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Carlisle COB Forum :: Meeting of the Minds |
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Subject :Living Green..
27-04-2010 12:04:25
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| pastormarla |
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Joined: 05-12-2009 17:32:21
Posts: 30
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About thirty years ago, I lived by a gardener who taught me all about growing food organically. I started following her methods, and was pleased at the results. I did research on organic food and found the dangers from the many pollutants in our food and what those pollutants did to the earth.
My mom was always a re-cycler. How I hated having to wash out plastic sandwich bags for re-use! If she had no use for a gift we or anyone else had given her, she would re-gift it. My parents always drove small cars, usually Volkswagens, so we never knew about poor gas mileage. We were taught to turn off lights, radios and the TV (we only had one, of course) when we left the room. My mom had us all canning food late into the night. In some ways, the style of living green comes naturally to me.
As time has passed, I have been glad to see how many people are now trying to promote a green lifestyle. We lived near Cleveland, and the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie are now beautiful. I have been swimming in Lake Erie. Roadside litter is more a thing of the past. Still, a neighbor and I carefully pick up trash for a mile on either side of our houses, to keep the Conodoguinet clean. That also reduces the trash in the ocean...and I love the ocean!
When it came time to change electric companies, we chose a plan with energy produced by the wind. We need to stop our dependence on fossil fuels. We have almost always driven cars with great miles per gallon engines. My current car is a 93 Toyota Corolla which gets about 36-40 miles per gallon on the highway. What a money saver it has been for us!
When the "buy local" movement started, it made a lot of sense. So we frequent the local farmers' markets. We are especially careful about our beef. If you read up on that industry, you will be careful too, believe me! Since we are mainly vegetarian, we don't eat a lot of beef, but when we do, it is really good.
It does cost more financially to eat organic, to buy local, to pay more for electric. But when the cost mounts up, I think of it as my contribution to a restored earth.
While I feel good about the things we have chosen to do, I have found that one part of living green is a lot of feeling guilty. I don't want to spend five minutes cleaning out the dog food can, so I don't recycle it. There is another part of living green that many of us do not talk about. That is the fact that it takes education and research and change of habits. There are always new things to do, new ways of improving on one's green footprint. It is a little like eating healthy...experts change the amount of salt or sugar, or whether carbohydrates are good or bad, and you have to learn about the varieties of cholesterol and how to read labels. And eating and living healthy involves life style changes.
But in spite of that, it is good to let the earth and ourselves live healthily. And it is worth the time to learn some new things and ways to live and cook. None of us will be perfect, but still some change is better than nothing.
I think it would be helpful if people would post some new thing they have learned to keep the earth healthy in response to this posting....so teach us all! |
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Subject :Re:Living Green..
03-05-2010 10:19:21
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| pastormarla |
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Joined: 05-12-2009 17:32:21
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I have been weeding a huge section of English ivy in our yard. I realized that although I recognized certain things as weeds, I didn't know their names, or if there were special ways to get rid of them. So I went to the PA agricultural extensions site to see if any were invasive weeds.( http://www.natlands.org/uploads/document_28200794705.pdf ) I remember carefully pulling out the purple loose strife in Ohio, when I learned it was invasive.
Now, before we continue, the English ivy I am weeding is very invasive as well. I know this, and carefully patrol to see if it has jumped the road. If so, it gets weeded. The myrtle, however, has crossed the road, and it is really difficult to keep out. At this stage, I can't think of many ground covers for steep banks that are not invasive. So the ivy is staying and confined.
In any event, many of the weeds I normally pull are invasive. But some of the invasives look very much like good plants that grow in our creek/meadow/woods area. The Norwegian maple is invasive...but looks a lot like the many maples in our area. Trying to manage the invasives is a bit more complex than I thought it would be.
I did find a website on keeping weeds out of organic fields. What really caught my interest was timing. Some of these plants scatter 300-500 seeds. So they really need to be taken out before seeding. That is giving me some incentive to keep at it. There had also been some experiments in spraying plants with vinegar. I want to try that on plants in sidewalks.
The oil spill constantly is a reminder to us of the fragility of the environment. At least it is making people a bit more thoughtful about offshore drilling.
Finally, a word on dumping. I haven't lived in the country for awhile, and I am surprised at how people dump garbage along our road. If you put that stuff by the creek, it is going into the ocean. Someone dumped two bags of grass clippings..that may seem harmless, but were those clippings from a sprayed yard?
Why is it so much work to purchase a trash service, or put the grass clippings in your own yard???
I guess that laziness and greed are the sins that lead us to mistreating the earth, and I am guilty as well! |
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Subject :Re:Living Green..
24-05-2010 12:29:32
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| pastormarla |
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Joined: 05-12-2009 17:32:21
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The Local Farmer's Market in downtown Carlisle is now open on Wednesdays, from three to seven. I made the first day, and bought some fresh feta as a gift for Katie, my daughter-in-law. But she couldn't eat it, because it was made from raw milk, and she is pregnant with our first grandchild. Simple eating is complex!
Meanwhile, my lettuce is coming on in the cool weather, and I am not too interested in lettuce salads for supper. Tonight we will start on the lettuce.
I am checking out my roses and see they are turning yellow. Is there a natural fungicide, or do I bite the bullet and get something that isn't that great for the environment? After all, the roses are far from the vegetable garden?
I am trying to shop local for the flowers around the church building. That means using my phone and not driving around. I am also making my own baskets rather than purchasing them. I talked with my flower supply place years ago and she said the key to good hanging baskets is to stuff them full of flowers and fertilize, fertilize, fertlize.
Anyone have some hints out there to help us live in green ways? |
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Subject :Re:Living Green..
21-06-2010 13:36:46
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| pastormarla |
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Joined: 05-12-2009 17:32:21
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Just an update on recycling and gardening.
We were visiting my sister Bonnie, who lives in West Central Wisconsin. She is a very dedicated re-cycler. While I tend to avoid washing out the dog food cans, she takes the labels off of her cat food cans and puts them in the dishwasher. She must drive about twenty miles to re-cycle her items.
Her recycle place has a great idea...they have some shelves for people to recycle paint and varnish. These are products that should not be disposed of carelessly. And how often do we have to buy more paint than we need just to be sure to cover an area? I wish we could do this somewhere in Carlisle.
I am always interested in which states allow one to recycle at rest stops. I have been pretty disappointed at the rest stops on Rt. 81 in PA. Wisconsin stops always had recycling. That state is so ahead of PA on environmental issues. They also have paid a lot of attention to bicycle trails...which are also used for cross country skiing in the winter.
Garden hint....my sister was a bit skeptical, but rabbits have found a hole in her garden fence and were chomping down on her vegetables. I told her to pepper them. She didn't think it would work, so I went outside and just sprinkled everything with ordinary household pepper from the shaker. This is my theory...that animals sniff before they eat and a snout full of pepper is a great discouragement. Well, even after a rain, her vegetables were untouched. I also use pepper to discourage animals from eating my tulip bulbs when I plant them.
I am also experimenting with vinegar as a weed killer in sidewalks. In my first attempt, I watered down the vinegar some and the weeds just looked sad. A few died. I will try full force vinegar next.
What hints and helps do you have?? |
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Subject :Re:Living Green..
15-07-2010 12:43:08
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| pastormarla |
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Joined: 05-12-2009 17:32:21
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What to do about insects? I may have mentioned that we were invaded by a hive of bees, which came boiling up through the floor heating vents. Since we are not really fond of living in a house full of bees, my husband bought insecticide to kill them. But it was obvious that there was a full hive located under the floor. Next came an exterminator. He said they were honeybees and a protected species, so we should call a beekeeper. By this time, the bees faded away. Since I now know they are a protected species, I feels so guilty about killing them. I was so glad the last few weeks to see honeybees still flying around my flowers, so they aren't all gone.
Now we have an invasion of millipedes. There is an average of fifty crawling across the basement floor each time we head down to do laundry. I have to remember to go get shoes before I venture down. Okay, dilemma, millipedes are harmless and eat decaying vegetation. BUT, their dead bodies leave a potent smell, and they multiply rapidly. There is the disgust factor of crunching bodies while we walk, as well. Research also said they must be gotten rid of, or they will cover the floor in inches. Of course, this was from a company selling pesticides to kill them.
So, I did the internet research. One recommended way of killing them was to spray vinegar. I added balsamic vinegar to Simple Green soap. Sure enough, kills them pretty quickly. This means that many are killed when I spray and the kind husband sweeps them up daily. We were living with it, and hoping the numbers would go down. Then the millipedes started to show up outside, on the porch and sidewalk. Again, I know they are harmless, but the crunch factor??
We decided to use diatomaceus earth to prevent and kill. But that stuff doesn't seem to get around Carlisle much. So the husband told me he had found an insect killer that wasn't dangerous to pets or human. I said to go get it. Well, the minute I saw the "Orkin" trademark on the bag, we were probably in trouble. The poison is to be spread two feet wide around the house! And it is not good for wells, and toxic to all insects. It also is killer of fish and other wildlife in creeks. We live right next to a creek. I hope to spend time tracking down diatomaceus earth, which is sprinkled gently around the foundations, both inside and in the basement. A wide trail is not needed. While it kills many insects, we will limit the amount that is outside.
I do find it ironic that millipedes love damp cellars, so we must run our dehumidifier. The cellar finally dried out the day before a nice big rain, which put the river back into the basement. But, one source said diatomaceous earth doesn't work as well when it is damp. Life is a puzzle! |
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