Saving the world

Had lunch with Pastor E today. We talked about saving the world. About how we probably can’t, and that isn’t much the point anyway.

 

Trailers

I had a good conversation last night with a friend. We talked about trailers. Well, mobile homes to be exact. During our conversation I realized that I had feelings about trailers. I feel sad that they are considered an acceptable place to live when really, they aren’t.

 

Trees for the high desert

I’ve been thinking a lot about what kind of trees to plant around our new house. The high desert is a tough place for trees and we will be asking a lot of ours, so I am quite excited about having found some good prospects.

 

Building green and cheap means small and simple

Our house is going to demonstrate a lot of sustainable systems and is designed to be affordable. Apparently there is a major perception out there that green homes are only for people with deep pockets: after all, to have a green home you need low-e windows, Energy Star appliances, and solar panels, right? While those things are helpful, being green means having a light footprint on the earth… that comes from simplicity and smallness more than anything.

 

Camping and the Potty House

We went camping on our property this weekend. The weather was typical for an Arizona spring: highly unpredictable. After a week with highs in the low 80s, it snowed on us and got really cold Sunday so we had to come back to Tucson early (we had planned on staying through to Monday). But Saturday was fun… we had friends and a fire and s’mores, and we saw our first sunset (stunning!) and our first starry night (equally stunning!).

We were able to test out our latest project: the Potty House—christened so by our two-year-old. We built it in pieces at home out of salvaged lumber (total cost less than $200). Wifey’s dad and I took it to the land and put it up Friday. It worked extremely well, even with twelve people using it!

The Potty House, by the way, is a sawdust toilet. It is not a pit privy, and no it does not smell or look bad when you lift the lid… it looks and smells like fresh pine sawdust. All deposits are composted into safe fertilizer in a separate compost bin (which does not smell or look bad either). It does a great job of taking what is often considered waste and turning it into a useful resource.

Wifey’s comment to her skeptical mom: “We’re saving the planet, one poop at a time!”

For more information about sawdust toilets and how they work, check out the Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins.

 

Why do I recycle?

Maybe that’s a silly question, because these days it would be hard to find someone who didn’t think recycling was a good idea. Taking something made for one purpose and finding a way to reuse it or its materials for another purpose once its original purpose is fulfilled, well that just seems like common sense. In and of itself, it is efficient, and to do otherwise seems wasteful.

Continuing the line of thinking from my last post, where I suggest the idea that making sustainable choices is essentially considering the well-being of future generations, recycling seems to take on a bit of a nobler, higher purpose than merely being efficient. I have to confess that when I dump all our paper, cardboard, glass, and number-one-and-two plastics in the big blue recycling can the city provides for us, I’m not thinking to myself ‘This is something I do out of love for my kids and their kids.’ But you know, maybe I should. Because if I didn’t, and I just tossed everything in the big green can for trash, I’m basically contributing to the problem of waste management… eventually all that trash has to be dealt with by somebody, and an awful lot of the consequences wind up in the laps of our kids.

 

Sustainability

It’s a buzzword that gets tossed around a lot these days. So I decided to find out what it actually means, cos you know, I’m a word guy, right?

Some definitions that came up when I Googled the term:

• The characteristic of being able to coexist with another system indefinitely, without either system being damaged.
• The use of ecosystems and their resources in a manner that satisfies current needs without compromising the needs or options of future generations.
• Sustainable development: The concept of meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

The definition that I had formed in my head using merely how I hear it used has been a fuzzy sort of ‘Living in a way that allows you to get along materially without ruining the planet in the process.’

 

What’s up?

So it’s been a little while since I posted last. I am going to use the holidays excuse. So here’s what’s been up lately…

 

What do you need?

Do Not Worry

5″Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

28″And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

I think much of the damage we North Americans habitually do to the environment is because we don’t really listen to what Jesus is saying when he says ‘Do not worry’.

 

Garden gumption

On Saturday morning I was playing in the yard with our elder urchin and looked at the largely fallow vegetable garden I had started a couple years ago. We have a few pepper plants, one eggplant, a baby grapevine (the only one of seven cuttings to survive since I took them this past winter) and a rather depressed cherry tomato plant, all in pots. None of the garden beds are in use because of our otherwise lovely mesquite trees. Gardening tip: never plant anything with any water requirements whatever under or near a mesquite tree unless you use containers. The mesquite will aggressively take all the water.

Anyhoo, I decided to try gardening again. Partly to experience the struggle of working the earth after the fall. Partly because I realize that the only way to really fail as a gardener is to stop trying, to be unimpacted by all I have learned from my past failures. Like, ‘Don’t plant a garden near a mesquite.’