The Rain Barrel

We were offering a great deal on rain barrels ($40 for members!), so I bought one. In my imagination, I was going to decorate the rain barrel, perhaps with polka dots or stripes or flowers in hip colors. Everyone who came to my house was going to admire it as a piece of art, and I was going to be able to brag about its function as well as its form, thereby gaining cachet as an environmentalist and a gardener. I was going to save on my water bill, prevent groundwater contamination, and give the plants better water. And I was never again going to have to ask my next door neighbor to water my vegetables when I go away for a few days.

I did not imagine that the accordian gutter extension would cost $15 (!), the cedar 4x4 would cost $40 (!!), the water off the gutter would be an unpleasant brown, and I'd have to go to the PTO Thrift Shop in search of old nylon stockings to prevent mosquito infestations. Plus, the guy at Fingerle's (who charged me the $40) was down on rain barrels. He'd installed one in his ultra-green, ultra-native, ultra-eco garden, forgotten to drain it before the first frost, and ended up with an ice cascade on the roof. "Why not just plant a low-water garden?" he mused while running my credit card through the machine.

I am still waiting for rain to see whether it will actually work. I installed it on Tuesday, and if you'll recall, it only rains on my days off.

Unusual Harvest

We've been asked to find a use for the "harvest" from the School of Natural Resources and Environment's composting toilets. Apparently when their facilities manager called another gardening spot with the offer, the reply was "Can't you just flush it down the toilet?"

When I worked for the LSA Dean's Office on the fourth floor of the Dana Building, each and every one of my co-workers refused to use the composting toilets. In contrast, some SNRE employees will use nothing but.

We definitely won't use the harvest in the food gardens at MBG, but where should it go? Another question: does this call for an interpretive sign? Or not?

If we do it right, kids will love it. Not sure about the docents, though.

(Drawing from Oikos Green Building Source: http://oikos.com/library/compostingtoilet/)

Wish I'd Written This One

From my sister's blog:

My sister [that would be me] mentioned composting on her blog recently. Compost, like dogs, is something of a running theme in our lives. When we were growing up, we
always had a compost pile for carrot peelings and teabags...

Dirt, Dress and Dinner

Three reasons I love my coworkers:

(1) I'm not the only person who keeps a container of vegetable food scraps on my kitchen counter. It bears a close resemblance to what I once called garbage. Some members of my family find the smell earthy and pleasant, while others find it, well, stinky.

(2) I'm not the only person who doesn't eat meat.

(3) I'm not the only person who buys her clothes at Kiwanis, the PTO Thrift Shop, and the Salvation Army.

Nevertheless, if everyone lived as I do, we would need 4.1 earths, mostly because I live in a big house, drive to work, and occasionally travel by air.

Plastic Shopping Bags

Used plastic bags are taking over my house. The equation goes like this:

Weekly Accumulation of Plastic Bags
+ 3 bright orange newspaper bags
+ 1 bread bag
+ 1 bagel or English muffin bag
+ 1 miscellaneous "I forgot my canvas bag" bag
- 1 doggie poop sack
- 1 garbage sack
+ 4 net weekly increase in plastic bags

To try to control the proliferation, and in celebration of Earth Day, I am knitting a carry-all out of used plastic bags. This involves slicing the plastic bags into one-inch spiral strips, much as one might peel an apple. The slicing takes about fifteen minutes per bag. I've sliced one bag each morning and each evening for a week, and I now have a softball-sized ball of plastic "yarn."

My original plan was to give this plastic carry-all to my sister for her birthday on May 15. The current plan is to give it to my mother for her birthday on August 11. Depending on how things proceed, my sister-in-law's birthday isn't until the end of January.