food co-op

It's been a little while since I last wrote.

But I need to mention that I finally got to the food co-op which was one of my larger items to follow up my challenge with. I went to help prepare some food for the forest fundraiser.

Currently housed in a temporary location in a demountable on the eastern edge of the ANU campus behind the Street Theatre, the co-op is larger than I expected. When I walked in I was assaulted by the smell of food. A mix of a food and good food. To the right were racks and racks of cereals, grains and nuts with shelves full of fresh fruit and vegies behind them. In front of me, beyond the counter were racks of containers that I later learnt were filled with dried fruits and amazing quality couverture (I made a white and milk chocolate cheesecake with this the following weekend and it was fantastic). To the left is a wall of shelving with spices and loose leaf teas on it.

I was expecting all these and I was expecting the fridges full of yoghurt, milk and so forth. I was expecting the tins of organic produce such as beans on a shelf and a variety of snacks around the place and on the counter. What I wasn't expecting was an area of the co-op with couches for lounging around on. All they need is the ability for you to be able to buy a coffee or something there and I'd happily sit there and hang out.

I know there's soup kitchen nights and maybe that's the time to go and take advantage of those couches and the yummy food all around me?

And maybe I'll have to try and organise an event for work to be held there. Wonder if they'd let me?

weeds and seeds

Did you know that the technical definition of a weed is any plant growing somewhere that you don't want it to be growing.

I love this. It makes me laugh. I mean this technically means that my grass that I so lovingly look after and 'weed' and water with grey water and mow is, when it is growing in my garden beds it is actually a weed. Wow.

Doesn't that just make you laugh? I find it really ironic.

I was thinking about that today while I was weeding my lawn see. And weeding my vege patch too. The clover in our lawn goes nuts in spring. And interestingly we have 3 different types of clover in our lawn. Some of it is very fine and I have to let it grow a little bit to remove it. Weird.

So, I was weeding and I transplanted some seedlings. They look good and healthy and have their second set of leaves so I've moved them into the 'grown up garden bed'. I have leeks to transplant too but I thought I'd let them get a little bit bigger first.

This is very exciting, except that about 14 other rows of seeds I planted didn't sprout. I might stop trying to grow from seeds and just buy seedlings from the nursery.

I must admit I do enjoy the gardening but sometimes it seems like a lot of work.

We're finished

Wow, yesterday we finished our challenge. That is quite an amazing feeling. And I know that we're going to continue a couple of the items on there as well which is even better.

Having a look down our list of stickers we haven't done too badly. We've had a couple of lapses on showers and driving to work last week blew us out for that column. Just last week too. Darn. Lost a few for gardening due to extended work hours or bad weather. And lost a few on the eating organic meats too. That's been hard mostly when we've gone out. Can't control everything though can you?

So overall I'm pretty happy with how we've gone. It was a bit of an eye opener on an issue that I think we'd become a little-well, not complacent, we do a fair bit, but not proactive anymore. Not looking for the next thing that we could do to reduce our impact.

Having said that, I'm always conscious of what we're doing. Of not lighting or heating what we don't use. Of recycling, not bringing new plastic into the home where possible.

And doing this challenge has pushed us to do one more thing consistently. For us, this will be not driving to work 3 days. This means for me when I'm not going to be cycling thinking about whether catching the bus will work for the day's schedule. Sometimes it won't. Like the nights I finish at 9pm. And it won't when I need to be somewhere at the very start of the day or at the very end of the day and negotiating buses will make that difficult. For example if I end up at the other end of Canberra it's two buses and 2 hours home. I'm sorry, but right now I'm just not that committed that that's worth it for me. Not when I'm working 10 hours days already.

The 4 minute or less showers will also remain a feature in our home. We'll buy organic meats where practical, but this won't always be practical based on time circumstances and a change in finances.

One item that I'm not fussed on continuing is working in the garden daily. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this. But it's not something I need to do daily. I get out there at least every second day on average. And this is ok for the garden that I run. When my tomatoes are out there it might be different (they're still babies and are living inside to protect them from the volatile weather). But atm, this is all it needs. I'll reevaluate this as needed.

And my final item was substituting organic products in my groceries where I didn't buy organics. I buy a lot of stuff that's local or free range and rarely buy processed foods. So while there's a few things I can buy that are organic there aren't many. Standard organic items for us are things like drinking cocoa, my tea, milk, our coffee beans are both organic and free trade for example. Of course there's more we can get as standard items. But when it comes to the rest I get some organic sometimes and some not and it tends to switch around a bit. This works for me because at this stage, we're a younger couple saving to buy a home. So our reality is that the extra expense that buying everything organic that we possibly can is quite a big difference in our grocery bill.

So I manage it as I do as a compromise. So clearly, it's not all about money or I wouldn't get any, cause let's face it, organics just generally cost more. However, I do often find myself pondering the difficult question of what the point of saving fiscally is when the alternative is a negative impact on the earth and my body.

Over for some

I just wanted to say a heartfelt and well deserved congratulations to those of you out there who started at the first of the month (or the second) and are therefore finished their challenge.

I hope that you enjoyed the challenge and had fun completing it, with an ability to laugh at times things don't go as planned (such as the lots of rain we've had not being conducive to my gardening item).

Hopefully there's one thing you were doing as part of the challenge that you will continue to do now that it's over.

And, can I ask, what about those extra optional items? Did you pick one and how feasible is it now that you've completed the challenge?

Great work everyone!!

And hang in there for those of you not yet finished. You're doing brilliantly!!

Short showers

I really struggled with my 4 minute shower this morning. Not because I wanted a really long shower but because my shower has recently become temperamental with the heat setting. So I spent a fair bit of time this morning trying to make minor adjustments to make the heat ok. This takes time you know, time you don't then have for washing.

I'm thinking I should get it looked at because the house is less than 10 years old and it seriously only just started happening. The pressure is still fine, but it's a lot hotter than it used to be and very finnicky. And it doesn't help me stick to the 4 minutes either ;p

nearly over for some

I've just realised that those people who started the challenge early in the month, your time is nearly up.

How have you coped with your challenge items? Did you choose any larger items to do for the extra challenge at the end? Do you think you'll continue to do some things once you've hit the 30 day mark?

I've been falling short a bit the past few days. My paid employment has been kind enough to remove an extra bakers dozen worth of hours than it pays me for lately. The change in work hours-leave at breakfast time, get home at dinner time- has significantly reduced my hours for 'play'. This is workable of course, but I'm not really into the idea of getting home at dinner time and going outside to garden while my dinner cooks itself. Let's just say that doesn't happen.

And so, I may not get out there to do some gardening. I've checked up on my seedlings this morning. Does this count as 'work in the garden'? I feel like it's a cop out personally but perhaps I'm being too harsh about it?

I'm interested to know if anyone has been working on a specific item they have done really well with and conversely, if there's a specific item people haven't done so well with.

I still find the substituting organics when shopping item disheartening because I usually only shop weekly so it looks really bare. I've taken to crossing off the days I don't shop with a pen to try and make it look less 'done'. Has anyone else had an item they're struggled to keep of or that looks like they've not done well with it?

Hopefully not...hopefully you're all gunning it and have lots of stickers on your charts.

bus tickets

I bought a bus card for 10 rides today. So I guess that means that this challenge has made an impact on me. It's made use the buses!

I like the bus. It takes me twice as long to get to work than even cycling does, and driving is about half the time as well. But it's time I get to sit down and read or just generally chill out. And so even if I don't catch the bus daily (cause I'll still cycle sometimes and sometimes I need to drive due to the time I finish) any bus rides instead of a drive are better than none.

And, when you buy your bus tickets in lots of 10 they're actually quite reasonable!!!

Bike swap and sell meet

We thought we'd go along to the Environment Centre's bike swap and sell meet on Saturday. I really had no idea what I was expecting, but I find myself realising that I wasn't surprised by what we found. There were lots of bikes. Mostly town bikes and old road bikes. A good deal of the bikes were 'vintage', and a couple of these were really beautiful bikes including a brown bike with its original leather saddle. It really was a gorgeous bike. In fact it was so beautiful it had a woman gushing over it for quite a while. She stood peering at it, angling it this way and that, saying things like "Wow. Look at this." "Isn't it beautiful." "Look at this seat!" I could almost feel her sorrow from across the room when she realised it wasn't her size. I thought she might have bought it anyway such was her love for it.

Personally, we were looking for a kids bike and otherwise nothing really specific, just looking. The looking worked out well, because this is all we ended up doing, not finding a suitable bike for said child and there being nothing we spied that called provactively to us to buy it. While my hubby continued to look around after we'd seen everything just to make sure there really was nothing for us I began weeding in the community garden. It was a strange moment where I found myself missing my cyclone weeder and wishing I'd just shoved it in my handbag. Yes, like many things, I love my cyclone weeder. It's the best. Makes pulling weeds so much easier (cyclone weeders are available from hardware stores and some nurseries for around $5 and have two prongs that get straight in under the centre of the weed and a piece of metal that works as a lever to shift the weed straight up and out).

While I weeded I had one of those moments where you get lost in time. I don't think anyone even noticed me there. That was kind of weird. I was there to look at bikes and instead I was weeding and apparently not out of place. Perhaps this is due to so much happening at the Environment Centre on Saturday. There were all the bikes, stall holders and people there for that. The regular garden working bee was on and there were even a couple of ladies having a cup of tea on the porch.

Some of the people milling about were really interesting. Most had ridden bikes to the event, looking very fit and toned in their I'm-riding-my-bike-around-town-clothes. Everyone was in a good mood and out enjoying the glorious sunshine. I watched a stall holders response when someone asked him about a price for some front gear rings he was selling. His response as he walked across his sheet to the potential customer and the fingered the object was "Oh those...$90." "Ok." "Actually, $80." I'm not sure why I found this so cute and it gave me a little giggle. Perhaps because in this interaction the man selling the items seemed a bit dottery. He wasn't old. He wasn't young either, but he certainly wasn't old enough to be dottery. And this just seemed like he just couldn't make up his mind (rather than being a shrewd salesman).

I also found the interior of the bike shed fascinating. I'm not sure if that's what the Environment Centre call it, but it appeared to be a maintenance and storage area for bikes, so this is what I'll call it. Along with the areas obviously used (or once used) to do bicycle maintenance it had some old posters inside advertising events long past, pictures of people on bikes riding huge scary looking tricky things on mountain and downhill bikes. I think these latter posters are supposed to be inspirational in this context, but I think the people in them are just plain showing off... ;) Then when I turned around there were piles of tyres and a young boy playing with a tyre pump so amazed at how slowly the lever will sink back down if you let it do it by itself that he called his brother over to look.

Back outside I find myself negotiating bikes lining the paths. Bikes everywhere. So many bikes. Everywhere I turn there are more bikes. A small boy rides along on a bike, leans it back up against some others and stands there running his hands over the handlebars the way an adult will run their hands over the bonnet of a much coveted car. Such an adult behaviour. I realised then that I've never seen a child respond to an object with such restrained longing. I found this a strangely beautiful and intimate moment between a young a bike he will never own. Potently powerful.

Just like riding your bike instead of driving your car.

for Saturday

On Saturday I wanted to post this:

Yesterday wasn't a good day....

We didn't get ANY stickers.

Hope you guys all did better than we did.

almost halfway through

I added a few stickers to my chart this morning and then stood back to take a look at it.

In doing so I realised that I have a nice neat row of blue stickers with no holes in it. I'm sticking to my <4 minute showers. I saw lots of holes in not driving to work. But this is to be expected. If I'm hitting my target I should have 3 stickers out of every 7 days. Substituting organic in a shop only gets stickers when I shop. This column looks really really sad. I wish I'd thought to cross out the stars on the chart when I first started for days I didn't shop. And pretty much the same thing for the organic meat/2 days vego column. We took that as a start from this date purchasing organic not an eat from this date organic so it doesn't look great either.

My other row, work in the garden, looks pretty good. There's one or two holes in it where I didn't get a sticker. Don't know what happened those days, but apparently I didn't pull any weeds or add mulch or plant anything.

Overall my chart looks like ok. And I realised during this 'stocktake' that I am almost halfway through. Wow. That makes me realise that some of you would be 2/3's of the way through. How does that feel? Do you feel like  you'll be able to continue at least one item from your challenge when it ends?

I think we'll manage the shower and commuting easily. The garden probably not so hard too. But shopping will be the tricky one. Organic meat is very expensive. Though we do vego twice a week and try to eat fish twice a week, so it's really only 3 meals each week then. That's probably manageable. Grocery shopping though I think there's got to be a point where you're substituting things in and there's nothing left to substitute!!

Cycling to work

Do you ride to work?

Or are you considering riding to work?

Today was the first day I've ridden to work since starting the sustainability challenge. I've been trying to ride to work 2-3 days each week for the past few months and most weeks I manage it, but sometimes there are barriers. There's this horrible wet stuff called rain that I just absolutely hate to ride in. Sometimes the body tells me it's "really not up to it today". I used to also find that I didn't allocate myself enough time to get out of the house. I'm used to the cycling routine now, so this doesn't happen anymore. But for a while it was a bit of an issue for me. I can do the cold, that just requires an extra layer or two. Don't know how I'll go in the heat, I've not done that yet so that will be interesting. But the rain, the rain really does get me reaching for the car keys every time...

A you're probably aware, not driving to work 3 days a week was part of my challenge. I'm hoping that making the challenge 3 days will help me jump that barrier that keeps me at 2-3 days of riding (and I didn't think 4 would be manageable at this stage). Fitness wise it's great to cycle to work. I get my exercise for the day and it doesn't take much longer than it takes me to drive and walk effectively giving me a bit of extra time in the day. And now that I've officially discovered the bus having caught one last week due to this challenge I can opt to sit and chill out with a book instead. So if I'm not riding my intention is to get my 'not driving' in by either car pooling or the bus or a combination of both. But so far so good with the weather this week. Yeah yeah, I know it's only day 1. But we're off to a good start there so I'm definitely aiming for my 3 days this week. My husband thinks I can manage more than this but my screaming legs really do protest quite loudly. Sometimes I love it. I get on the bike, start pedalling, get into an almost meditative state due to the rhythym. And then there are days I get on the bike and my legs just feel like lead. There are other days that they just scream the whole way and most especially on the uphills. And today was one of those days.

Mind you, I didn't ride last week which may partially explain the aching legs. And I'm not exactly crawling, so I would expect my legs to feel it. At the same time, I certainly get overtaken, so I'm not zooming along and so I'd expect the poor old aching legs to recover ok too.

I guess you could say that my commute speed is somewhere in between the people on town bikes with bike baskets in the clothes they're going to wear all day and the guys in professional cycling gear with a great road bike and bulging thighs. My commute is also the same sort of awkward 'average' when it comes to distance. It's too long to get away without a shower, but too short to be on the bike for the length of the average gym class. I'd much prefer it to be something that would have me as one these people on town bikes cruising their way into their day. I'd love to ride to work in a skirt and pretty top. But instead I have this weird sort of awkwardness as the one in the middle. The go between on an old hard tail mountain bike with shoes that clip in (cleats) and nothing much else that says 'professional bike rider'.

And that's because, let's face it. I'm not.

But that doesn't matter because you don't need to be a professional bike rider to ride to work. Sure these guys that scream past you down Northbourne and overtake you by sliding into the cars lane right next to or in between cars like it's the most natural thing on earth look good (and intimidating). But none of them started riding yesterday. And none of them just ride less than 10km a day. Still, if you're riding on the road you will need a bit of guts, at least for the first few times. It took me a few rides around the block to be comfortable to cross the road diagonally from one side to the other. It took me another few rides around a bigger block to be confident to hit a dual lane roundabout. And the only reason why I even ever rode down major highways and Northbourne Ave is because I needed to get more training for mountain biking into my week and cycling to work seemed like a good way to do it. If I didn't mountain bike I truly don't think that's a ride I would have done it.

The point there is, that it really can take a bit of guts to ride on the road. And that can be a barrier to riding to work. Mind you, so can not having a bike. I've gotta say, I've taken the cycleway a couple of time and it's a much nicer ride than the main roads that are my other alternate route. For one, cycleways are much easier to navigate. They tend to go through a park or green area, a much nicer ride. A cleaner and safer ride too. There's plenty of room to overtake, not like a teeny tiny bike lane on the road that's really only big enough for one. Bike paths also don't expect you to ride in the gutter, or in the awkward place where you aren't on the gutter but if you falter a little you will be, and then there's a lip of bitumen that you have to navigate your wheel back up. Yes, definitely good to avoid that.

So I thought, considering bike paths are a nicer, easier, safer ride to work that I'd provide you all with a link to the information on where to get an ACT cycleway map. They cost somewhere between $5 and $10 (think it just went up from what I just saw on the link from last time I looked), but is also held by the National Library. It's a complete map of the ACT cycleways, making it a great tool for planning weekend rides or the weekday commute.

If you cycle to work I'd love to hear about it. Why not leave a note and tell your story...

Farmer's Markets Day

Ever wanted farm fresh fruit and vegetables,
organic meats and eggs,
a choice of two fish mongers,
antipasto,
a plant nursery,
gourmet bread
and sweet treats all in the one location?

Then you need the capital region farmers market.



As you've probably gathered, it's Saturday. Farmers markets day. I love farmers market day. Actually, let's be honest. I just love food. And farm fresh is even better. So the farmers markets are a veritable smörgåsbord of goodies for someone like me. I love wandering the aisles of fresh fruit and veg, seeing everyone all bundled up in their thick coats and beanies because it's still (what's with the weather anyway) cold. Many of them are sipping take away coffee they purchase immediately upon arrival. Most have a green bag over their shoulder. And many are not alone, choosing to come with friends, partners or family.

There's always a great vibe in a thriving market place. People rushing, pushing and the opposite, people meandering. Lots of chatter. Markets definitely aren't quiet places are they? Yet people are there for the same reason. They're doing the same thing, but it's still an individual experience. At Paddy's markets there was always stall holders shouting above the din with their latest cut price offers. Or telling you their produce is "quality quality". There are signs on each item guaranteeing you these are the best apples in the market, or 'extra sweet' and I even saw one batch of red delicious labelled as 'XX Sweet'.

In the years I've been shopping at markets I've come to realise there's several advantages. Let's start with economics, because the markets are quite often (but not always) cheaper than the stores. And often significantly so. Not to mention the food is farm fresh, it's produced and grown locally (so there's less carbon inherent in the foods due to reduced transportation) and you're supporting small, locally owned businesses and farms. They can be great meeting places, if your chosen meeting place is obvious because markets can be busy places too.

So the markets aren't for us just grocery shopping. They're much more than this. It's always an experience. I think this stems from the routine that we got into when we were first started using markets for our fruit and veg. We used to go every Saturday morning. We'd pick 3 meals we'd never made before from our recipe books and buy the ingredients for them plus a few standard items. It may sound corny, but this was a bonding experience for us. We used to work together to pick the new recipes, work together at the markets and then unpack together and immediately make a breakfast out of our newly purchased items (of which breakfast quiches was always our favourite).

So it just became part of our routine. One that we've continued here.

With 'here' being Canberra, the local farmers markets are the capital region farmers market. If you haven't yet been I'd recommend them. These markets aren't just for fresh, local fruit and veg but also for meat, fish, nuts, cheeses and antipasto, fresh gourmet bread, sauces, traditional pizza, wines, eggs, homemade sweets and treats, coffees, teas and chai lattes, flowers and trees and shrubs. There's also often a stall with bales of hay and a stall selling live chooks to roam around your backyard if that takes your fancy.



The capital region farmers markets are held every Saturday, 8-11am at the northern end of EPIC.

Plum pies and tomato gravies

My new gardening gloves are now not so clean and white. I dirtied them having a good go at the weeds that have been left to thrive under my deck through the cold of the winter months.

I had to stop when the light became low enough that my imagination started to put wolf spiders in every weed that I touched. Bravely, I was pushing on, saying "You're such a scaredy cat. Just get this one" and then "Stop being so silly. Just get this bit". Eventually though even this gentle coaxing I was providing wasn't enough to keep me going. I stopped with just enough time to transplant my sad looking coriander before dinner.

I loved dinner tonight. It included peas, snow peas and mint from our garden which is very exciting considering I've admitted in my previous post that I have a tendency to kill plants, especially the edible kind. I have to laugh then at how well my parsley and mint are thriving though. I don't count this as due to my gardening skills, but rather my nonskill. I didn't barricade the roots of the mint so it's taking over the garden it's in. And I planted the parsley right in the middle of a garden bed. So it's taking over that one too. I think we can safely call these plants edible weeds.

So, I can grow weeds. And not much else.

But I'm just not giving up yet.

There's something so beautiful and wonderful and satisfying about a flourishing garden. And something even more magnificent when the flourishing plants can feed you. And this spurs me on. I think about the crisp pop you get when you bite down on a cucumber or pea straight from the vine and my mouth waters. I think about the sweetness of the tomatoes that my Pa grows so successfully and the delicious salad sandwiches we all eat as a result. And the tomato and onion gravy my family makes when Pa's tomatoes have gone berserk and there's far too many for us to get through even after having given away buckets of them to the neighbours.

It's really so satisfying to eat something that you've grown yourself. And if you can grow it so well that you have to give it away that feels good too. And if you grow so much of it that even your neighbours won't open the door lest you throw another head of broccoli in their face then all the better.

Unfortunately though, this is just so not me. I don't beat myself up about this too much though. Not many of us are weekend farmers carting our wares off to the markets or selling it in bags from our front porch. There aren't even many suburban households that I've been to that have a vege patch let alone a thriving one. Though most people have a pot of herbs or two.

But still, I am so determined to keep some plants alive. I think all that's happened is that I've killed enough plants to now be wearing a hat emblazoned with 'stubborn' on it. And this is part of the reason I included the daily gardening in my challenge. Being stubborn about it will spur me on. But it helps that I enjoy gardening. I really am a Grandma before my time (am I digging myself an early grave here if I tell you I also like sewing?). I even harbour a dream of making plum pie with my own plums and preserving fruit. In all seriousness, I find gardening strangely cathartic. And I love food. Food can be grown. It just all seems to fit together...

I guess all in all I have managed to have one variety of fruit or vege available to eat at any given stage. Even if it's just a green onion or a few peas, there's been something.

So even if it's only plant at a time, I'm determined to grow some more plants. An ooga booga lady I know said she used to struggle growing all her herbs until she concentrated on one herb at a time. Is this what I have to do? How much time to I devote to each plant? How long do I need to give it before I know it won't die? My chilli's survived for 6 months before they went. This process might take me the rest of my life.

Things I've learnt about gardening:

• Seeds are much more difficult to cultivate and subsequently to keep the plant alive. Amateurs are best served with baby plants (at least until they can keep a couple alive)
• You really need to prepare your soil. Lots of organic matter. If you don't compost (now is the time to start) get yourself some good organic fertiliser from your local nursery or the nursery section of your local hardware store.
• Mulch. In Canberra if you don't have mulch you will have hard soil that loses its nutrients quickly. Mulch also helps reduce evaporation, essential in summer and reduces the effects of frost in winter.
• 5 minutes every day is worth more than 2 hours on the weekend.
• Use the position of the sun and the seasons to place your vege patch. You need some shelter in summer, if you can't get this put some shade cloth over your veges. In winter you need some sun. Running a vege patch along a fenceline on the north side of your property means they won't be getting much sun.
• Invest in good gloves. Cheap ones don't fit well and are uncomfortable. They make the work harder.
• A cyclone weeder is the best invention for the garden ever. Great for removing clover and any other weeds that grow from a central point.
• A grey water hose from your washing machine reduces the pain of the heat on your grass in summer.
• Enjoy it. You're really not going to get anywhere if you aren't enjoying it. Grow things that you love to eat or look at or smell to help overcome this.
• Start small.
• I enjoy it

stickers by halves

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain.

Instantly I felt defeated. I had planned on cycling to work and by not driving getting myself a sticker. But the weather wasn't looking good. I don't mind the rain, but I am not a huge fan of being cold and wet, so cycling in the rain when it's cold is just not something that appeals to me.

Of course, it might stop raining. And there's always the bus...

But I'm not ready to admit defeat yet. I have my heart set on cycling so I get up to check BOM for the weather. The forecast says: Rain.

I'm still not convinced that riding will be horrible enough not to do it though. Perhaps this is just because while the book I'm reading is really good, catching the bus was just a less preferable option this morning than getting a little bit wet. So I look outside. I have a good look outside at the weather, at the clouds. They're pretty grey, but it's not raining right now...

But this is not to last. No sooner had I reverted my eyes back to my computer screen than the rain came pounding down. And the impression I had from the colour of the sky was that it wasn't going to stop in a hurry. So the bus it was. Except I needed to be at the bus stop in 5 minutes and I was still in my pyjamas.

Needless to say, I didn't feel like I'd planned my challenge very well this morning. For starters, if I was going to get the bus I don't even know which side of the street I need to stand on. I have to acknowledge here that I was very very spoilt in Sydney with the 131 500 website which is amazing for getting around town and is a public transport resource that Canberra very sadly lacks. But this is no excuse. All the same, I realise that I can get a lift, so I organise to car pool-with my husband.

The other major thing I did today was to review and read up on my purchases from the previous day for my garden. It's too wet to actually be outside gardening, but I have an array of seeds that I need to sort into soil types and companion plants or I will kill them like I have everything else. Admiring my new beautiful pink fabric and white leather gardening gloves I am encouraged. I love these gloves. Maybe my nice new gloves will help me not kill everything I plant... The gloves are cool, they are gorgeous, and even more amazing, they fit perfectly. They're still clean, but that won't last long. They're so beautiful and so soft I want to wear them now, even though I'm just sitting at my kitchen bench with a cup of tea reading up on how not to kill my chili's and tomatoes.

I'm hoping tomorrow it's not so wet and I can get my bike out and make my gloves dirty.

As for my other 3 daily challenge items. I only made one purchase today-organic yoghurt (so I decided it counted for a sticker even though that bends my rules slightly). Showers were on target and tonight was vegetarian night. So today was a good day, we earnt 4.5 stickers.

Half a sticker you say? We average out driving and showering between us.

And he drove.

17 billion planet earths?

Do you love a challenge?

Do you love the environment?

Then why not do the Environment Centre's Sustainability Challenge?

I've been planning this moment since I picked up my Sustainability Challenge pack and agreed to blog about it on Friday. I'm quite excited about it. Both the challenge and the blogging that is. So it should now be no surprise to you that 'this moment' is the moment I sit down to start my first blog about the challenge. Seeing as I've had my pack since Friday I've had all weekend as well as today to think about it (and become more excited). I know exactly what I want to talk about, but starting seems such a challenge in itself today. I really thought over 3 days I'd come up with something better than my 3 cliche questions to open with.

But apparently I haven't. So there they are at the top of my entry.

Like my challenge so far, not great.

For starters, I'm starting late. And then, although I've had my pack since Friday, my weekend was prohibitive to starting until today, so I'm starting later still, which means I don't get to put cool stickers on my challenge poster for the past 3 days (yes, I admit it, I like stickers...).

I thought about challenging myself to make up for lost time and prohibitive weekends by doing 6 things instead of 5 (which would come with the bonus of collecting extra stickers!). I thought about doubling up and doing some things twice a day. I thought about getting an extra challenge pack and taking it to work and forcing it upon my workplace.

Now I could do 6 things, but I had enough trouble picking 5. I could do one twice a day, but only if it were gardening. And I could take a pack to work. But by the time I had written my proposal for the workplace to participate, had that approved by the bosses, bigger bosses and even bigger bosses who need to approve things, conducted a panel on the 5 things we'd do and sent out instructions to everyone not on the panel it would have been Christmas 2020. And that's when I realised this thing is meant to actually be doable. So I decided that starting late without upping the ante is ok. It is definitely better than not starting at all. So while I may have missed the first third of the month, I'm in it for the remaining two thirds. And I'm here to tell you all my tales about it.

So, I'm announcing that I have finally started my Sustainability Challenge. After ticking a terrifying list of 'next steps' on a food for thought document provided as part of the challenge pack I didn't end up with much that was achievable for us. A bit of brainstorming added a couple of extras to the list but it still wasn't very 'helpful' (are challenge items supposed to be helpful anyway?). But after a prolonged discussion with my husband we eventually agreed on the following list:

• Working in the garden daily (priority on edible plants)
• Not driving to work 3 days
• Substituting 2 products in our major shop (weekly) for organic
• Showers of 4 minutes or less
• Purchasing only organic/free range/grain fed meat.

And our 4 extras are:

• Visit and start using the food co-op at ANU (I've only just discovered this existed, so am really looking forward to this one)
• Increase the portion of energy to our home that comes from renewable resources
• Purchase and start using a solar device for recharging our smaller appliances such as mobiles
• Participate in an event akin with sustainability eg a planting day.

To be honest I don't know how I feel about our list. There's a part of me that thinks it's cool (the 4 extras). And there's another part of me that thinks it looks kind of pathetic to see it written there like that (the 5 daily challenge items). I mean we recycle absolutely everything that can be recycled here, we compost with bokashi, we purchase local produce, we buy some organic produce/products and majority Australian products. We save water in various ways, avoid plastic, don't use household chemicals, cycle to work a couple of days a week, are appliance savvy, are vego 2 days a week, grow a few herbs and vegies and have some yet to fruit fruit trees and a few other things. So it seems pretty pathetic to have to commit to having a 4 minute shower. It's one of the most basic things you can do for sustainability, especially with the water restrictions Canberra has had for at least as long as I've lived here. But I'd be lying if I said that my showers of late were less than 4 minutes. They're not long but they're not 4 minutes or less either, so I thought it was a good one to add.

Now I haven't just listed environmentally friendly practices already practiced in my household to intimidate anybody (if you do more feel free to note and gloat, love to hear about it!). But if you subscribe to the notion that because you recycle and watch your water use you're doing enough not to compost (yes, someone has said this to me) I'd like to challenge you.

Which is why I'm doing this Sustainability Challenge. To challenge myself, especially given that according to the WWF ecological footprint calculator  I need 2.5 planet earths to sustain me in my current lifestyle. Considering my husband has an identical lifestyle I need another 2.5 planet earths for him. And since this isn't  Hitchhikers Guide to Galaxy there isn't another planet (or 4) for us to make home.

Now that I think about it, my footprint from that calculator is quite scary. We intentionally do quite a bit to reduce our footprint and still I need 2.5 whole planets to support me. Maybe that doesn't seem like much, but consider that the actual planet I live on I share with almost 7 billion people. So if everyone lived like me we'd need about 17 billion planet earths. And there's erm...one...WOW.

I take the stance that how I treat this earth isn't just about my lifestyle here, but about that of my grandchildren and their grandchildren. And when you make it personal like that it makes it pretty hard to justify not having a shower that's a minute shorter if it means your children and their children and their children (and so on) can have a quality of life similar to your own. Which got me thinking about what their lifestyle would actually be like if we went on like this. What would happen? No really. What would their life be like?

If the images that came to mind then were as ugly for you as they were for me then we're both in the right place-reading (and hopefully completing) this challenge. At the very least, having our notions of a 'quality' lifestyle and a 'sustainable' lifestyle challenged. Of considering the difference between 'want' and 'need' in our consumer driven society. I'm not suggesting that we should all go out and buy ourselves a mudbrick house tomorrow, but reading the label on a manufactured product to see where it was manufactured (and hence considering the carbon inherent in the product) is likely to go a long way to improving the quality of life your great great grandchildren experience.

So, I hope, through this blog to not only talk about my own hurrahs and hurdles with this challenge, but to encourage you with the 5 things you've picked for yourself, your household, your family. In fact I'd love to hear about what you've picked, see what great ideas are out there for the challenge.

And while we're talking about encouragement, I have an admission to make...

I drove to work today.

And I'll be driving to work tomorrow.

And the saddest part about that?

It means no stickers!! :(