Green Kids Contest

I was reading the Canadian Living Magazine's Green Living Blog today and Daniela (blog owner) wrote about a contest for kids age 6-13 to become one of Canada's greenest kids. The details are at www.sunlightgreenkids.ca so if you are a green kid or you know one - go check it out! There is an honorarium involved, plus a great opportunity to make a difference. Worth writing a 150 word essay for I'm sure.

I just wanted to share this as I think it's a fantastic opportunity for a child to do something important, for themselves and for the world they live in. Pass it along!

Winning the War on Weeds

Ok.. I'm not really, but I loved that title! I am now in a house, as you may know, and weeds seem to be something that come with houses. Who knew? It looked so well tended when we put the offer in. By the time we took possession (a mere 30 or so days later) the weeds were out of control. Yikes! And being very pregnant at the time, I just gave up. Now I'm paying for it as apparently they sowed themselves and are back with a vengeance. Sigh...

I'm adamantly against using pesticides. My husband wants to agent orange the front under the trees where the weeds are taking over. I want to dig it over, pull the weeds, lay down the landscaping fabric and cover with rocks. I'd like river rock I think. Ummm yeah.. I priced it - I need 10 yards and it's.. are you ready for this... over $800!!! And more to just put bark mulch. Goodness me!!!

We have rock in part of the yard, so I'm thinking of pulling all that and using it under the trees, then avidly watching freecycle/craigslist for free river rock nearby and building it that way. I just can't bring myself to pay that much money for rocks.

I've been using Elimaweed and Scott's ecosense weed killer. they are good for the stuff growing in sidewalk/driveway cracks and kind of along paths, but if you don't keep up at it, it all grows back. Grrr. And it cost a fortune. So the next step is to just get down there and dig it. You know.. when I have time. Which I have so much of with two wee ones, lol. I need to teach the toddler to pull weeds for fun.. Only problem is I envisage him pulling anything green. Hmmm. I thought about hiring a student for a few hours to help with the rocks - gotta pull them out of the bed they are in. Hmmm...

I do plan on trying this approach. I've done it here and there and it does work, but you have to maintain the approach, something I'm not good at. Just take 15 minutes and do it. Do all you can as quickly and well as you can, focus on nothing else, for 15 minutes. The kids do sleep, so I might try it consistently everyday. That's an hour and 45 minutes of weeding each week. More than I'm doing now.. Might just work - I'll let you know.

If anyone has any other ideas to tame the scourge that's invading my garden, just let me know. My mom says sometimes you just have to start over.. Ummm. no.. I dont' think so. I'm blessed with some really nice plants - it's just those other ones I dont' want. Please feel free to share. I need all the help I can get to do it and not have my desperate husband grab a bottle of Round-Up.

Sharing just feels good

I've been holding on to some things leftover from the garage sale. I had good intentions of putting them up for sale, but haven't gotten around to it. The other day I decided that I would share them on the FullCircles network - so I have gifted a nice wall shelf and my grandfather's old slide projector and screen to people who will make great use of them. In fact, the projector went to someone who had a ton of slides, but an old projector whose bulb burnt out and can no longer be replaced - a real gift to them!

I've noticed that when you share with others, the things you need seem to come your way, too. For example - we have a shed at our new home that really needs siding put on it. We were chatting with a friend about it, and wouldn't you know it, they had a big lot of used vinyl siding that they didn't need. So with a visit to us for lunch, they brought it over and we now have siding!

It's quite interesting to see that when you just take the time to ask for something - or help - how people want to share or help you. This is the ultimate in recycling. You get something you really need and they get something they didn't need passed on for another use. You may not make a straight trade with someone, but in the end it all somehow works out. You get what you give, you reap what you sow... funny how that works.

So my advice to you all is to share - give things to a friend, share them on craigslist, or freecycle or fullcircles or your local website, bulletin board or by word or mouth. And when you need something - just ask for it. Tell your friends, post an ad, put it out there and you might be pleasantly surprised at what comes back to you.

Getting Greener

My Goodness, but it’s been a long time since I’ve done any blogging! So much to say, so little space. :-)

I have been quite busy around here – both dealing with little boys and with our home. We’ve been doing our part for the economy, that’s for sure, as we had all new windows installed in our home. This was our big energy saving move for the year. Our house had many single pane windows and the double pane windows were from the 80’s and you could still feel a chill through them.

It’s amazing how new windows really change your home, both inside and out. Not only do they look nice, but the noise reduction is amazing. And we can feel the difference in the temperature in here as the drafts are not there anymore. It’s a good time to be doing things like this as there are so many incentives. Not only do we have the government rebates from our energy audit, but there was a rebate from the manufacturer and there is now also a tax rebate on home improvements between $1000 and $10,000 for people in British Columbia. This will give us an overall rebate of almost $2000 on the windows, which were discounted some from the manufacturer in the first place. So we will save both money and energy now!

I’ve been doing lots of little things around here. I’ll list a few that I can think of at the moment.

• Bought a composter – still have to set it up, but now I’ve made a spot for it and it should go in this week.
• On nice dry days I’ve been hanging out a load of laundry. Our line is a small umbrella style, but I load up as much as I can on it. Since I’ve been doing laundry one load a day as needed, it’s easier to hang it as there is only one load to do.
• I wash just about everything in cold water – except diapers which get hot. But diapers never go in the dryer except for an air tumble to soften them once they are dry and that only takes a few minutes
• I started a vegetable garden – so far the radishes have come up – only one lettuce started but I’ll just plant some more – same with the carrots that haven’t really come up either. I’ll just try again. We now have also got tomatoes, hot peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, as well as the strawberries, rhubarb and raspberries I had already. I will plant a row of peas this week, too. My little garden butts up to the side of a shed, which is getting siding put on it (recycled from a friend), so I can’t plant along the edge just yet. I think there will be some zucchini and some more peas as soon as I can plant them. We also have one bean – named Bean – which is my son’s pet plant.
• We had a garage sale, which passes things to others, then I shared most of the leftovers by donating them, putting them out on Fullcircles and I sold a few things on Craigslist. Since everything was in good condition I only threw away a few things that were broken when we set up/packed up. That cleared a huge area of our garage.
• I’ve been gifted things from FullCircles – an old bench seat that I put in our garden, my strawberry plants and raspberry plants and some irises, cloth diapers for my son and more.
• All of my garden waste has been put into the yard waste bin or the paper bags for it and left out for pickup after which it is sent off to be turned into compost.
• I recycle all our eggshells around the plants that slugs like - it seems to help keep them away.

That’s everything I can think of right now.

Most of our time is now spent in the garden. Having a big yard is a lot of work but I find I’m enjoying it. I’ve decided not to stress out over the weeds. I just pick a spot and work it a little at a time. Since I don’t know what’s a weed and what’s not in many cases, I’m sure I’m cultivating a few! But that’s ok. I’ll learn as I go. In the meantime, I’m having fun with it all. I did buy weed-killer – it’s finally available in Canada and is made from a highly acidic vinegar. It kills whatever it touches, but if you spray it where you need it, it’s great. And it works well, although the big established weeds take a few applications. We’ve got a whole side of the house covered in them and I sprayed right at their base with it. After a while it got to be tiring doing that – so instead I covered a huge section of them with a big tarp which I will leave on all summer to hopefully bake them off enough to deal with them. I’m using the spray for those that I can’t dig out – like the ones that think cracks in the sidewalk are good places to grow.

Hopefully our little veggie patch will grow, our composter will compost and my time in the garden will be rewarded with some yummy treats. With the good weather finally here, it’s so nice to be outside – and I figure what could be greener than growing?

Give My Regards To Rona

I was flipping through flyers (a favourite pastime of mine!) and I noticed the current one from Rona (for those of you elsewhere - this is a home improvement centre here in Canada) and they have a great flyer this time around. They are quite heavily promoting their ECO choices.

From power tool accessories, to push mowers, low VOC paints and natural choices for your home cleaning and lawn care, this flyer is filled with them. It's very nice to see. The best notice of all in the flyer was that as of July 1, 2009 Rona will no longer be selling synthetic pesticides for cosmetic use in all it's stores across Canada. After all - as I see it - a lawn is a green space to enjoy, not to cover in chemicals. Same goes for the flower beds.

Now speaking of gardening - I have to choose how to spend my $50 that I got as a gift. I'm torn between so many things and how to get the most bang for my buck! Right now I'm looking at a composter which I can buy from the city for $35 and maybe some little solar lights for the yard (the ones on a stake) that Home Depot has for 1.99. I could get a half dozen of those to mark the walkway in the front yard, which would be nice. And I might even be able to sneak in a packet of seeds for my veggie garden while I'm at it! I still haven't decided and if I can scrounge a composter from someone, I'll be able to stretch my gift even further for something else for my garden or home to help 'green' it. Yippee! (and as for gifts - I asked on my FullCircles group - formerly freecycle - to try to find a patio table and we've been gifted one that I will pick up this weekend. I just love sharing this way. If you aren't on a FullCircle or a Freecycle list - what are you waiting for? It's a great way to gift others and find things useful to yourself as well)

Earth Hour report

I am happy to say that even though we were away from home, we were still able to participate in Earth Hour this past Saturday. We were celebrating a special occasion and had dinner at the Cannery Sea Food Restaurant. They turned off all the lights they could and during that time we got to enjoy our dinner by candlelight. It did make menu reading interesting, but the staff had little flashlights to help out, lol.

We were in Vancouver, BC and from our table we could see (or should I say not see) the Lion's Gate Bridge as they turned off the lights there, too. It seems that Earth Hour is catching on. We didn't see a huge change in the light across the water in North Vancouver or downtown (we could see both from our table) but there was a difference. Maybe one day we'll see it all power down for a while.

Now something to consider - why not have your own Earth Hour every month - perhaps the last Saturday of each. It could be a romantic dinner, a fun time for the kids, a chance to sleep a little earlier (with a baby I really do have a one track mind)

In the summer you can sit outside and watch the sunset, use your solar lights or candles or just relax under the stars. In the winter, how about a fire to warm your toes, flashlight stories with the kids, or indoor 'camping' for them. The ways you can spend an hour without lights on are endless!

A little Green for St. Patrick's Day

With today being the 'greenest' of days, I am taking some time to post here. It's just been a hectic few months with the new baby and a very active two year old. Rest assured, that even though I've not kept up the posting, I'm doing my best to keep up the effort. I thought I'd share a little about the energy audit we had done.

The advisor came to our home and did a blower test (to check for leaks) and inspected many areas of our home. We came up with a list of things to do, and how much each of these items should affect our energy usage (and consequently our savings in relation to this)

The biggies that came in were that we had the equivalent of a nice big hole in the wall - letting out the heat and letting in the cold. So we've made a plan to fix some of this by installing new windows in our home this year. That will be our big project. But we will also do some draft proofing around the house with caulking, lightswitch foam inserts (for behind the plates) putting in outlet plugs on all the sockets we aren't using, and adding a little insulation as our budget allows. Ideally we will insulate in the crawlspace as we are actually losing more heat through there than our attic (which has insulation, just not an ideal r-factor) This explains the cold floors!

We could replace our furnace, but until we seal up the house's envelope, it's just not going to make a huge difference.

The energy audit allows us to apply for government grants if we do a follow-up audit within 18 months. This is something we will do, as we will have replaced the windows and that alone is worth a little money to us. And as we may need to replace the washing machine and want to replace our awful dishwasher (with energy star models!) we can earn a little more back, too.

It's a good time to do this type of thing as there are great incentives through the audit program - both federal and provincial grants out there, plus there is a new tax incentive as well. Add to that the savings we can anticipate by changing out the old thin windows we have, along with a little insulation and over time it's well worth the effort financially. Immediately it's worth the comfort and the fact we use less energy. (it's not all about the money)

I received a printout for our home, with the list of things to do, what the grants would be and how these things impact the home. They also gave us a bunch of information on greening our home. I have to say that I've found the BC Hydro website a huge wealth of information as they have great ideas/tips on there. This is also where I've found some of the window contractors I'm talking to for quotes. I suggest you take a look for some good ideas. (www.bchydro.com) They have a team powersmart you can sign up for if you use BC Hydro, as well as lots of guides/tips/links etc.

One thing we did over the winter was replace our hot tub cover. Since you have to leave it warm, and our old one collapsed in the snow, we bought a five inch thick insulated cover. It's probably a bit of overkill for around here, but I'm not letting any more of that hot water heat the air than I have to.

While I know we can't afford to do it all within the 18 months you are allotted for the energy audit/reaudit, I can definately see us doing some of those things and reaping the comfort benefits of it, as well as the financial ones.