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