Happy Earth Day to You!

Today is officially Earth Day (although every day should be). To celebrate, we went to Green Home Experts on Sunday to buy a composter for our yard. They were out! This is great news--the store is fairly new (and fabulous) and I'm glad they're doing well. They'll call us when they get more in. Until then, I'll just have to compress the contents of the kitchen compost pail a bit.

There are so many little everyday things that we can do to be kinder to our planet. I've been doing some of them for so long, they're just second nature. Like making mustgo for dinner. Just take all the veggies on the verge and make something from them--mustgo soup, garbage salad, stir fry surprise, or our latest favorite: Mexican glop. I suppose I could name them something more appetizing, but you get the idea. . . Don't waste food--it makes Jesus cry. And we don't want that.

Other things that we do without thinking anymore: bring your own reusable bags--even the guys at the produce market are used to me doing that now. And almost all bags are reusable, not just the cloth ones. I occasionally get paper grocery bags, and we put those in the paper shredder can to catch the strips. Then the whole thing goes out to the recycle bin. I usually set a magazine on top to keep the shreds from blowing away. Learned that one the hard way. . .

Jon has been buying his lunch meat in those "disposable" plastic food containers. I keep a few on hand for sending leftovers home with guests or bringing food to parties. The rest are in my craft room or on the workbench. They're transparent enough to see the contents without opening them, and they're better than buying the Rubbermaid containers. They stack easily too. We also have the jars with the lids screwed onto the ceiling (or the fabulous jar-go-round that came with our house!) for nails and screws and such.

THE FABULOUS JAR-GO-ROUND! It took a bit of elbow grease to get the paint off the jars (I think they spray-painted our basement) but it's up and running now.

The seedlings that we planted in the basement have been upgraded--we take them out in the sun during the day, and put them to bed in the garage at night. It's supposed to acclimate them to the temperature change. They seem like they're enjoying it. I'm just waiting for one of our evil squirrels to uproot them. They're the craftiest squirrels I've ever seen--and they're not afraid of people, cats, or dogs. Maybe we need a pet cougar or something. . .