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Ow. Pain bad.
May. 3rd, 2009 06:19 pmGreengrade for today (so far):
good:
--planted 3 echinacea and 2 yarrow in the front of the house, as well as 3 rescued lilies from church. (They always flood the place with hothouse lilies at Easter, and then as soon as they stop blooming they put them out in the hall for anyone who wants to take them. I've seldom gotten those lilies to do much, it's like they are too stressed out from their one Easter's glory to do anything else, like the kid who's super-popular in high school but never amounts to anything later in life...hopefully one of these is a closet nerd...)
--fed the kids a very simple dinner. not entirely local but all good and healthy. Dessert was homemade yogurt with honey and cinnamon on top. (see lady-jem.livejournal.com/68060.html#cutid1 , my lj entry on how to make homemade yogurt. Surprisingly easy.)
--felt VERY virtuous when I saw the rest of the takeout Chinese in the fridge (I had some for lunch today too) and realized I really didn't want serious heavy food and instead ate some goat cheese on crackers, orange juice my mom brought and forgot to take with her (so the buying-non-local-tiny-container negative points are hers and not mine), and a bowl of yogurt myself. I know, eating healthy doesn't necessarily count as "green," but being mindful and paying attention and choosing the simple over the complex-processed is a good thing, as I see it.
--ate a banana for "brunch" rather than stopping at McD's or Dunkin on the way to work this morning and getting something awful
bad: (not including the usual crap I always do, like generating too much garbage, driving more than I need to, etc.)
--put some yard waste trash into the same bag as trash trash rather than separating. Hopefully I don't lose too many points here because it was really not much at all...
neutral (good cancels out bad):
--hubby is outside using a gas rototiller to render at least slightly organic and growable the raised bed in our backyard, which is basically a big block of clay. It's horrible. We've been trying to work it by hand but we just can't do it, so we broke down and he's now in 2 hours doing what would otherwise take us weeks or more likely never get done. He's mixing an appalling amount of manure and sand into it to hopefully give us something that veggies will grow in. The gas part is bad, the growing our own veggies will (hopefully) be good. If this bed doesn't pan out in the long run, we'll hire landscapers or something, or make a higher bed and fill it with our own dirt, because this is insane.
I also hurt my back putting in the lilies. It's appalling to me how much clay weighs--a big shovelful lifted Not Quite The Right Way was enough to do me in. Fortunately that was the last lily, and then I was done, but I would have liked to help Al schlep the gajillion bags of amendments back to the bed. (Okay, I didn't really want to, but I of course would have. Now--not a chance. The husband points he's racking up today will take forever to pay back.)
I hope to hell this works. I want veggies. It would suck to have bought a nice house with a nice yard only to discover we can't grow anything in it.
Today we went to visit The Growing Place in Naperville--a really awesome nursery with scads and scads of plants. That's where we found the pussy willow and orange mint before. Unfortunately, they seem to specialize in carefully bred hybrids and such, pretty ornamental things, and they don't have Plain Old Anything. No white yarrow, no St. John's Wort. We did get some red-leaf lettuce, a peony, and 3 small echinacea. All but the lettuce are in the ground--that raised bed, ya know? although I'm trying to find a home for the lettuce that's closer to the kitchen door, so I'll be able to just sort of step outside (like with my herbs) and pick a salad. We'll see.
Now I'm just rambling, so I'll stop.
Ow. I'm not 25 any more. I'm not 35 either, for that matter, although this would have done my back in then too.
Ow. If I had some St. John's Wort oil I'd mix it with helicrysum EO and rub it all over my back. I don't. Ow.
Ow.
--J
good:
--planted 3 echinacea and 2 yarrow in the front of the house, as well as 3 rescued lilies from church. (They always flood the place with hothouse lilies at Easter, and then as soon as they stop blooming they put them out in the hall for anyone who wants to take them. I've seldom gotten those lilies to do much, it's like they are too stressed out from their one Easter's glory to do anything else, like the kid who's super-popular in high school but never amounts to anything later in life...hopefully one of these is a closet nerd...)
--fed the kids a very simple dinner. not entirely local but all good and healthy. Dessert was homemade yogurt with honey and cinnamon on top. (see lady-jem.livejournal.com/68060.html#cutid1 , my lj entry on how to make homemade yogurt. Surprisingly easy.)
--felt VERY virtuous when I saw the rest of the takeout Chinese in the fridge (I had some for lunch today too) and realized I really didn't want serious heavy food and instead ate some goat cheese on crackers, orange juice my mom brought and forgot to take with her (so the buying-non-local-tiny-container negative points are hers and not mine), and a bowl of yogurt myself. I know, eating healthy doesn't necessarily count as "green," but being mindful and paying attention and choosing the simple over the complex-processed is a good thing, as I see it.
--ate a banana for "brunch" rather than stopping at McD's or Dunkin on the way to work this morning and getting something awful
bad: (not including the usual crap I always do, like generating too much garbage, driving more than I need to, etc.)
--put some yard waste trash into the same bag as trash trash rather than separating. Hopefully I don't lose too many points here because it was really not much at all...
neutral (good cancels out bad):
--hubby is outside using a gas rototiller to render at least slightly organic and growable the raised bed in our backyard, which is basically a big block of clay. It's horrible. We've been trying to work it by hand but we just can't do it, so we broke down and he's now in 2 hours doing what would otherwise take us weeks or more likely never get done. He's mixing an appalling amount of manure and sand into it to hopefully give us something that veggies will grow in. The gas part is bad, the growing our own veggies will (hopefully) be good. If this bed doesn't pan out in the long run, we'll hire landscapers or something, or make a higher bed and fill it with our own dirt, because this is insane.
I also hurt my back putting in the lilies. It's appalling to me how much clay weighs--a big shovelful lifted Not Quite The Right Way was enough to do me in. Fortunately that was the last lily, and then I was done, but I would have liked to help Al schlep the gajillion bags of amendments back to the bed. (Okay, I didn't really want to, but I of course would have. Now--not a chance. The husband points he's racking up today will take forever to pay back.)
I hope to hell this works. I want veggies. It would suck to have bought a nice house with a nice yard only to discover we can't grow anything in it.
Today we went to visit The Growing Place in Naperville--a really awesome nursery with scads and scads of plants. That's where we found the pussy willow and orange mint before. Unfortunately, they seem to specialize in carefully bred hybrids and such, pretty ornamental things, and they don't have Plain Old Anything. No white yarrow, no St. John's Wort. We did get some red-leaf lettuce, a peony, and 3 small echinacea. All but the lettuce are in the ground--that raised bed, ya know? although I'm trying to find a home for the lettuce that's closer to the kitchen door, so I'll be able to just sort of step outside (like with my herbs) and pick a salad. We'll see.
Now I'm just rambling, so I'll stop.
Ow. I'm not 25 any more. I'm not 35 either, for that matter, although this would have done my back in then too.
Ow. If I had some St. John's Wort oil I'd mix it with helicrysum EO and rub it all over my back. I don't. Ow.
Ow.
--J
