Mother's going GREEN Day 58 - Some Updates

I thought I would let you know what has been happening with our changes that we have made so far.

Our garbage is now a bag a week. Not a big bag, but 20" by 21" bag - so in a month we fill one garbage can for pick up. Which is great. I made the challenge of 1 can a month.

Our worms are eating a lot of our produce waste and already we are seeing the compost develop. They are so low maintenance it is unbelievable. No smell and very few fruit flies which is great.

Also, since our dryer broke awhile back we have been hanging our clothes out to dry. The drier has been fixed, hopefully it is working as I have not yet used it again. It still amazes me how the stains come out of the cloth diapers. I get all excited now when I have a badly stained diaper as I want to see if this stain is too tough for the sun. Haven't had one yet.

I am also very happy with our switch in body wash. With the old stuff (the chemical stuff) I would always break out in little blisters on my arms after being in the sun. This would happen every summer when I ventured out into the sun. Initially the doctor said it was an allergic reaction and to change soaps. I did but the same old thing. Then she said just wear sunscreen and you will be fine. Whatever.... that was about 3 years ago. Now having switched to the natural chemical free body wash - I have no side affects from the sun. Coincidence, I think not.

Our walking everyday is great I have lost about 5 pounds of my post pregnancy weight in the last week and probably saved that in gas too.

Our vegetable garden is great - we are already eating lettuce and Swiss chard from it. I can hardly wait for the tomatoes to come. It looks like we will also have an amazingly large pumpkin for our jack-o-lantern come Halloween. The strawberries and blueberries get eaten by the children as soon as they are ripe. So nice for them to pick a fresh snack in the garden while they play.

Going green is not difficult - in fact rather simple - you should try it too

Mother's going GREEN Day 53 - Children's Eco-Craft

When Fridays come along, I usually head to the recycling can and try figure out what we can create this week because we have an abundance of milk jugs I decided to put them to use. We also needed some sort of plant markers for our rooftop vegetable garden which is growing so well - so the idea of Vegetable Plant Markers came to mind.

Vegetable Plant Markers

You will need:

-- Empty Plastic Milk Jugs

-- Pictures of Vegetables

-- Glue Stick

Instruction (with adults help if required):

-- Cut long 'rain drop' shape from recycled milk jug (2 per marker)

-- Glue picture on the top of 'rain drop' shape cut out (I used printed pictures on the back side of an already used paper, but you can either draw your own or cut some from a magazine)

-- Glue on second 'rain drop' shape to cover picture - this will provide some waterproofing so our pictures do not get damaged.

-- Place markers in garden to identify your vegetable plants.

Mother's Going GREEN - Day 17 - Involving the Children

Going green for our family was partly inspired by my children. What kind of world are we going to leave them? Whatever world it is I want my children to look back and know that I tried to do something for the world and for them. I also want to teach them the value of the earth and how important it is to our lively hood.

Our family's journey of going green most certainly involves them. The small ways that they help out is:

• cutting newspaper for the worms (our worm compost) each time we feed them we give them a little fresh newspaper.
  
• feeding the worms.


• taking care of the vegetable garden.


• ensuring lights are turned off in the rooms and are not turned on during the day. (my son noticed one deary grey evening, that I turned on the light for dinner and he questioned it as it was not quite dark enough for lights. Way to go son!)


• helping out with the recycling (sorting out the glass from the plastic and the corrugated cardboard from the paper)

I am seeing after only 17 days that my behaviour toward reducing, reusing and recycling is rubbing off on them. "Monkey see, monkey do."

Thank goodness for little children, thank goodness we have the opportunity to do right for the world for them.

Mother's going GREEN Day 14 - Our Rooftop Organic Vegetable Garden

After a lot of work, building boxes, hauling them and the soil onto the roof we finally have our Organic Vegetable Garden set up and ready. We are lucky enough to have a 'flat' garage roof with fairly easy access onto it and being dead space we figured we would put it to good use and plant our vegetable garden. Because of where we live we need to be mindful of the bears and we figure they will not be able to access our rooftop. We opted to make some boxes for our plants although you can pretty much use anything for container growing. Also, you can pretty much grow whatever you want in containers. We chose to use Canadian potting soil, it had to be chemical free and organic. We planted many of our plants from seeds but chose a few that have started growing so we can enjoy their rewards sooner.

We have planted: tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, butternut squash, peas, winter squash, cantaloupe, water melon, rosemary, cabbage, cauliflower, pumpkin (hopefully for our jack-o-lantern come Halloween), sunflowers, parsley and celery. I can hardly wait until we can harvest our vegetables and we hope that it can sustain us for a little bit - talk about organic vegetables and zero traceability and of course very local.

In our 'regular' garden mixed among our plants we have grapes, raspberries, blueberries and strawberries - the strawberries already have berries so can not wait until they are ready to eat. We live close to a wooded area where there are many blackberry bushes and they have fruit on them too.

We hope to have a summer filled with fresh organic homegrown berries. It feels great - this possibility that we will be able to sustain ourselves for a short while and eat the best and freshest vegetables ever.