Green Dreams

Green Dream # 6 Front yard veggie patch.

Green Dream # 7 Re-purpose household items (ie. found this old curtain from our last house, hiding in the bottom of the linen closet, and it fits our front door; better yet, it replaces the lace curtain that has been there since we moved in SEVEN YEARS ago, which never ever felt like ours.)

Green Dream # 8 Wash, dry and re-use plastic bags. We haven't bought new for years. When these run out, I am considering making/buying cloth bags instead. One question: for freezing food, especially liquid food, what would replace the plastic bag?

Green Dream # 9 Reusable mugs and water bottles. Milk in glass containers.

Green Dream # 10 Cloth wipes. We haven't gone the no-toilet-paper route, however (as per No Impact Man). The used cloths are stored in a diaper stuff sack, (a welcome re-purposing that marks the end of our cloth diapering days). I launder them every other day.

Green Dream # 11 I just wanna ride my bicycle.
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This morning the house is Friday Quiet. Ah. I actually sighed while typing that last sentence--a good sigh, a cleansing sigh, as one might put it in yoga practice. I am drinking my ginger-garlic cold fighting brew, because apparently spring ain't sprung without a touch of the ague. CJ caught it first, and I coughed all night long. Would I choose to set my internal alarm clock for 5:40am, or would I skip early morning yoga? My alarm went off (it's inside my head; I set it when I'm falling off to sleep by picturing the numbers on the clock--the time at which I'd like to wake; and it almost never fails me). Turns out, I wanted that time for myself; how could I sleep through it? I couldn't. I leapt out of bed.
Guess what? I've been biking to morning yoga. It takes less time than travelling by car, at least on the way there, because it's downhill and there's little traffic. Coming home takes more effort and attention (focus, blissed-out yoga brain, focus!), but I don't lose more than a few minutes in the commute. I am riding Kevin's old mountain bike, and the front-riding baby seat is perfect for stowing my bag; but I'm coveting a more upright ride that would fit my body better. Add it to the (short) list of Things I Covet.
(Also add: fire pit for the backyard).
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As I tinker with a slight re-design for this blog, I've changed "Eco-Attempts" to the friendlier and more optimistic "Green Dreams." Riding bike is going on the list. I fully intend for that to be our family's main summer transportation. My only concern is that the roads are not terribly safe for cyclists. Apparently a bike trailer was recently struck in the north part of the city, resulting in a broken arm for a small child; and the driver fled the scene.
Our cities are designed around cars. As Michael Enright put it, in a recent editorial on The Sunday Edition (a three-hour radio show that airs on CBC Radio One): There is no war on cars; the war was won ages ago, and we already know the victor: the car. The Walrus recently ran a fascinating article on green cities in Europe (Chris Turner's "The New Grand Tour"), and the author's description of cycling around Copenhagen on rented bicycles, one of which included a double seat on the front into which two children could be strapped ... well, count this reader as pretty darn envious. He and his family cycled the city on lanes exclusively designated for bike traffic; they never felt safer.
In our city, we have a few paths on which only cyclists and pedestrians can travel, but the paths are broken by busy streets, across which one must dash without any marked crossing or traffic signals. I frequently let the kids bike on the sidewalk, and wrestle with biking on the sidewalk myself, considering that I'm pulling two vulnerable children behind me in a carrier.
I spend a lot of time coaching my children on how to be smart and safe pedestrians: no, it's not fair, but even if a car is doing the wrong thing (ie. running a stop sign, or not giving the right-of-way to the pedestrian at a crossing, or swooping around a right-hand turn without checking for pedestrian traffic), the walker has to let the car do what it's doing. Because in human versus car, car wins, human loses.
I wonder whether that's an apt description of the peculiar lives we've built on the altar of car. Car wins, humans lose. Think of everything we sacrifice in order to propel ourselves inside our own individual motorized compartments. Think of the oil gushing out into the Gulf of Mexico, right now. Consider the air we breathe. Remember what it feels like to walk and talk, to exercise, and meet our neighbours, and take time. Cars give us convenience, without question. There are jobs that could not be done without cars (ie. midwife). But a lot of us don't really need to use cars, not as often as we do, or think we do.
In thinking about my Green Dreams, I recognize that many of these choices and changes demand time. Hanging laundry to dry every day does take more time than throwing it into the drier--not a great deal more, but a bit. So does washing the dishes by hand. Baking my own bread. I'm still trying to figure out how to make snacks more convenient without falling prey to the ease of the prepackaged treat, grabbed as I dash a pack of hungry grumpy children to piano lessons. All of this extra labour would cut into my productivity, if I were employed at a regular job. But part of where I'm headed, I think, is viewing this home-based production as valuable on a number of levels. It doesn't fit into the stock market. It doesn't work comfortably with capitalism, but I've got a few problems with capitalism anyway; nothing in nature grows indefinitely, and it seems like madness to base a businesses' success on eternal growth: it's a recipe for corruption.
This work is valuable because it keeps me humble. It's valuable because it's my offering to the earth. It's a small and humble offering, but so be it. I would like to offer my time--because I have it, and I'm grateful for that gift--to living creatively. Anyone who's ever made anything knows that there is a great deal of invisible work behind what's created. There is the original vision, changed and altered and made deeper by reflection and time, there is work, there is error and recognition of error, and incorporation of error, too, and there is luck, happenstance, improvisation. There are bursts of production and activity, and lulls of wondering, daydreaming, even doubt. There is sacrifice. You have to figure out if it's worth it to you--figure out what you're sacrificing, and why you want to.
Mostly, though, you just do it: you do the work you've chosen to do.

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