Old Recipe for a New World

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March Plastic Tally

For all my fretting over falling of the wagon, looking over this month’s new plastic trash was rather reassuring. (By new plastic I mean things we acquired and disposed of since January.) An exercise in the pleasures of archeology. Sort of.

~ Last month E. and I attended our first party alone together in a long, long time. He drank beer from the keg in that green cup, and I took my wine in the little clear one. The fork was for our friend’s birthday cake, and we shared it.

~ Wine wrapper and plastic cork.

~Two out of a total of four Lamb’s Pride yarn labels. They actually say they are recyclable, but don’t give a number. Perhaps I should send them back to the company with a note asking--why? why must you use plastic? Anyways, my almost-done-sweater is lovely. And I’ll get yarn locally next time.

~The usual milk bottle caps. Any ideas on something crafty I can do with my collection?

~A toothbrush wrapper. I got the kind of brush that you replace the head on. The replacement parts also come in a plastic package, but with four in a pack it seems like less waste overall. Maybe.

~Mac and cheese cheese pouch, and a ring from a jar of almond butter.

~Orange plastic strings from a few haybales. We need lot’s more of that.

~Styrofoam cup that we neither wanted nor asked for, but didn’t say no to quickly enough at a low blood sugar stop at the burrito shack drive through.

~A label from one of the several bouquets of daffodils we got for Cora’s birthday. And some veggie labels.

~A bottle of kid’s probiotics.

~Tub of sour cream left behind by our house-sitter after spring break. It was 3/4 full, and we were all in heaven. Cora ate it by the spoonful.

~A new printer cartridge, at last. We actually excavated an old printer from our shed in hopes that it would use less ink, and found a few cartridges in the box. So far we haven’t really had to deal with the ink question, but this is symbolic of an ongoing quest to get off the un-refillable cartridge habit.

~Plastic wrapping from a puzzle and CD Cora received for her birthday.

~Potato bag from our CSA.

Also this month I bought the following items, with full awareness of their plastic content but convinced that their usefulness justified it:

~A bottle of lye for soap making.

~Two strawberry starts–my present for Cora.

~A mesh plastic bag of onion sets. I had to have them, but felt so guilty I gave half to a friend, along with the offending bag.

~Also, we’ve been searching for plastic-free lamp oil, and were resigned to just using candles for our unplugged evenings. Then a friend gifted us with a quarter bottle of oil that he’d gotten just in case before Y2K, and we accepted it, gratefully. Or maybe I’m mis-representing that, because we actually begged him for it.

I think that the sheds of friends and neighbors should be fair game, though. The more we share and spread around tools and materials, the more we get to visit, and that makes the world a happier place to live in. And cuts down on new purchases of plastic. So if you need any lye, come on by. I’ll share, so long as you take the bottle with you. 😉

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System Cleanse

I once heard a prominent holistic MD give a talk on the importance of making dietary changes in order to facilitate healing. He said he asked all his patients to make some kind of change. Often, it was to simply return to whole foods. Sometimes it would be more prescriptive, a cleanse say, or a certain regimen such as for heart disease or cancer. But even if an individual ailment had little to do with food, he’d still ask them to alter their diet in some way, even if it was only a symbolic way. The reason was because while broccoli and green tea are good for our health, deeper healing is partially facilitated by intention. Our bodies need that symbolic act, that change in diet, as a show of our commitment to transforming a pattern that is not serving the system.

I’ve reflected a lot on that idea lately. You might even say that the larger intent of this otherwise eccentric and unusually rigid (for me) experiment is something along those lines. The idea of cleansing our system while making a commitment to further growth and personal transformation has fueled this project from its humble origins back in the days when it felt impossible.

I’m looking forward to the healthy reintegration of plastic into our lives. It will be nice to be able to buy tortillas every now and then, and to have sour cream with our beans. Despite my occasional griping, though, I am feeling very grateful for this commitment. This is not the kind of thing I’ve done much of, and it has been a powerful act. It has taken me on that long dreamed of journey to the olden days, and given me an education in made-from-scratch like you would not believe. It has wakened me from the cultural sleep, and opened doors to a world in which there are countless ways to praise this good life while living as simply as possible.

So onward we go, into the last month of this simple fast. It will carry on, surely, as we have so much left to discover the alternatives to. I’m not thinking of that so much right now, though. It’s just the external details of what is really about inner change. The kind of change that can’t always be spoken, but is there, singing loudly, nevertheless.

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Self Portrait with 1/3 Planted Garden

My notebook and conversations are filled with thoughts and reflections on this third month plastic free. I’ve got this and that to report, mostly about how we fell off the wagon here and there. Nothing serious, just my grappling with the unfamiliar rigidity this experiment brings to life. And an occasional bout of outright rebellion.

But more on all that later.

For now, this is what I’m up to.

::

ps, I hope you are mulling over your post for my April garden/blog party!

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A little more wood grain


Remember my oil cloth? It’s adorned this table for some ten years, mostly because I was convinced the table was damaged beyond presentability on its inner panels. Then one day last week, I lifted the oil cloth and looked again. I got out the steel wool, and now find myself with a whole new table. We’ll bring the oil cloth out for any projects that involve dough and rolling pins. But for now I’m just enjoying the spaciousness left in its rather bright and busy wake.

And savoring the perfect balance between letting old things go and making do with what we have at the same time.

I feel so…grown up.

Just like that music-making little lady up top there, I imagine.

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Earth Hour–Tonight!

I was just reminded that tonight’s the night to celebrate earth hour. Starting at 8:30 pm your local time.

It’s a symbolic act, undertaken with a global community.

Turn your lights out to join folks all over the world in sending a message about climate change.

And to enjoy the nearing-full moon light.

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Cora Love

We’re celebrating Cora this weekend–she turns Two on Friday.

Today we had a small party with our dearest Mamas and Littles. Celebrating the arrival of spring as well as little Cora.

~We sang and circled and danced and spun.

~Little bundles of cloth hold calendula and rice grass seeds to spread on the land, that our friends’ lives may be filled with as much beauty as they bring to ours.

~We sort of made a springtime procession a la Mother Earth and Her Children, with daffodil wands and handfuls of rich compost to bless the new green growth we discovered and greeted.

(And then ran all over in a general ruckus of rambunctious fun.)

~The cake is carrot-applesauce from one of the Moosewoods. Cream cheese and maple syrup frosting.

::

Blessings, my daughter, on your next season of growth.

It is a joy to have you at my side.

Every day, every moment; I am so grateful.

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Speak Those Good Green Words

Perhaps it helps take my mind of all the plastic wrapped things I’d like to be buying right now–yep, it’s official, I’m having withdrawals–but I seem to be all-garden, all-the-time around here. So believe me when I say I need a little…support. As you know, I’ve been reading all sorts of garden books. I’ve been talking to all sorts of garden people. I’ve been digging beds and sketching possible layouts and sorting through my seeds.  Since I can’t distract myself with plastic pleasures (I know this is dumb, but I’m craving coconut popsicles), I’m just going to indulge this, er, healthy obsession. With a little help from my friends.


You are cordially invited to chime in for a little blog party. A garden blog party. What has your land taught you? (Or the potted aloe plant on the kitchen window sill?) Tell us about your method and philosophy, your tools, your bounty and losses. Tell of your favorite plants, what you say to weeds, the smell of rain on your soil. Tell us of the wild land you roam and how it strengthens the plot you cultivate and your own growing body. Tell us what your garden would say if it could speak, what it has whispered to you when you weren’t listening, but heard anyways. Speak practically or poetically. Whether you cultivate it or not, whether you have “success” with those efforts or not, whether you consider yourself obsessed with green growing things or utterly indifferent, I’d like to know what you’ve learned from your home-ground.

To participate, write your post anytime in the next few weeks. Link back to me or leave a comment with a link. By mid-April I’ll compile all the posts into one “annotated” guide, and we can all swoon over each others turf, and be reminded of the goodness of our own. If you’re not a blogger (what! some of you haven’t started your own blogs yet?) leave a comment of as long and descriptive a nature as you like, and I’ll incorporate the text into another post. Tell your friends. Let’s all speak our good green words in one joyful breath.

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These Days

I have a guest post over at the One Small Change blog. They’re the good people who have created a bit of a phenomenon of environmental changes–small and large–in the blogosphere and beyond. My post is called A Plastic Free Primer.

In the meantime, the river’s a-running and my little bug turns two this week.

Every so often I think about how to create a simple, sweet, and plastic free party for her. But mostly we’re just digging in the garden.

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Garden Books Galore

Annotated map of our yard.

Detail of keyhole beds from Gaia’s Garden.

Tasha Tudor Reminding me that skirts and dirt go well together.

The stacks of our public library yielded this inspiration:

Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway is the best home permaculture book I’ve found. Hemenway carefully builds a framework (or should that be layers a sheet mulch?) of how to understand and create an “ecological garden.” Why to mix perennials and annuals, how to layer plants, the importance of building soil, the role of observation in the garden, and so much more. This is one of the best gardening book’s I’ve ever read.

Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World by Wendy Johnson is, simply, beautiful. For decades Johnson has tended the gardens at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, California. Her writing is as skilled and mindful as the gardens she describes. One part poetic storytelling of a life of Zen meditation and turning dirt, one part highly thoughtful and comprehensive narrative of gardening lore. Anyone who likes to think about plants, gardens, meditation, compost, koans, and their kin will love this book. Even if you just love one of those things, Wendy Johnson will make you swoon for all the rest.

The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing the Green World edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson isn’t a gardening book. It is a book about connection and relationship between women and plants, and ranges from the garden to the wilds, touching upon every aspect of green growing things. It includes essays and poems and stories by many writers you already love and others you will come to love, including Zora Neale Hurston, Isabel Allende, Alice Walker, Rachel Carson, and dozens of others. This book is an inspiration that will have you humming with appreciation for your particular plot of earth, the larger homeground beyond it, and the green tribes that fill your life. I revisit this book every year.

When I delve into a subject, I go full bore (a remnant of my interest-led unschooling years, perhaps?) I absolutely inhale everything I can get on the topic, applying it as I go and eventually moving on, a bit wiser for my efforts. A few other gardening books on hold for me at the library, or ordered through interlibrary loan:

How to Grow More Vegetables… by John Jeavons. A classic of bio-intensive gardening that everyone else seems to refer to.

Designing and Maintaining Your Edible Landscape Naturally by Robert Kourik

The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka

Gardening for the Future of the Earth by Howard Yana Shapiro and John Harrison

Stolen Harvest by Vandana Shiva

Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry

Four Season Harvest by Elliot Coleman

I told you, I’m voracious. Probably won’t get all the way through this list before the actual work of gardening takes hold of me and I turn to the plants and soil to teach me all I need to know. But I might get close. And there’s always next year. For now, I’ll plant the fertile beds of my imagination for whatever harvest lies ahead.

p.s. what are your favorite books?

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Holding, Waiting, Dreaming

Here’s the day bright and warm.

Look carefully and you can see the piles of dirt I meticulously double dug in a burst of “must grow all our own food this summer.” When my wise garden advisor came to weigh in, she nudged me back towards the center of our yard. “See how wide these paths are?” she asked. “Grow food in them.”

Aahhh. I see.

Stay small, work slowly outward, build soil. Listen to this little piece of land, rather than chattering at it endlessly.

The funny thing about this month’s one small change (my grand plans to start walking everywhere), is that it was just a bit much. I blew out my shoulder hoofing it with Cora on my back (the stroller had a flat and I would not be stopped), and now am relegated to staying home and reading garden books instead of roving all over town and randomly turning up soil in such a way that I succeed only in killing our pobre patch of native grass. Next month’s change was meant to be laying the ground work for growing–you guessed it–a lot more food. Which I’m looking at a little differently now. Taking the long view, you could say. As in, how much of the pathway do I really have the energy to turn into something new?

Despite the fineness of them, these barely-Spring days are not time to leap forward. Just as the apricot knows better than to burst forth just yet, I need to observe a bit more, pull my energy back towards the center. So, maybe this isn’t the year I’ll grow all our own food. Maybe this year I’ll learn something unexpected. Like, what I have is enough.

Oh blessed day, it is enough.