Hugging trees makes children sleepy
The kids have been making us a little crazy lately, so we decided to try doing something new today. We went to visit the Cumming Nature Center in Honeoye Falls.
Our plan was several-fold:
- It’s an hour drive away — farther than we’d usually go for a hike in the woods, but this ate up 2 hours of our morning while our children were safely strapped into their car seats
- It would tire them out, so they’d nap (this has been an issue since the Binky Fairy visited Duncan 10 days ago)
- It’s outdoors — and we all could use more nature and tree hugging.
Speaking of tree hugging, when I see my children voluntarily go up to a tree and literally hug it — with no prompting or demonstration on my part — I know I’m doing something right as a parent. They do get outdoors to enjoy the natural world (as much as is natural in a city) a lot more than I do and I know that’s so important for them. At least if they’re on a playground or playing in our tiny backyard, they’re outside, and children can find the beauty and wonder of nature in anything. Often it seems to be in the rocks they insist on bringing home. Or the mulch they must repeatedly put on the bottom of the slides.
In any case, we managed to all get in the car and drive there without incident. Duncan actually fell asleep a few minutes before we got there. That’s what happens when you insist on waking up befor 6 a.m. We wandered around for a while, looked at a pioneer log cabin and read some signs about how the native Irondequoit used to live and then carried the crying, dragging little ones back to the car.
We found a diner for lunch. It was the first time I sent food back to the kitchen. I ordered a roast beef sandwich and my beef was green. Yes, green. Beef is not a vegetable. It shouldn’t be green. Amazingly, we finished lunch and packed everyone back into the car — where they fell asleep on the way home. We ran errands while they slept (Kevin stayed in the car with them, don’t worry! But we were out already and just used up 2 hours’ of gas) and got home with them still sleeping. I hung out with them and read in the car for a while until they each woke up.
It doesn’t seem like much of a fascinating day, and it was a lot of driving for a walk in the woods. Next time, we’ll pick somewhere closer to home and keep the hiking short. I’m glad that Berry is finally getting old enough to take on a walk like that, as I’ve always envisioned spending so much more time outdoors with the kids than I tend to actually do. It gives me hope for future weekend activities.
At lunch, we talked about our favorite part of the walk. Kevin saw a knarly tree that he liked, Duncan liked stepping on the tree roots. Berry — well, she’s 18 months old, she doesn’t give us much in the way of descriptive sentences yet. Me? I liked the part where we walked along a stream and all stopped and got quiet enough to hear the water flowing below us. There was stillness, suddenly, finally. I closed my eyes and could feel the woods around me and hear my own thoughts, finally given the space in my head.
Even after we got home and I was trying to decipher the TV show that Berry was asking me to put on, I looked in her eyes and she seemed different to me, somehow. Maybe we’d just spent some good time together. Maybe tromping around in the woods and hearing some stillness was good for her, too.
My garden helpers
It’s not easy to find time to tend the garden with two little ones. Or do any singular activity, for that matter. They like to be involved.
Our backyard, tiny as it is, is now strewn with kids toys. The turtle sand box, basketball hoop, water table, little slide and see-saw. I love it, honestly. It makes me happy to look out the back window and see all those things for them to play with. We can’t fit a swing set back there, so we do what we can with what we have.
Even with the toys, the lure of What Mummy’s Doing is too strong. Inevitably, I get interrupted with “help,” often in the form of digging in inappropriate places — such as where things are growing. Duncan, at least, has learned the boundaries of the vegetable garden and walks along the pavers, but not in the soil. Berry caught on quickly this year, but occasionally manages to somehow fall into my garden beds and took out a pepper plant earlier this summer.
One form of “help” we’ve found that they both enthusiastically get into is watering the garden. We collect rainwater from our garage roof in plastic tubs. Kevin has grand ideas about building a water barrel, but so far we’re just using totes with lids and it’s working well.
The kids love filling up watering cans (or at least pretending to in Berry’s case) and watering the vegetables. Duncan likes watering one particular square foot of the garden which quickly turns into a mud puddle. It doesn’t seem to matter how many times I tell him it’s had enough water already, sooner or later he returns to that spot and sploshes some more on.
Explaining that the garden doesn’t need watering when it’s just rained - and everything is clearly still wet - also falls on deaf ears. It’s just too much fun. Why wouldn’t the plants want another drink? It tickles them, after all. 
I love him.
So here’s some shots (with my cell phone) of the two of them helping out. I will say that their participation is helpful when getting them to eat veggies at dinner. By watering them, Duncan has buy in. I mean, they’re HIS veggies. Why not eat them. I even got him to eat a raw green bean the other day - and he liked it!
What do I do with the worms in my compost?
I love my compost bins, tucked away behind the garage. It’s so quiet and private back there (a big thing in a city backyard) and smells of leaves and rain and the forest.
I finally got around to screening my compost. Oh, what beautiful stuff. It’s not such good work for my back, but good for the rest of me (thigh muscles, spirit, etc.).
This was the best batch of compost I’ve made yet. Full of worm castings, hummus and rich black stuff. And worms. I’ve never seen so many worms (except maybe on RIT’s sidewalks after a heavy rain).
What am I supposed to do with the worms in the compost? Put them back into the pile? Put them in the garden? Eat them for dinner?
I tried hard to sift the compost lightly, to reduce the likelihood of grinding any worms on the hardware cloth. I probably cut a few in half as they desperately tried to wriggle through the holes into the lovely black screened compost beneath. Most of my worms went into the screened compost and then into the garden. I figure the garden can always use them. And, since I didn’t put any worms in the bin to begin with, they migrated from somewhere on their own and more worms will find the bin again for the next batch.
In order to answer my question — so I know what to do next time — I turned, as always to the Internet. Not, say, the Cornell Cooperative Extension, a reliable source of knowledgeable information. Why do that when you have Google at your fingertips?
What I found? Not much.
In worm composting (where you have a couple of pounds of worms in a bin!), you put the worms back in the bin. Gives me the heebies just thinking about it. I can touch worms, with gloves on. But I don’t want 2 lbs of the them in a container, thanks.
According to compostinfo.com:
Screening Compost
Your composting system may not break down all the larger materials, such as corncobs or wood chips, in the first batch of compost that you make. When you screen your compost, any material larger than your screen size can be removed. These materials are called “overs” which can go back into the compost system the next time that you build a pile. The overs provide bulk for aeration and microbes attached to these pieces will help jumpstart the new composting process.
Yes, nothing about worms.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has directions on how to build a free-standing compost screen, but, again, no worm info.
Surely I can’t be the only person with this question? I guess I’ll have to ask the Co-operative Extension folks at the South Wedge Farmer’s Market this week after all.
Putting a number on the earth
We (finally) hear and talk a lot about global warming and carbon footprints. But it all seems very vague and nebulous. I know my impact on the earth is larger than I’d like it to be. I know, as a society, we’re living way out of balance. But what exactly do we need to do to get back into balance?
350.org puts it into perspective:
The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.
There are three numbers you need to really understand global warming, none of them very complicated. For all of human history until about 200 years ago, our atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide (that’s the first number).
Beginning in the 18th century, we started to burn coal and gas and oil to produce energy and goods. … By now—and this is the second number—the planet has 387 parts per million CO2 – and this number is rising by about 2 parts per million every year.
In the past year, some of the world’s leading climate scientists have told us what the highest safe level of CO2 is: 350 parts per million. That’s the last number you need to know, and the most important. It’s the safety zone for planet earth.
Wow. Seems like we have some work to do.
Growing herbs and supporting community
My herb garden is growing.
The blog article I posted a link to the other day reminded me that I do like growing herbs. They’re very satisfying - easy to grow and offering an almost immediate harvest.
So far, we’ve eaten asparagus and rhubarb from our garden this year. Maybe I should make a side bar widget with what we’ve harvested. I expected to get more asparagus than I got, but what I got was good. Even Duncan ate some. And knowing that I grew it and that it was full of fresh organic goodness made me smile inside.
I’ve had chives, thyme and oregano growing in the herb garden for a while. The oregano always does great, even though it’s swamped by the rhubarb plant. I need to figure out if I can separate the rhubarb and, if so, when. The thing is monstrous and it gets bigger every year.
The thyme…I think I’ve replaced it a couple of times. The winter seems to do it in and I’m not sure if it’ll come back this year. I saw a pot of it at Wegmans yesterday and got one for my windowsill herb garden. I find I don’t actually go out into the yard when I’m cooking to cut fresh herbs. So I decided to grow basil, thyme and garlic chives in a pot on the front porch. I can bring it inside in the winter, too.
Cooking dinner is hard enough sometimes, with a one-year-old clinging to my legs and fussing for me to pick her up. Getting outside in the yard to snip herbs becomes almost impossible. Because then the almost-three-year-old will want to come out too. Which means putting on shoes, bring various favorite items and never wanting to come back inside again. One day I’ll be able to send him out by himself with a pair of kitchen scissors.
I also got some purple sage at Wegmans and put that out in the outside herb garden.
The latest addition to the herb bed came from the South Wedge Farmer’s Market today. Plain leaf Italian parsley. I don’t usually cook with parsley, but I have a secret plan for it and the sage. I can’t reveal what it is yet, though.
I love the farmer’s market — especially when it’s about organic, local, sustainable food. I know the “About Me” section of this blog says I’m getting “greener one environmentally safe product at a time,” but I’m really more about the food than the products. I need to change that. Knowing where my food is coming from — and what’s in it and not in it — is very important. Plus, sustaining the local economy is just a common sense good idea.
After a long day at work, getting outside and hanging out with the kiddos (Berry LOVED the music and made the whole stroller dance with her) was refreshing.
Grow it anyway
You know that poem, Anyway, usually attributed to Mother Theresa?
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.
[Reportedly inscribed on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, and attributed to her. However, an article in the New York Times has since reported (March 8, 2002) that the original version of this poem was written by Kent M. Keith.]That poem makes me think of my garden. (I’ve only had 2 cups of tea today, it may take a while to get to my point. Bear with me.)
We’ve lived in this house for 5 years. We’ve been wanting to move to somewhere larger for probably the last 3. Until recently, we had plans to move to Oregon before the end of the year — but that’s now on hold indefinitely. Duncan will be going to a really good school in the fall, somewhere we can envision him staying until he graduates high school (with Berry following in a couple of years). Kevin is still in school. We’re staying put for the time being.
My point with all of that is that it’s hard to think about long term plans for your current location and invest lots of time and energy into it when you think you may not be there for the next growing season. I think I have an issue with the emotional commitment and my visions not being fulfilled.
Anyway. That’s where the poem comes in. I need to do it anyway.
Gardening organically, doing what I can to live a little more lightly on the earth, teaching my children to respect and appreciate the wonder of the natural world…those are things I’m passionate about. They’re part of who I am in my core as a person. I knew that when I lived on a mountain in North Carolina, off-grid and with no running water. I embraced it then. (I also wanted to move and live in a house, instead of an Airstream.)
I think the difficulties we went through during that time — probably mostly due to the extreme poverty we experienced — made me run into the arms of commerce and hot running water. At least for a while. You can never get away from who you really are, though. And I’m a composting, veggie-growing, recycling, organic-food-eating girl at heart. I need to feel my connection with the earth to be grounded and happy.
I’d really love to live in a bigger house with more land around us. We could have a greenhouse and extend our growing season. We could get into greywater systems. Build an earthship. I still have all the dreams I ever did — back when being green wasn’t cool or popular.
But I can do a lot with what we have right now. Make compost. Grow food in our little garden. Catch rain water from the garage roof. Teach my children to tend the earth. Go for walks in the woods.
If we move next year, we move and start again somewhere else. If we don’t, I’ll have more asparagus to eat.
I started this post with the intention of linking to a blog I just discovered and a good post about getting into gardening. So here that is.
Composting: a new way of healing
We’re finally getting back into composting. We’ve had a pile behind the garage since we moved in. For a couple of years I collected vegetable scraps and had them in a chicken-wire bin, but that went by the wayside, too.
We still put leaves and yard trimmings back there, but have otherwise neglected it.
I’d forgotten how much I love the smell of decomposing organic matter. It’s like a forest after the rain.
Sorting through what compost we do have from our pile & screening it through hardware cloth made me happy today. I felt more connected to my vegetable garden than I have in a long time. Something was missing.
The last 2 or 3 years I planted a garden but didn’t really tend to it well. Often I let the harvest go by without reaping much of it. Sure, I’ve had young kids every year since 2005. But I wonder if it’s been more than that.
My first real garden was in North Carolina at my mountain wilderness home. The first year went well - I built lots of beds & planted tons of strawberries and asparagus. Maybe a rhubarb plant, too. Every garden should have one.
Then the next year, right after I got the spring crops in, my husband & I separated. He stayed on the property and I moved out.
I never got to enjoy the harvest from that garden. It’s a sadness I still feel. Perhaps this year I can fill that sense of loss with a deeper connection to a garden I won’t be leaving. Besides, the asparagus are finally coming up this year.
Clean water and stuff
I admit I get most of my national news from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and what Kevin shares with me from our local newspaper, the Democrat & Chronicle. (He reads the paper, tells me what he apparently thinks I need to know, then recycles it.)
But I’m still aware of things going on in the world. Like our need for clean water in many countries. Hell, we need clean water coming from our own tap!
The D&C had a story recently about water becoming contaminated with pharmaceutical drugs — from people throwing them out and from unmetabolized drugs in our urine. (Here’s a link to CNN.com’s version of the story as the D&C thinks I’m going to pay for access to their archives.)
So when Dean Kamen was on the Colbert Report with his water distillation/purification device that he wants to put in place in third world countiees to eradicate disease, it blew me away.
I think it’s a tremendous idea. But also one that we need in this country. If there’s a way to get out all the crap that’s getting into our drinking water, why aren’t we incorporating it?
On a similar vein, I did get Diet for a Poisoned Planet from Amazon.com. I started reading it. (I’m also vainly, if valiantly, trying to keep reading A New Earth.) Good God, what are we doing to our food supply, to the very things that sustain our lives? How did profit ever become a bigger motive than life?
Trying to be green AND clean
Why does being green have to be so damn difficult and expensive? It seems every other person is “going green” yet it still costs more to do things that are healthy for your family and the planet.
I fell in love with the Swiffer WetJet a few months ago. I got a “green” recipe for floor cleaner (white vinegar, natural soap, grapefruit seed oil and hot water), jimmied open the cap on the cleaner container and poured out the horribly smelly stuff it came with and mopped away. Even Duncan loves mopping now.
I could be extra-green and use washable pads, but they make it a lot harder to mop and our baby sitter doesn’t like them. And, let’s be honest, she does most of the mopping.
I thought I had a good thing going. My green cleaner costs next to nothing and the floors were getting mopped several times a week.
Then, tonight, I decided to haul out the big old mop and Murphy’s Oil Soap as between 2 kids, a cat, us and several winters, the floors are getting banged up. They’re never shiny any more.
I was saddened and horrified to find out the floors are filthy. The mop water was black. Ugh. No wonder those white pants Berry wore the other day were totally dirty down the front. I thought our floors were cleaner than that.
So is it the Swiffer mop (which now has a leak in it - possibly due to bottle cap tampering)? Is it my floor cleaning juice? Is it just the difference between cleaning something with a wet wipe and with a nice, wet washcloth in the bathtub? I know my kids come out cleaner from the bathtub/washcloth application than a baby wipe.
Whatever the reason, it sucks. I’m not a huge fan of cleaning. It doesn’t last long enough. But to clean and not really get things clean? How disheartening.
Food, “glorious” food
A decade ago (or more) I got interested in pesticides in food. I read Diet for a Poisoned Planet: How to Choose Safe Foods for You and Your Family
One of the things that struck me was reading about how children can be harmed by pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables–and that the harm outweighed the benefits of eating them. That blew me away.
Now I have 2 children. I think about these things even more.
I was looking to see if there was an updated version, and there is. I haven’t bought it yet, though. Why? 2 reasons:
I don’t have much time to read.
I’m scared to find out what it says.
When Duncan was a baby, he got only organic food. It’s easy to feed kids organic baby food. But as he started eating what we eat…well, we don’t eat organic all of the time. It’s the same with Berry. And it troubles me.
The Environmental Working Group has info about what fruits and veggies are best and worst when it comes to pesticide residues. But what I loved about the Diet for a Poisoned Planet book is that it also talked about the effect of canning and freezing on food. In some cases, it helped remove pesticides (for example, from the peel of pears), making them OK.
So it’s on my wish list. Maybe I’ll get it for myself once I’ve finished A New Earth.
