Do you do the Green Thing? ☺
TulsaRose
7 years ago
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ravencajun Zone 8b TX
7 years agofoggyj2
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Going Green - what do you do? :-)
Comments (10)I compost, I use boiling water instead of round up on weeds,careful around plants, I take my plastic bags to the resale shop as well as my clothes, vinegar for cleaning, eat what I grow and share some, I use left over sred paper on compost,use mulch free and given pine mulch on garden from others as well as have sorces for leaf mulch and free nabor tree sreds for mulch, I like free and usable dont got to the land field. I like to by organic food when I can. Thanks for some of the idea's to help more. never thought about unpluging things.I try and not spray in the garden and grow organiclly flowers as well by using natural sourses like growing garlic in garden area and rubbarb an other herbs to keep moles out of garden natrally, I put tansy herb in my shed to keep mice away in winter, and I use old roses to put around the house thorns keep cat's away from the house, from spraying . I cut old daffidil's of an put around the base of my house as they are naturally poision to keep insects away and hot pepper seeds around base of house in spring and around garden as well as grow daff. around veggie garden to keep rabbits out too. no sprays. works no animals but my hubby ha. I go to farmers market an take home boxes of left over produce at times while shopping like watermelon tasting area good rines for compost with my choice veggies local. and take my recycle bags with me and buy my milk there too. fresh. mm good. with cream on top. o yeh. not that store stuff. I take home any coffee grounds,saw dust,sred paper I can find I keep my eye open for freebee's.What I dont sell at resale shop, I then have garage sale. We turn done our heat at night by half what we have during the day. We eat less more quality food and less of it less waist, more veggies and fruit, and less meat. WE do eat more nuts though. I reuse my pots, and use wood sticks or used road blinds for name tags. and thing we can think of recycle always looking to use. I love to find strange things to put in our yard that people through away to decorate the flower beds. or at garage sales. WE have a antiq. section, dutch section, frog section,mexican, south west.and beach them, water can,galvinized,tea pot. area's bird houses,wind chime....See MoreWhat cultural things do you do to reduce BS?
Comments (27)Gardnerzone4--I experimented with non-pruning this past year and got some funny results. I had a couple of HT's that had very little die back over last winter, so I did minimal pruning. I started the spring with plants around the 4 or 5 foot mark. I ended up with a couple of beasts. Blue Girl grows upright for me, and continued upright, to about the 9 foot mark by the end of the year. Yes she was big & impressive, but 80% of her blooms were over my head (and I'm 6') for most of the summer. This coming spring I'll take her back down to a more reasonable level. She looks downright silly next to her younger siblings. Garden Party grows outward--into a more rounded & full shape. By the end of summer, it was about 6 feet wide and 7 feet tall. It looked like it would reach out & grab small children as they walked by & we started calling her Audrey. I loved the way it looked--a big, fat globe of a bush with beatiful fat, smelly roses. Where I live, I think it depends on the growth habit of the rose & the amount of winter kill. I prune mainly to shape and to take off dead pieces, but I imagine things are much different in Chiswell Green than where I live. I have a friend in that region of England and she says it's much milder there in the winter than here in Central IL....See MoreWhat special things do you do in hard times?
Comments (13)Last Christmas, having little disposable income (now, there's a surprise....sigh) we invited the neighbors in the two closest houses to "Soup Night", every Wednesday in January and February. The basic premise was that I would make a huge pot of soup, and I would provide bowls and utensils. Anyone could come, anyone could bring a guest, no one had to rsvp or anything. You could come emptyhanded if you were having a rough week or you could bring a salad, a dessert, bread, or a bottle of wine. But no one needed to plan what they would bring ahead of time. Some weeks we had just the core of eight people, and some weeks we had over 30. I think nearly eighty different people were here at least one of the weeks. We met people who lived nearby who know our neighbors well, but whom we'd only waved to in passing. We introduced out-of-town friends who were passing through to everyone, and our grown kids, who decided this was extremely cool, brought their friends and co-workers home from other parts of the state. Some weeks we had a good balance of food; some weeks we had five desserts and no salad, and one memorable week we had six bottles of wine, one loaf of bread, and the soup. A neighbor on a fixed income brought one apple each of fourteen varieties, and we had a sampling session for dessert one night. No one ever left hungry, and everyone stayed, every week, until the 10 pm deadline we'd agreed on earlier. As a result of our Soup Nights, we've pooled resources to rent equipment, swapped odds and ends that have accumulated on our properties, traded stories about experiences with local servicepeople and vendors, introduced each other to new people, heard local history from old-time residents, swapped services, helped each other out. We shared recipes and celebrated my son's engagement together and mourned the loss of a neighbor's beloved dog. We listened to bluegrass one week, classical the next, jazz the next. We commiserated over the high cost of, well, everything, and shared worries about the war. I really only started it because it was winter, I was bored and lonely, and I wanted to do something interesting for Christmas for our neighbors. But the end results were just incredible. People stop me in the hardware store and ask if we're doing it again next year (we are) and could they come some night. I didn't, initially, think of it as a hard-times sort of thing - but it is. Not only did that pot of soup stretch incredibly far, we forged a sense of community that had previously been lacking. We all miss it, but agreed that January and February was the perfect time for it, and we're looking forward to Soup Nights next year. katie...See MoreDo you accumulate a lot of stuff or do you keep things purged?
Comments (31)We moved out of our house last year for a gut remodel of our kitchen, refinishing of main floor wood floors and replacing upstairs carpeting with wood and painting of walls & trim throughout. We were able to store some things in our attic during this time, but all our furniture was in a storage pod. It was exhausting cleaning this place out. Not the big stuff, but every closet, cabinet and drawer. We had just cleared out my parents' home of 30 yrs. when my Mom passed and set my Dad up in an apartment nearby. So our energy gauge was depleted from the start. We had to do it, though, as I'd been without a working range for 2 yrs. and the refrigerator had begun to fail. I swore I would never, ever buy anything else for the house that wasn't essential. I have always kept a clutter-free home in my living spaces, but my closets and cabinets and attic were where all the overflow stuff lived. Our DS moved overseas 6 yrs. ago so we have most of his accumulated worldly treasures in our attic. And DD has a fair share up there, too, as her little Cape has little storage. Aside from a few indulgences - like new glass pieces for my BD - I've managed to live by the "one thing in/one thing out" rule for the past year. This post is further incentive for me to keep at it ;)...See MoreChi
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