Green with Children

The Fruits of My Labor

It's time for me to proudly report on the progress of my backyard organic garden. Homegrown tomatoes are a feature at every dinner now, and I eat them with a little salt throughout the day. I have more peppers than I know what to do with, the cucumbers are on their way, and every visit to the garden rewards me with a small handful of green beans to crunch as well.

My "organic pest-repellent"--namely, the way my sons peed in the garden--seems to have been successful. I've yet to be looted by woodland vandals. My zucchinis are a total flop, perhaps due to the soggy humidity of this summer, but that's okay. As long as I have homegrown tomatoes, I don't mind.

It's hard to blog about your garden without predictably waxing on about the joys of being out there, the flavor of pride, the connection to "the land." It's all true. What surprised me was how everyone else responded to the garden. It's like a new baby. People express a measure of wonder at the plants and their products. It's like a little six-foot square of good in the backyard.

The way the boys marvel is the best part for me. Dex and Julius are transfixed by the wee little cucumbers spiking their way into being. They shout whenever they spot a reddening tomato. They love to hunt for the camouflaged green beans on the vine.

Understand, when these guys are outside, it's usually to noisily crash scooters into the curb or engage in some other vaguely Mad Max-like play. The way they slow down and focus when presented with the garden is revealing. It's the same when they encounter a spider or a caterpillar, to be honest.

When my nephew visited, the three of them would delicately step onto the wooden plank inside my garden, tussling over space. Their little bodies tucked beneath the tomato vines, the wire fence of cucumbers, the pepper plants--it looked like a painting.

Dexter starts kindergarten in September, and one reason I chose to send him to Seth Boyden Elementary was the teaching gardens each classroom tends. I can see that these kids are going to learn more out there than can possibly be evaluated on a statewide test.

Modern society has done its best to muffle our connection to nature, but this summer's garden has proven to me that nature is like a part of the family--the connection is impossible to deny.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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The Truth about Going Green

When you live in relative affluence--the fridge has food, the kids have everything they need, your neighborhood is safe, you occasionally go to dinner or a movie, maybe even take a vacation once or twice a year--it's easy to lose sight of how dramatically different life is for the rest of the world. Maybe even for your neighbor.

This weekend, I realized it's like that about going green, too.

I have been surrounded by friends and neighbors as attuned to environmentalism as I am, if not more. We actively work to conserve energy and water, none of us use paper napkins, and we dramatically limit our paper towel use. I don't even own any Ziploc bags anymore--snacks and lunches get packed in reusable containers. This summer's backyard barbecues remind me that I live in a bubble.

Outside my bubble, where most Americans exist, paper plates, paper napkins, paper towels, single-serving water bottles and idling motors are the norm. Meals are routinely served on paper in the summer, lemonade is sipped from plastic cups, and water comes in a 12-oz. plastic bottle. When they toss that bottle into a recycling bin, they feel they've done their part.

These parties are fantastic for all the right reasons--great friends and family enjoying delicious food, drinks, laughs, music and, of course, the summer. I was constantly distracted by waste, however. Paper plates were abandoned after a small serving of potato salad. Plastic cups were lost or abandoned half-full. Often, the recycling cans were not clearly marked. I've become some sort of recycling freak.

At one party, Julius managed to coat his hands and arms to the elbows with dirt. When I took him in to wash his hands in the bathroom, I sucked my teeth at the paper towel in lieu of a hand towel. Then I laughed at my own righteous indignation. I'm writing a blog about going green. Of course I'm going to be doing more than the average person. As much as I do find my new "eco-mommy" life as easy as, if not easier (and cheaper) than, my "trashy mommy" life, it still looks like a big leap from there to here from outside my bubble.

For years, I fully believed that we had many environmental problems, but I did nothing about it. Once I decided to try, each step toward a more eco-mommy lifestyle led me to the next. The decisions became easier as the greener options consistently proved to be simpler. Soon, my eco-consciousness infused the way I think about almost everything. And now I live inside my green bubble.

It's so hard to pull people into the bubble without sounding preachy, tedious or superior. This isn't converting to an ancient religion. It's more like learning to drive a stick shift. Sticks will make you appreciate your automatic more, make you more aware of how a car operates, and ultimately--in my opinion--make you a better driver.

And lest you think I'm too high on my horse, one host did take a step toward environmentalism that I myself can't do. A flat, warmish keg of beer was offered in lieu of cans or bottles.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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Food Fight

It started out as one small article in The New York Times about the rising price of organic food. In my blog, I cast it as an enviable budgetary issue, considering how many people in the world can't afford any food at all.

Well, now if I had a dollar every time I saw a story about the rising price of food, I would have enough to buy a gallon of milk. Food is prohibitively expensive. Unlike the millions of other things I want in my life that are prohibitively expensive--cool designer sunglasses, a beach house in Menemsha, a butler--I honestly need the food.

A while back, our beautiful Green Guide founder Wendy Gordon suggested I track the cost of my groceries. I tallied up the receipts for the last several weeks. If I hadn't bought all this food, I think I could have bought the house in Martha's Vineyard.

By the way, it's easy for me to save my grocery receipts because they are all crunched in the bottom of the canvas bags I use every time I shop. Just like you, right? Has anyone else noticed the interesting phenomenon that you can gauge a lot about our society by the checkout person's reaction? Nonchalance? Must be a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's. Eye rolling and thinly veiled hostility? Must be my neighborhood mainstream supermarket. When the response to a motley bunch of reusable bags is routine nonchalance at every checkout aisle in America, we will have succeeded.

So my new campaign is to not spend our retirement on a week's worth of groceries. Here are some methods I've found useful: I have become an avid purveyor of the store specials, even letting them predict the menu. I'm also trying to discipline myself from going to Whole Foods. I am so happy at Whole Foods. I feel like a virtuous mom, a stylish shopper, a gourmet, a sophisticate. At Pathmark, where I now buy all our groceries, I feel like a harried middle-class housewife trying to stretch my dollar. Yes, it's no fun to shop this way, but it's working. The cashiers may not have heard that we use canvas bags, but the management clearly gets that we prefer organics. I'm finding major-league deals on organic fruits and vegetables. Organic meat is harder to find, but I don't don't use much.

I'm clearly not the only one doing dollar acrobatics. One day, an otherwise decent[-]looking man panhandled me in the produce department. He was wearing an apron and carrying a tray of chicken nuggets encased in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. I thought it was some weirdly unappealing taste test. Alas no, the gentleman was a few cents short to buy the nuggets (perhaps to eat on his break from the deli counter?) Hell, these days, I empathize. I gave him the money.

The truth is, a time will come when I too will don that apron and ask for some help in the organic milk aisle. If only my kids drank gasoline. It's so much cheaper.

© The Green Guide, 2008

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