GardeningNude

Get Yo’ Green On Tuesday – School is In Session – Teach Your Children To Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Once again it’s that time of year – school has begun. According to Discovery’s Planet Green website, “every ton of paper -- or 220,000 sheets--  that is recycled saves approximately 17 trees. For scale, the average school tosses 38 tons of paper -- the equivalent of 644 trees -- each year.”

Here’s a photo of my little cutie heading off to elementary school. When you send your children off to school, how are you helping them learn about taking care of themselves as adults? What can make a huge difference for our children is modeling good adult behavior - purchasing post-consumer recycled paper for instance, and educating our children to make sure it gets recycled yet again after it is used at school.

Donating time to assist organizations such as SCARCE (School and Community Assistance for Recycling & Composting Education), a not-for-profit organization which spends considerable time and effort recycling school products such as paper, crayons, pens, and other supplies will really help your children to connect with the process of where our products come from and where they usually go to – over stuffed landfills.

Teaching your children to reduce, reuse, and recycle school products is easy – just like teaching them to brush their teeth. Good habits start at home and need to be learned. Bad habits like being wasteful also start at home, so take the time to change that.

Make a difference in the life of a child by modeling and educating how to take care of the world by reducing, reusing, and recycling!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Green and Simple Tip – With 26 Billion Toilet Paper Rolls Produced Yearly – Harry the Pug Says Let’s Recycle

Harry the Pug is bringing you a green and simple tip today – from the toilet. See the toilet roll by his paw? That little cardboard is the bi-product of a toilet paper roll – and usually the average American simply throws it in the trash thinking it a tiny and insignificant bit of cardboard.

Let’s reconsider our thinking. In the United States alone, 26 billion rolls of toilet paper are created annually. With most Americans using an annual average of 23.6 rolls per capita. My home uses lots more than 23.6 rolls per person per year – it’s true – I’m just sayin’!

With these statistics in mind the question needs to be asked: what are you doing with your toilet paper cardboard? Are you throwing it out? Don’t do that! I recycle the cardboard directly in my recycle bin, use the cardboard to hold electrical cords together, and sometimes tear it up to put in my compost bin.

Help make a difference and be sure to reuse or recycle your toilet paper cardboard. What ideas do you have for reusing this cardboard? Leave a comment and let me know.

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Car Trash – What Do You Do With It? Here’s a Green Recycle Tip!

 

See the photo above – that would be me at least 50% of my life – in the car. Just call me “The Taxi” It’s true; Americans spend a lot of time in their cars due to our hectic modern life. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, over 100 hours per year commuting to work alone. There are days when various members of my family eats, naps, and does homework in the car – modern American life is hectic.

While living a greener lifestyle in our family does include bicycling and walking, we are still trying to find ways to reduce our automobile usage. In the end, with urban sprawl and larger wide-ranging communities, the car has become a necessary evil to help our family to survive in a modern age. With all the travel and activities we have, there is a bi-product created which lives in our car; garbage from our adventures.

Before recycling existed, we would dump the garbage out at the nearest trash receptacle and leave it at that. However, what I have learned is a lot of what we collect as trash during our car travels can be recycled. Our family has begun to save everything we gather and bring it home so we can place it in the recycling bin instead of throwing useful things out in the landfill.

Next time you’re out and about in your car, remember to save all your recyclables and bring them home. Think before you throw them out in a trash bin and make a conscious decision to make a difference for our environment. Recycle!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Greening is Easy AND Can Make You A Profit – Garage Sale Sustainability

  

Here it is – a giant fallacy about living a sustainable lifestyle: that you need to spend a lot of time and money to make it happen.

Many times I have heard my friends say, “I refuse to do anything about being green – I mean, c’mon who can live like that?” What they are referring to is the ridiculous amount of money you have to pay for a bamboo-blend outfit which can cost over $100 and is supposedly “green”. Worse yet, the exorbitant costs of organic juice drinks, which can sometimes exceed $6.00 seems outlandish. This might be “green” to some people, but it is not the type of practical green living I am talking about for every day living.

Being green, definitively, is living life with more awareness of where all your stuff comes from and where all your stuff goes to. For instance, when you are done with your kitchen waste, do you just throw it in the landfill to become someone else’s problem, or do you compost it to keep it out of the landfill and to use it in your garden?

It is all about simple choices that are better for you because they save money – and even earn money. Sometimes they are choices that are simply healthier for both you and the earth.

For example, if your kids out grow their clothes, what do you do with them? Do you throw them out? Do you give them away? In this economy a simple and very easy way to reduce, reuse, and recycle is to have a garage sale. It EARNS you money.

Faced with my oldest daughter leaving for college this fall, the family decided to have a “Get My Kid To College Garage Sale.” Each of the family members contributed. Soon we had old toys, clothes, books, and even sold fresh veggies from the front lawn veggie garden I built this year. You can see in the above photos we made homemade signs and sold our hearts out.

In the top photo you can see what my youngest daughter and I did not expect – -RAIN! In the end, we were rained out (notice the soaking wet hair and clothes). All was not lost, we worked together as a family and earned a little money which helped my oldest daughter get started with her college career. It was fun!

Use Garage Sale Sustainability ideas wherever you can to make your life greener – remember – it’s all about using simple common sense.

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

A Yellow Pages Rant – What’s With The Phone Book Company SCAM? Americans Go Digital and Save Our Resources and Our Landfill Space

Once again I have received the damned Yellow Pages Phone Book. I do not want these books - I have not used a phone book in nearly five years. Ever. Not even once in five years! Usually I toss the old book – which is still in pristine condition - in the recycling bin annually and accept the useless new book. But this year I have chosen to do something different – RANT!

Yep, I know I rarely rant, but this time it’s personal. Several times a year I receive pounds and pounds of unwanted phone book on my front door step. Because most of my referencing is done online, I find it a tremendous waste of paper. There are some people who might need or want the annual Yellow Pages distributions – but my preference is the distribution of phone books should be consumer driven. In other words, we should be able to opt-out of receiving this junk mail or better yet, if the books are wanted, they should be requested individually on an opt-in basis.

Think about that – how many people would actually take the time to phone the phone book company and request a free book? Seriously. Not a single person I know. This is surely why the program does not exist. IT IS A MONEY MAKING SCAM!

According to the Yellow Pages Association, consumers reference print Yellow Pages directories more than 12 billion times per year while Internet Yellow Pages sites receive 4.6 billion references each year. My question is where do these statistics come from? NO ONE HAS EVER CALLED ME FROM THE YELLOW PAGES COMPANY! EVER!!! Are they out there dialing up everyone in the United States to get a truly accurate number instead of an estimation?

Information from www.stopthephonebooks.com really puts the phone book scam into a green perspective:

Creating 500 phone books takes:

TREES -- according to a study in California 17 to 31 trees- depending on how much is new paper and how much is recycled paper .

ELECTRICITY – 4100 kwh (a 3 bedroom house in Colorado uses about 600 -1500 kwh per month-- so that about 3-6 months of electricity)

WATER -- 7000 gallons of water (that’s about 14 gallons of water per book - Gee, I thought we were trying to cut back on wasting water).

GAS – ????  -- how many gallons of gasoline for the delivery trucks? Gas for the trash trucks? Gas for the recycling trucks?

So-- how much did we use for 615 million phonebooks ? -- Well, that’s about 1.23 million times each of the numbers above -- in just one year (and we are not even including the electricity and water it takes to recycle these products yearly). Also, guess what? Only 15% to 20% of the phone books created are recycled annually. 

Of course, that’s an estimation, right? It’s just my opinion, but according to the Yellow Pages Association website, it’s okay to estimate, right? That’s how they got their 12 billion number. Apparently estimating how many people are actually utilizing their phone book product justifies how much of our natural resources we are destroying. With this mindset, estimating is a great way to justify tricking businesses into advertising in a useless, wasteful, out-dated, resource-sucking product also.

My thought is this is a SCAM to take money from business owners and is an utterly useless and ridiculous piece of advertising SPAM which we do not want. It’s time for all of us who agree with the this rant and opt-out of this insanity and do something kind for the earth.

I phoned the below phone book businesses today and tried to opt out but could not. ATT/Yellow Pages was impossible. I tried to opt out, repeatedly, but no one ever answered the ATT number so that I CAN opt out. I will try again tomorrow.

— ATT/ Yellow Pages: 1-800-479-2977

— Verizon: 1-800-555-4833

— DEX: 1-877-243-8339

— Yellow Book:1-800-929-3556

In my opinion, it’s part of the SCAM – they avoid you on purpose so opting out is not a consumer choice – how unprofessional. But then again, businesses which build scams really are not very professional are they?

Here’s the reality - most of the directory companies do not offer telephone menu options which include opting-out. It would be great if they provided an online way to opt out – I guess that’s just asking way too much from a bunch of scam artists!

This is an issue we should be contacting our government about. Contact your local representative and tell them you want something done about this outlandish scam built to steal good businesses money!

Please help come up with additional ideas to make a difference. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think -

Do you feel this is a giant underhanded SCAM like I do?

What can we do to stop this unprofessional practice from phone book company’s around the globe?

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

How To Install A Rain Barrel – The Conservation Foundation Helps Demonstrate How Easy It Is to Install A Rain Barrel

How easy is it to install a rain barrel?

REALLY EASY!

Jim Kleinwachter works with me in the above short video to demonstrate how easy it really is to install a rain barrel. Jim runs The Conservation Foundation’s incredibly successful “Conservation @ Home” program.

Rain barrels come in many forms and the particular rain barrel we are installing was used as a barrel to transport olives from the Mediterranean. Originally the barrels were thrown in the landfill. The Conservation Foundation rescues them and reuses them – a great way to reduce, reuse, and recycle industrial products.

For rain barrel installation you will need a couple tools. Specifically, a rain barrel, hacksaw, and flexible downspout. Aluminum downspouts: 6 screws and a screwdriver. PVC downspouts: PVC cement.

Connecting your downspout to your rain barrel

1. Place your barrel near the downspout you have selected, and measure the area you need to cut.
2. Disconnect your downspout from the sewer system by sawing the downspout above where the top of the rain barrel will be, leaving room for the elbow to be attached. Save all these parts you have removed for use in the winter.
3. Attach a flexible downspout elbow to the cut end of your downspout so that water from your downspout is directed into the rain barrel through the top screened hole.
4. If you have a PVC downspout, secure it to the elbow with PVC cement so it will not fall off during a heavy rain. If you have an aluminum downspout, secure it to the elbow with aluminum screws.
5. Place your rain barrel under the downspout elbow so the water goes directly into the top hole of the rain barrel.
6. Attach a hose to the overflow spigot, and direct the overflow into your own yard, but away from your home’s foundation.

It’s very important that when temperatures in your community get below freezing  you reconnect your downspouts. You can do this simply by attaching the downspout onto the downspout elbow that currently directs water into the rain  barrel. Keep your rain barrel spigot open so water does not accumulate in the rain barrel and freeze. You can also turn the rain barrel upside-down or bring it inside to ensure no water accumulates in the barrel.

It’s that easy – above is a view of my Conservation Foundation rain barrel installed on the side of my home. Get a rain barrel today and help your family and your community conserve water! Purchase a rain barrel from The Conservation Foundation by going to this link – Rain Barrels.

Thanks go to Tom Reid of Tom Reid Motion & Stills LLC for the fantastic video work!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

How 14 Days In The Yucatan Made Me Realize The Value of Planet Earth – Part 4 – Building Community

Sixty feet up the spectacular Mayan pyramid known as Nohoch Muul, wind buffets me and I cling to the rock desperately - trembling in the 100 degree heat – my heart pounding wildly. As I carefully climb up the steep face of one of the tallest known Mexican pyramids sweat drips down my forehead onto the ancient rocks.

Looking back the steep sixty feet of crumbling steps I have climbed, I am reminded that no safety fencing or climbing gear is there to protect me. A single rope hangs down the middle of the stairs and that’s it. Each step brings me closer to the top of the pyramid and as it does, the wind increases. Already the view is spectacular – miles of jungle stretch out before the pyramid.

Hundreds of years ago Nohoch Muul (seen in the photo above) was the center of the local Mayan Indian community. Mayan Indians from across Mexico traveled to Nohoch Muul seeking guidance and friendship. Every day a priest would climb nearly 140’ to the top of the ancient pyramid to spend time in the ancient temple at the very top to offer prayers to help his people. Nohoch Muul is a part of a much larger Mayan Indian community known as Coba which was discovered in the late 1980’s. Amazingly, only 10% of this ancient Mayan community has been uncovered.

Located in the Yucatan peninsula rain forest near the Mayan Riviera, the ruins of Coba puts me in touch with the idea that all people crave, like the Mayan Indians, existence within a community as an important part of our humanity. This craving explains our passion for social media and our desire to live a life in a neighborhood which is welcoming.

While modern day life in a community may not require a daily 140’ climb, being a part of a supportive environment helps ease life’s woes. Like the pyramid climb, it is not always easy, yet it is rewarding. Building and maintaining friendships, helping one another, particularly during trying economic times, and living life in general can present difficult challenges. Yet when you share time with other human beings, volunteering and helping improve the neighborhoods and community’s where we live, humanity is lifted up in a powerful experience of sharing.

When we take care of our neighborhoods we feel less depressed, more satisfied, and generally happier with who we are and those around us. These thoughts drift with me as I struggle to reach the top of the 140’ monolith. Several times I lose hold and think I might be blown off the pyramid. Always another climber helps me so that I am able to safely reach the top. After the last shaky step, I turn and see an ocean of green rain forest stretching for miles below me (see above photo). White clouds float through the blue sky. There are no skyscrapers, or buildings, or airplanes; just nature and the ruins. Smiling, I reach my arms up in triumph. I made it!  Grinning even wider, I realize that I did not reach the top on my own. I had help. Sometimes life is about more than our own selfishness. Achieving a personal triumph is always made easier when you have a community of caring people to help you.

Living a green lifestyle and building emotionally healthy relationships will help you when you are climbing your own personal pyramid. Family and friends will lift you up when you need help so you can live a better, less isolated, life. Perhaps building community will help you realize the true value of humanity – or perhaps it will just make you smile more. Either way – working to build a greener and healthier community will improve the quality of your living – so do it today and make a difference.

And now in the last photo you can see I had to get back down…. eeek!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Greening in Business - Ball Horticulture Teaching Employees How To Tend To Nature and Tend To Their Health With A Community Garden

Think about this – across the globe many businesses, churches, synagogues, mosques, and community centers are surround by a sea of an utterly useless plant – grass! What positive effect does acres of grass have for an organization? You cannot feed people on grass. American businesses and organizations use tons of chemicals to maintain the grass, which then cause damage to our water tables nationwide. If we are not mowing grass with carbon producing equipment, we are wasting water on it. This is such a tremendous and inane waste of our resources. It simply makes no sense.

My proposal to you dear reader – follow Ball Horticulture’s example of ditching some of the grass and building a healthy community. Ball Horticulture’s exciting move has been to do something about all that useless grass. They have created one of the first employee-run community gardens in the nation.

There is an unfathomable connection between nature and health. Healthy veggies grown with no chemicals; sunshine which produces good mood endorphins in our brains when we are exposed to it; fresh air which is a welcome escape from the confines of the typical closed environment office. This is just the beginning of what Ball Horticulture hopes to encourage with the creation of the Ball Horticulture Employee Community Garden.

Susan Schmitz, Trials and Education Manager, gave me a tour of the community gardens. Overflowing with every vegetable imaginable, 120 employees have come together to grow their own fresh food in 5’ X 8’ plots. According to Susan, half of those participating had never grown a vegetable before in their lives.

While Ball Horticulture is obviously experienced with plants, they realized that their various employees might not be. Therefore, to assure a higher success rate, Susan and her team came together to host seasonal training workshops. Knowing that veggies can quickly get out of hand in size, Susan felt the first step was having the employees understand what a 5’ X 8’ plot would look like. She taped the plot out on the floor and set out a couple plants on the imaginary plot to demonstrate spacing.

Education soon expanded to planting, weeding, and maintenance concerns, eventually growing into what veggies might be planted late in the season after the spring veggies peaked.

Susan also had a bi-weekly email resource and a company bulletin board established for further assistance with seasonal suggestions and questions which might help the employees have a better chance of succeeding.

Soon employees were growing masses of veggies and feeling very proud of themselves. They weigh each garden’s harvest on a produce scale so they can keep track of just how much locally grown and healthy food was produced. Many individuals choose to give all their veggies to the Giving Gardens Program, which donates the food to local food pantry’s.

While visiting the gardens, I was astounded at how truly beautiful they are. Each plot is labeled with the “owners” name, giving the employees a strong sense of ownership, responsibility, and accomplishment. Therefore, they are all wonderfully maintained.

Please make a difference in your community by helping people in this difficult economic time. All you businesses, churches, synagogues, mosques, and community centers do your community a favor - DITCH THE GRASS and BUILD A GARDEN. Make a difference today! 

Today’s post is a “Two Fer” – this blog is on both my greening blog – www.gardeningnude.com AND my gardening blog – http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com – ENJOY!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com.

“WATER” – The Chicago Field Museum Educates on the Importance of Earth’s Most Precious Resource

Water. Earth’s most precious resource. With only six countries holding nearly half of the world’s fresh water supply, you can imagine the importance of our educating our children and neighbors on why we should be conserving water.

The Field Museum of Chicago does a fabulous job educating community about water in their special exhibition titled, Water. My 8 year old daughter and I went to the exhibit this week to learn more about how water really functions in the world. Above you see her studying a very cool reservoir simulating machine.

First, the exhibit addressed the basic properties of water. One of my favorite parts of this section was the amazing water sculpture (see below) that showed water in it’s three physical states – liquid, solid, and gas. Visitors can touch and feel all three states with a hands-on, water-cycle sculpture.

John Drengenberg, corporate spokesperson from Underwriters Laboratories (UL) (one of the sponsors of the incredible Water exhibit in Chicago) walked with us through the tour. While we talked about the importance of water, John explained UL’s involvement in testing water in over 7000 community’s nationwide.

John emphasized that having access to and keeping water clean and safe is important for the survival of our world. UL feels it is one of the most important roles they have in helping our communities live cleaner. Shockingly, more than a billion humans live without dependable access to safe drinking water. Imagine that GIANT number – one billion people - who suffer daily simply because they do not have clean drinking water.

My daughter experienced the difficulty of trying to lift a typical jug of water that millions of women and girls have to carry every day in developing countries. As you see in the photo to the left, she could not lift it easily, in fact neither could I - it was quite a humbling experience. These women and girls must forego school or jobs simply so they can spend all their time dedicated to the simple and basic task of carrying water for the family. This means their family must live in poverty.

Perhaps one of these women could have been the next Marie Curie or  Amelia Earhart or Georgia O’Keefe; important women in our world’s history. We shall never know because they must spend all their time dedicated to a type of slavery – water slavery – born out of necessity.

Water is organized by the many museums in a grand partnership with will have the exhibit touring around the nation and world. Please go see the exhibit if you can – it will show you a whole new perspective on a resource we simply take for granted. The link to more information detailing the water exhibit is here - www.fieldmuseum.org/water.

Make a difference in your community by not wasting water. Use less chemicals such as fertilizers and insecticides on your property as well. Do your part to keep the clean water we have. To learn more about your home water usage, please go to the online Water Calculator provided by the Field Museum - watercalculator.fieldmuseum.org.

This exhibit will be open through September 20, 2009 in Chicago – do not miss it!

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Why Water Conservation is Important Plus a Look At A Tip On Double Rain-Barrel Installation

Americans have access to an abundance of water much of the time; having water available at the twist of a faucet so it becomes easy to overlook the importance of water conservation. In the United States, we use approximately 205 billion gallons of water a day for household, business/industrial, and agricultural purposes. Demands on our water resources increase as our population grows, and our population is growing at alarming rates. According to the U.S. Census Bureau the Nation's population is projected to increase to 392 million by 2050 -- more than a 50 percent increase from the 1990 population size.

Thinking about the future of our nation is important and we must put conservation measures into effect now. Individuals make a HUGE difference in this effort. By practicing water conservation on a regular basis you can prevent or postpone the building of new water supply infrastructure. This can save your community millions of dollars.

Water conservation can also reduce the amount of water that needs to be processed by wastewater treatment plants connected to storm water systems, again preserving infrastructure and also reducing the amount of waste which is discharged into our nations river systems.

By utilizing rain barrels, individual citizens are helping the larger community. Debra Shore, Commissioner for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago recently spoke with me and let me know that if every citizen owned a rain barrel, it would reduce the cost of storm water maintenance by millions of dollars.

Above you see a video demonstrating how I have connected two utterly fantastic rain barrels from Clean Air Gardening. It is a good idea to put your rain barrels near your composting bins too – compost needs water regularly and combining your tools to make a more sustainable system is always a positive.

Make a difference for your community and conserve water with a rain barrel!

If you would like to purchase the rain barrels and composter shown in the above video, please go to www.cleanairgardening.com.

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

What a Three-Legged Dog Taught Me About Being A Part Of A Community

This weekend I went camping with my cousins in Indiana and met the most incredible dog ever. His name is Frankie and he’s a three-legged dog. My cousin, Sunday, owns him - he lost his leg in a horrid farm accident and almost died, but they decided his life was worth the effort to save. I think he’s pretty glad he’s alive too.

In one weekend I learned an awful lot about life from Frankie. First of all, I learned that life is pretty precious. When I was a young girl and would whine and complain about chores and life in general, my grandmother used to say, “Well… you got all your arms and legs now dontcha?” And that usually put me in my place. Yes. I was pretty lucky. I had all my arms and legs.

Frankie does not. Yet he still thinks he’s a pretty lucky dog. He does not whine or complain. Ever. Even when he can’t run as fast as others. Even when he is covered in sweat and completely exhausted. Frankie still makes the attempt. He does not give up. An example of this is in the above photo. We rode my cousins horses all over the beautiful Indiana countryside for hours. Frankie ran along behind the horses no matter where we went. Often, he straggled. With only three legs it takes a significant effort to keep up with two full grown horses. Yet Frankie would make the effort – putting his whole heart into the run. Panting furiously. Never giving up. If he somehow managed to get ahead of me, like the photo above, he would turn and wait to make sure I was keeping up with HIM.

When we got to the creek crossing, Frankie would not pause no matter how deep the water was. He would charge through and make it to the other side. Jumping out with a shake; tongue lulling out his mouth in happiness. What a dog!

Frankie pushes himself so hard to throw himself into living, that when he finally collapses, he lays in a heap panting deeply and barely able to move from exhaustion. Yet when he sees a member of his family who needs him, he jumps up immediately – no matter how tired – and helps them. He’s always there for my cousins offering emotional support, helping them with the horses on their farm, and hugging them whenever they need it. Frankie is incredible. Frankie is family. Frankie is love-embodied.

Definitively, Frankie is all about community. He’s building, connecting, and loving the people around him every day. Frankie is making a difference in a world that’s filled with negative mindsets.

If Frankie can live each day to the fullest with only three legs, we can live each day to the fullest with all our arms and legs. If a three legged dog can throw his heart into his community with such vigor and gusto, it seems that surely you can get off the couch and make a simple attempt yourself.

Make a difference for your community – love your community – and help others like Frankie does and I know your life will be full and beautiful for you. You will be living a dog’s life. That’s about as wonderful as you can get as far as Frankie is concerned.

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com

Hydrangea Love – An Entertaining Idea On The Cheap and Green

I might not be Martha Stewart – spending less than $10 for a total entertaining evening in the garden – but perhaps that’s the point. With a very difficult economy on the horizon, it’s time we stopped spending extreme amounts of money for entertaining and started using what we have available to us. 

I choose to use the flowers in my own garden – this is quite a green choice because buying flowers that have been shipped from all over the world is just a ridiculous waste of carbon and energy.

Hydrangea’s are one of my favorite plants ever. It brings back memories of my grandmother every time I see their giant white flower in the garden.

During July they are truly at their height of beauty and every year I cut dozens of their stems and give them as gifts in great bunches tied with rubber bands to neighbors and friends. They make quite a statement on a dining room table or as a display by the front door.

Yesterday I held an America In Bloom meeting at my garden and wanted to make a spectacular display of the Hydrangea’s both as centerpieces and special features throughout the garden. In this photo guests wander my garden enjoying the evening.

My big splurge - for less than $2.00 each – was to purchase two colorful trash cans to use as vases. Cutting the Hydrangea’s at a point slightly above where it has a leaf, I gather a large pile of flowers. Next step is to strip off all the lower leaves to prevent rot in the water, and place them in the improvised vases.

Total cost is less than $4.00 and I have a gorgeous display for my get together which is green and utilizes very little carbon or energy. All the guests brought appetizers and I served summer cocktails made of lemonade, cucumber from the front yard veggie garden I grew for the 2009 “Get It Garden” Challenge and vodka. Simple. Easy. Delightful. Love it!

     

Shawna Coronado says Get Healthy! Get Green! Get Community! www.thecasualgardener.com, The Green Blog - www.gardeningnude.com, or The Garden Blog - http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com