cover art, which I think does it for me when it comes to finding books I’ve never heard of. It is sort of the color and texture of tea stained parchment with a pencil and ink drawing of a hot air balloon with a boy clinging to a rope as it flies high into the air. I attempted to commit the name of the book to memory so I could look it up when I got home, but of course the moment we left the store the book’s author and title flew right out of my head.

That is, until I discovered it, again, inside the Boarders bookstore last night. Having a 25% off coupon helped with the decision, and I got it right away, lest I forget the name again. It’s called “The Court of the Air” by Stephen Hunt. It is absolutely delightful. “A fantastical tale of high adventuring, low-life rogues, and orphans on the run.” 

Seriously, I don’t think our society uses the words “low-life rogues” nearly enough as it is.

Saving the world one bottle at a time.

Happy Earth Day!

Every day is Earth Day at my house these days. It seems to be all we talk about and all our decisions seem to be centered around “how will this effect the earth?” and it’s an incredibly weird and proud thing to do. I love the way it makes me feel. Just trying. Really.

We look at products in the store before we buy them and I find my eyes quickly scanning for a better alternative. I think that’s a major step in the right direction.

We’ve got our recycling bin set up and I called my local recycling line and asked them to send me a decal of the recycling instructions for our area. It’s free and will go nicely on our fridge so that if I’m trying to figure out if something is recyclable, I have a handy list right there. I’m even starting to think about composting, but one thing at a time.

I challenge everyone to find a way to make one change today that you can stick with forever. One change. That’s all, just one. If you can do more than one, better yet! But try it. Just one.

1. Choose cleaning products that are Green friendly, low chemical, recyclable containers. Laundry detergent, bathroom cleaner, shampoo, soap, etc.

2. Set up a recycling bin in your kitchen. If you contact your local recycling pick up center, they will deliver a green recycling bin for free. This is a too easy thing to add to your life. Live in an apartment? Most cities allow for apartment pick up too, depending on the size of teh apartment complex.

3. Find out which local grocery store in your area recycles plastic bags and take yours in periodically.

4. Before going shopping for a specific item, look for the same type of item on Freecycle.org first.

5. Stop using styrofoam cups at work for coffee!!! Bring your own coffee mug to work and wash it.

6. Same goes for plastic and styrofoam cups for drinking water. Not recyclable! Instead get a refillable bottle. Even bottles of water are recyclable, though there is debate on whether or not you should reuse water bottles.

7. Plug your major appliances into power strips and use the button on the power strip to turn them on and off. This will stop the waste of energy and lower your electric bill.

8. Use tote bags to carry your groceries instead of plastic or paper bags!!! I’m actually going to be setting out to make my own…my first sewing project. If you don’t want to make your own, most stores now carry some that you can purchase and many of them are thermal friendly (keep your colds cold etc) or buy them online from etsy.com from people who handmake them.

What are your ideas?

The Green Apple Project: The art of scrubbing down

In an effort to move toward being Green, my husband and I tried out some new hygiene products that are made of natural elements and utilize little packaging and, in some cases, made with Living Green in mind. My attention turned toward LUSHproducts because I already have LUSHLOVE. Their bathbombs and bath melts have turned my knees weak and my skin supple. I figured their products, particularly the Green products would be a great way for us to go. Handmade bath products can go either toward “Awesome” or toward “Very Bad Idea” but since I’m already very familiar with LUSH products, I felt pretty good about trying out there body cleaning products.

First let’s talk about going Green in the bathroom. If you already own products, it’s counter productive to throw them out in favor of buying handmade, all natural, dye-less or scent-less items. If you’ve already bought them, use them up. That’s what Going Green is all about anyway! Putting everything to use. So use up your products first. Then when it’s time to replace those items, you can go with their Greener brothers.

The first bar soap I bought was a scent called Alkmaar. It’s kind of grey and smells clean but a little too herbally. I smell like a hippie store, which, for all my Green talk, I actually don’t like at all. But it’s a good soap. The down side is that it is disappearing fast considering how much I paid for it. It was  $7.95, and my entire order was $9 shipping, which makes it the most expensive soap I have ever purchased. I knew when I bought it that the soap would be impractical for constant use, but I wanted to know if there was a big difference between natural handmade soap and the commercial soap we’d been buying. The truth? The handmade soap was smellier, but otherwise I saw no real difference except that in a week the handmade soap has dissolved by half, and that’s with us taking it out of the shower after every use. Considering that the shipping packaging, the fuel used in shipping, and the amount of time the bar lasts, this is not a Greener choice.

The shampoo I bought was called Ultimate Shine and it is a bar shampoo. A bar shampoo? This concept dazzled me. The website claims that a solid shampoo is better because it requires no preservatives and no packaging and lasts a very long time. They also point out that the bar can be used as a body soap and a laundry soap (though I suspect it would take too much of it as a laundry soap to be Green). For $9.25, I got 1.9 ounces of yummy smelly bar shampoo that was nothing like I thought it would be. It claims to be floral smelling, but that’s not what I got from it. I got a very clean, slightly bright and kind of citrusy smell from it. I loved it! The scent is very fresh. After scrubbing it on my head and lathering it up I was surprised at how much it did lather. After rinsing, I was alarmed that my hair felt kind of dry all of the sudden, but it did feel a lot more clean than it usually does. If I didn’t use a conditioner though, I’d have been pretty freaked out, I think.

Which is why I was happy that I bought a LUSH conditioner called Veganese. Lavender and lemon, holy crap. It smelled lovely and girly and even now, three hours later, my hair still has a bit of a girly scent to it. That never happens with typical shampoo/conditioners. I never sniff my hair throughout the day. This conditioner is totally Vegan, if that’s something that’s important to you (it’s not for me) but it had so many good reviews I couldn’t say no. I really love this! While Ultimate Shine made my hair shiney and clean, Veganese made it soft and silky. I love my hair right now, I’ve been asking everyone in my office to “have a sniff.”

Because the shampoo and conditioner lasts longer, they end up being a much better choice than the soap. Both products contain mostly (or all) natural/organic elements and I’m excited by the notion that it is handmade. No big plant is getting my money. And since I spend about $20 on a shampoo and conditioner each typically, I didn’t overspend to buy these.

While I’m still goingto have to hunt for a better soap, the shampoo and conditioner get my stamp of approval and even better? If you have a LUSH store in your area, you won’t have the burden of packaging and shipping costs (and fuel use) that those of us with no store have to shoulder in order to get these products.

What are your favorite Green bathroom products? 

p.s. Thank you WordPress for bringing spell check back. I was starting to panic on the inside.

Illustration Friday “Saved”

This week’s Illustration Friday’s topic is “Saved” which I’ve been toiling with all week. I didn’t want to do another garden picture (well that’s not true, I secretly did want to do another Garden picture) and I’ve been working so much on my Etsy shop stuff that I just didn’t want to do another drawing.

Then it hit me. All week I’ve been talking about The Green Apple Project and how it means saving the Earth, one little bit at a time. There you go! Saved!

I watercolored the green apple for The Green Apple Project a few days ago. I’ll tell you what, not to toot my own horn but when I look at my little painting, I can actually smell a freshly sliced green apple. I can taste it in the back of my throat. It’s amazing. Woot.

So here is the original water color and then the one as the logo. Enjoy!

Getting the color right was tricky. Everyone knows what a green apple is supposed to look like. Hell, it’s practically a color on it’s own (certainly it is also a flavor of Saki that I’m particularly fond of). I mixed maybe four different greens before getting it just right. The font is one I discovered a very, very long time ago (on a website far far away, sorry too long ago to remember where I got it or purchased it) called “Black Boys on Mopeds.” I’m not much of a font buff to tell you anymore about it than that.

The Green Apple Project’s: Diabolical Phantom Loads

In our basement, we have a Nintendo Wii, a Microsoft XBox, a PS2, a digital cable box, a Nintendo Wiimote charger, and a TV all hooked up together in a tangle of cords and color wires nestled inside an entertainment shelving system designed to make the mess manageable and offer a storage place for video games which we have rapidly filled up.

Last year, around November, I was stuck doing a group web project designing a service of the future for one of my last college classes. We decided to make our fake service about going green with electricity in your home. I was stuck with research and discovered, to my great horror, that appliances and electronics that are plugged in, even if they aren’t turned on, still use electricity. It’s called a Phantom Load. The name alone makes me feel violated, as if something is lurking in the shadows of my home, vampiric-ly drawing life force from my very being. Immediately my mind went to the entertainment unit in our basement, littered with electronics and all of them inviting Phantom Loads into my home.

My husband was more responsive to my paranoia than I anticipated he’d be, but he was less concerned with their menacing presence than pissed off that he was paying for something he wasn’t using. With a little research, we discovered that the best way to stop the menacing draw was to hook our electronics up to a power strip and when not in use, kill the power strip.

Viola. I wish we’d kept accurate records of what our electric usage was before and after, but we didn’t. I can say with a great satisfaction that after we hooked up our TV and electronics to a power strip and our computer and computer components to a power strip, we saw a reduction in electricity usage that was noticeable to our bill. Not a huge drop, but one that was obvious enough to the naked eye.

We weren’t even trying to be Green at the time, we just wanted to save a couple of bucks. I keep the power strips tucked away but accessible and we turn them off when everything needs to be shut down. Our digital cable box is the only thing not hooked up to it, and that’s because I need it on so I can DVR my shows. A girl has to have priorities.

Want to know more? Check out the U.S. Department of Energy’s page on Energy Saver tips. That’s where my research began last year!

On a side note, our entertainment center looks much like any storage unit containing so many cords and wires might look, though I have taken great pains to make it resemble something akin to design. While I admit to watching a fair share of HGTV programs dedicated to organization and redecoration, one thing I am always frustrated and irritated by is the designers need to rid a living space of television sets and game systems. Instead of dealing with them, they just ship them off to some unwanted room, a room destined for little use or little care. What a crock of shit. Why can’t these so-called designers offer some serious and good looking solutions to our television/video game/DVD watching needs without assuming people will just stop using them because they aren’t pretty?