Naturally Optimistic

Happy Earth Day! Steve has already begun planting. Of course! Why not? He's actually begun re-arranging & then planting. He bought a couple of new shrubs for our front garden & moved some of the day lilies forward which I planted last year. I think it will be nice. The only battle I have to fight is keeping SOME space for my unnaturally colored bright annuals (ie: petunias. I love petunias). The other day he said to me "The tree delivery is happening on Thursday." And I stopped, looked at him incredulously and said "what?" (you may or may not know that the first year we co-habitated we ended up having 75 seedlings & numerous grapevines that just happened to be ordered....for our yard...in town....um, we're still trying to find some homes for some of them....). But he was referring to the tree delivery at WORK not at home. Whew! I was scared for a minute! Planting season is right around the corner for him at his job. Thank goodness we're not g...

I'm trying to reconcile my inner-hippie-green-living-self with purchasing a SUV which gets not great gas mileage and is BIG. I love having a tiny little car that I can squeeze into virtually any spot, I only have to fill up twice a month and has a relatively small 'foot print' in general. I hate also having a car that is so small that trying to go away for the weekend is a tetris-like exercise in packing. I say to myself "I don't drive *that* much." My commute is negligible (1 mile? 2?) The only other places I go regularly are to the grocery store (3 miles?) and it's rare that I hit the road and drive down to Austin (although if I had a car that wouldn't feel as if it were to fly off the road, perhaps I would go more often!) or on road trips...but I still feel guilty. How do I balance out my AMERICANISM (ie: lots of stuff, big car, following the herd) with my GREENIE-WANNABE? If someone says 'hybrid' I will say YOU'RE RIGHT! But sadly it...

Today is new floors day in the Boberg-Casa. We are getting sweet looking laminate installed in our kitchen. I'm so excited. This is kind of funky and fun. We were going to go with the cheapest thing we could find, but decided to get something we loved at the last minute. And over 10 years or so - what's $200 more, really? Now if we could get some glass tiles installed as a backsplash, I would be one happy kitchenista! But the carpet - now this is cool. It's this product . Carpet made from corn! cool. Now, I'm not really a proponent for "hey, let's make everything out of corn" (duh, we should grow crops to feed people....) but I do prefer to have a corn based carpet than a petroleum one, so there ya go. I'm not a huge fan of carpet in general (ewww, dirty dirty) but at least this is our NEW carpet and not someone else's (and their dogs...). Plus it'll give Dahlia a place to crawl around on the floor (no traction on hardwood) and it'll make ...

I either usually pack my lunch and bring it to work or go home for lunch - when I pack it and bring it - I use my reusable lunch sack. This has gotten me through almost 10 years of work lunches! Think of all the paper bags that would be. Wow.

We "freecycled" our old couch yesterday! Whohoooooo!

At our house we compost all of our food waste. This has saved us so much space in our garbage and it goes into making some really great gardening supplies. Currently we have to take our food waste to our "sanitary district" where they compost HUGE mounds of steaming black...well, compost...that you can purchase for a pittance. We're on a waiting list for an "Earth Machine" so we can skip hauling in buckets of food scraps and combine them with our yard waste in our own back yard.

We recycle everything at our house - everything that we can anyway. Junk mail, cardboard, plastic milk jugs, tin cans, aluminum (which we actually take in and sell), newspapers, etc. Today was garbage & recycling pick up day (good timing!). Even Beavis has been helping out. Since he spends a lot of his summer days out doors, he uses the litter box less and we go through WAY less kitty litter. Thanks, Beavis!

Steve bought me a new water bottle yesterday (early b-day present) as he doesn't want me drinking out of plastic so much while I'm pregnant (usually I use a Nalgene). This SIGG water bottle was so cute, I couldn't resist! And a perfect start to Kelli's "Green Week" . Have any Green habits you'd like to share?

Sorry for the crappy picture - it's from my phone. It says that these bags (meaning the grocery-store-like-plastic-bags) are now 5 cents a piece in hopes that we will stop using them! Whohoo! Next to it is a bin of totes that you can buy for 59 cents and use until they fall apart. Yay IKEA for promoting green practices!

As tonight was "date night" we went to the movies. We finally saw AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH - romantic, no? It was shown at a local church here (on loan with permission from Paramount) followed by a discussion and call to action (we're really racy, aren't we?). It was a very informative documentary, continues to scare the shit of out of me and I'm trying to find my place in the "hope" category instead of just despair. (I'm not having a particularly good day...). As always we're on a quest to lead a simpler, greener life and spreading the word can only help. This is scary. This is real. Action needs to be taken. Now. Now time for that bubble bath and sparkling wine....