Please Know I'm Not Greener than Thou

I mean to talk in this corner of cyberspace about what I'm trying to do on many fronts, but I know I'm a long way from even developing a green cast to my skin in that area of thought and endeavor.

They make environmentally friendly bulbs, so our Christmas bulbs ain't helping my carbon footprint be smaller than Sasquatch's and my product choices are frequently inconsiderate of fair trade or environmental impact.

My requested gifts aren't even that green.

Green is just one of the things I'm contemplating and working toward in as informed and positive way as I can.

The My Garden Sandwich

Temperatures have been unseasonably warm which--along with a late planting of cucumbers--has kept my garden going longer than I expected.

I've been enjoying a veggie-heavy sandwich enhanced with available ingredients, and I've been pretty pleased with the flavor.

On a sub roll, I've been using:

• Cucumber slices
  
• Orange bell pepper (though I will soon use red because that's what's just ripened)
• Clippings from Territorial Seed Company's Micro Greens salad assortment (slightly cooler temps seem to have killed whatever was eating them)
• Tomato (from my grocer's produce section, the tomato plants gave out already)
• Veggie cheese, American or Swiss (ditto-grocer. I don't know how to make it.)
• Vegenaise® - from the health food store and very, very good.
  
• Sliced turkey

I have done the sandwich without the meat and found it to be just fine as well.

I hope it's healthier than average, and it does have the spiritual benefit of being grown as the result of my own effort.

Finding My Way Out of the Amazon Jungle

Amazon persists in selling animal fighting periodicals even though the activity they cover has been outlawed in all 50 states. Apparently there's still a good market so they defend the measure on free speech grounds.

I am anti-censorship and pro-free speech in every way, but cruelty is where Jeff Bezos and I stop seeing eye-to-eye, and Mr. Bezos it's on your watch.

As the above-linked SF Gate article notes:

"At last count, Amazon was selling 27 books, monographs and magazines about cockfighting. If your passion in life is watching two tormented birds tear each other to pieces, in a bloody pit surrounded by shouting gamblers, Amazon is the place to go."

For writers Amazon is a "can't-live-with-them/can't-live without them proposition." Yeah, things I wrote are for sale at Amazon. Fact of life. Can't change that so maybe it's hypocrisy to write this post.

But I am looking at ways to cut the money I give to Amazon.

I cut the Amazon affiliate links from this blog.

Beyond that, not buying from Amazon is not as easy as it sounds if you're an online shopper, but I'm trying as is Christine.

Christine's mom e-mailed her to see if I'd updated my Amazon wish list last month. My birthday was coming up and she was going to send me some things.

Christine told her we'd prefer not to have gifts from Amazon and directed her to Powells.com. The Portland-based retailer has a large inventory with easy access to used books and if you're willing to roll the dice, they have sales. You can pick up some items at big savings while supplies are available. (Happily they sell Charles' books and those of other friends as well.)

So, my mother-in-law shifted gears. She's sent us Christmas gifts for years from Amazon, not just books but stoneware and other items.

This year my $25 gift card came from Powell's.

Christine gave me copies of Spook Country and Michael Marshall's The Intruders from Powell's.

Getting some CD's for Christine's birthday has proved a little trickier. I went to CDNow.com and suddenly I was shopping Amazon.

Christine searched herself and found a site called Online Classics or something like that. Shopping cart courtesy of Amazon.

I searched a little further.

Borders - partnered with Amazon.

Virgin Superstore = Amazon.

Barnes and Noble had the CDs but wanted a fortune.

Best Buy - didn't have what I was looking for. Beethoven, specific album, OK?
Plus a Spanish classical guitar album.

Then the choirs of angels sang. I remembered buy.com. They ran a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago advertising free shipping to get you to try them.

I ordered a few times then dropped away because I forgot my password.

I started over. They had both CD's, they gave me free shipping on the combination and all went fine.

That's another $35 that won't go to Amazon because of their support of animal fighting periodicals. I'm sure that will hold up the application of maybe one rivet on Jeff Bezos' rocket ship.

And it raises a question -- if they own the online retail universe, why do a few animal fighting magazines matter so much?

Mr. Bezos, turn your thoughts from space just a moment to focus on the suffering you're condoning on earth.

California Baggin'

I was kind of expecting someone to look at me and say: "You mus' be frum Cal-if-ornia or somethin'."

It was the debut of our new cloth shopping bags from reusablebags.com at the grocery, and I-- though often a head-butter of convention--felt a little self conscious. It's one of those contradictions they tell you to look for in creating multi-dimensional fictional characters.

With Flowers In My Hair
I certainly would have been more in place in say San Francisco where they've criminalize plastic bags, I believe.

In Ireland you fork over 22 cents per plastic bag. OK, not cents, but it costs you some coins with harps on them, so I wouldn't have been out of place there either.

Christine--complete with a Life is Good T-shirt--and I were the only ones at the local store doing a green thing, though. They sell their own branded bags, but I don't see them in wide use, and Christine even bought drawstring produce bags.

I kind of worried about those since you can't see through them. I feared the produce manager's henchmen might come out and shake us down as suspects in a plot to mix in pricey New Zealand apples with the Jonagold's from Washington state.

I got in trouble for buying from New Zeleand a few weeks back. I was in trouble with Christine not the produce manager. They were A.) pricey as I mentioned and B.) Shipped a long way, which is bad in green terms. Believe me, I know what it's like Living with Ed.

The need
Despite my reticence on the initial excursion, I see the need for reusable bags, and you can too in the work of photographic artist Chris Jordan whose works in his "Intolerable Beauty" collection provide a visual understanding of how much we use every day in this country.

It's not on his website, but you can see his rendering of the number of plastic bags used by Americans in just fives seconds in his recent Bill Moyers Journal appearance. That's where I discovered him.

Even if you buy into the conservative notion that it's really impossible to hurt the planet--I'm acknowledging not agreeing with that idea--there still seems to be a high degree of waste. Certainly it's energy that could be channeled in better ways.

Yeah, it was a little embarrassing at first but by the time we were bagging things in the checkout line, I was glad we weren't choosing paper or plastic.

Further reading
Citizen Times: Breaking the plastic bag habit

Alternating Green

I believe I can dub our spring/summer garden a modest success. The production was moderate, but anything it lacked in quantity was compensated by the spiritual enrichment.

Brandywine tomatoes proved to be the largest but our plants didn't produce that many. The Cherokee purples were the most interesting and the Mexican Midget cherry tomatoes the most plentiful and the tastiest. Peppers were a mixed bag also, with some hot peppers proving the most prolific. We grew enough red and orange bell peppers for a few rounds of fajitas without requiring supplements from the grocer.


It's the spirit that counts
Given the spiritual benefit, we've decided, especially since it's hot for most of the Texas autumn that we'd try a winter garden, and I use the term winter loosely.

Seeds for this round are coming from the Territorial Seed Company, another provider of heirloom seeds and more.

The Micromix
I've sunk a few radishes and otherwise mostly varieties of greens including kale and a micromix (pictured) that should sprout ready for clipping, washing and salad preparation in a couple more weeks.

I think my results in our square foot garden will remain only supplemental to our diet, though we're hopeful to sprout enough kale for a soup Christine wants to make soon, and it all may save the cost of a few bags of Dole romaine mixes.

It continues to feel good to get back to the land.

Produce Yet Green

Our purple tomatoes to be are finally showing a bit of color. They've been green enough for frying for what seems weeks now, and it's difficult not to be impatient.

As a temporary fix we bought some of the heirloom Cherokee variety at a farmer's market on Saturday from a guy and girl who looked pretty counter culture. Pleasure doing business local. It's a Green thing.

That prompted me to wonder if my square box garden and my back-to-the-land effort make me seem more hippie-esque or just more like my dad.

He didn't know about things like "local" and "Green" with a capital G. He just liked tomatoes, and he liked making me work in his garden.

I hated it. It was one more source he had for giving me things to do.

Now it feels a little more back to the land, which I guess is why any pseudo-suit with a bohemian streak tills the land, or the compost in his square box at least.

Maybe the Old Man was on to something. He just had a Dick Cheney way of expressing it.

Back to the Land

I don't know that I have anything profoud that I've gleaned, but Christine and I worked on our square foot garden quite a bit over the weekend.

That involved assembling the boxes, interlocking cedar planks with old-fashioned pegs that hold them in place. I felt a little like an Anabaptist putting those into place. I just needed one of those black, wide-brimmed hats like Harrison Ford wore in Witness.

Once those were ready we put up some metal arches from which we will string netting for tomato plants to climb. Alleviates the need for staking. I'm sure it's better in some way and has been discussed extensively on PBS.

Next came the mixing of the various kinds of compost with vermiculite. I wasn't really sure what vermiculite was before this project, but it's basically those little white, nearly weightless pellets that're always mixed in with potting soil. It's considered a mineral and I think it is basically a soil conditioner. I don't know what that means but I read it somewhere.

You have to wear a mask when you're initially dealing with it so you don't inhale any dust. I don't like things that require me to wear a mask. Some people are scared of snakes.

I once did a newspaper series on asbestos. I'm scared of particulates.

I felt distinctly more industrial than "back to the land" during that portion of the endeavor.

After we had the vermiculite mixed in and dampened, I allowed myself to inhale again.

And it was time to shovel the mix into the cedar plant boxes.

I pretended I was Van Helsing unearthing one of the brides of Dracula. Made it more interesting.

Finally it was all done and I draped a tarp over the effort lest Oliver Littlechap our indoor/outdoor kitty think I'd constructed two new litter boxes for his convenience. So far he's taken little interest. I've decided to take that as a good omen.

We gardeners are big into things like omens. And almanacs. Must remember to get an almanac.

The plants arrive from the antiquarian plant dealers in about a week.

Purple tomatos will be here before you know it.