Sowing the Seeds of Heirloom Crops
If you have started a little garden in order to cut down on the food bill, your next step could be to start growing and savings the seeds from heirloom crops. This can be a great way to keep plant diversity thriving and also teach your children great lessons about plants!
Since most food grown today has terminator genes in them or are patented you cannot use the seeds from one year to the next. So check out SeedSavers.org and see if planting heirloom crops is for you.
Living Without China
With all the talk recently of banned substances showing up in everything from food to tires to toys from China, you may start to think about trying to buy things not made in China. Well, good luck.
In Sara Bongiorni’s new book, A Year Without ‘Made in China’, she tries to do just that. And she discovers that it is not just difficult, but downright impossible. Check the book out and read this article on attempting to make it without Chinese products.
Earth-Friendly Shopping Bags
After every windy day I have to clean my backyard of all the trash that has blown into it. Our property backs up to an open field and the wind usually blows from this direction. I have found numerous candy wrappers, a baby hat, one (very sad) baby bootie, styrofoam packing peanuts, ribbon, but most often I find plastic bags. Sometimes they get caught in the branches of our trees, like sad little ghost birds. My trash-cleaning days and San Francisco’s recent ban on plastic shopping bags have made me more conscientious about using my canvas shopping bags at the grocery store.
Reusable canvas totes are sturdier than a regular plastic grocery sack and by using them, you are helping to keep plastic bags out of our landfills and my backyard. Some stores even give discounts for bringing in your own bags (our local market gives me $0.03 every time I use one). They can be found for under $10 online and you might even be able to get a better deal at a yard sale or thrift shop.
Ok, you say, now what do I do with the 257 plastic bags that I have stored in my garage? Some larger shopping centers have plastic bag recycling bins. You can drop off your clean plastic bags there to be recycled. Or you could take them to a local thrift store to be used as shopping bags there. Or you could use them to collect your dog’s poop every few days. (I really don’t like throwing the dog poop straight into the trash can. However, since I don’t get plastic bags at the grocery store any more, I will soon have to figure out another plan.)
My other quandary in all of this is what to do about Ziploc bags. I love Ziploc bags. I mean, I really love them. They are great for leftovers, snack baggies, travel, wet clothes, freezing foods, storing craft items… I could go on. But I don’t like the idea of putting so many in the landfills. I do wash them out (unless they have been storing raw meat) and try to get 3 or more uses out of them – especially the gallon and quart sizes. I haven’t tried one of these yet, but this might make it easier to wash them in the dishwasher. I guess for now I will just have to content myself with trying not to use plastic grocery sacks and with reusing the Ziploc bags as much as possible.
Happy Recycling!
Simple Summer Pleasures
For a nice list of all the fun you can have in the summertime, mostly for free, head on over to parentdish.com and check out their list of simple summertime pleasures.
Be sure to also read the comments, lots of great suggestions in there!
Babies Not Quite So Innocent
According to some behavioural experts, babies can begin constructing simple lies as early as 6 months!
Infants quickly learnt that using tactics such as fake crying and pretend laughing could win them attention. By eight months, more difficult deceptions became apparent, such as concealing forbidden activities or trying to distract parents’ attention.
Originally it was thought that children didn’t begin lying until around the age of four. Obviously, the researchers didn’t have any kids of their own or they would have known it can start a long time before that!
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