Earth Day 2010

Blessing for Earth-Healers

We give thanks for all those who are moved, in their lives, to heal and protect the earth, in small ways and in large. Blessings on the composters, the gardeners, the breeders of worms and mushrooms, the soil-builders, those who cleanse the waters and purify the air, all those who clean up the messes others have made. 


Blessings on those who defend trees and who plant trees, who guard the forests and who renew the forests. Blessings on those who learn to heal the grasslands and renew the streams, on those who prevent erosion, who restore the salmon and the fisheries, who guard the healing herbs and who know the lore of the wild plants. 


Blessings on those who heal the cities and bring them alive again with excitement and creativity and love. Gratitude and blessings to all who stand against greed, who risk themselves, to those who have bled and been wounded, and to those who have given their lives in service of the earth.


May all the healers of the earth find their own healing. May they be fueled by passionate love for the earth. May they know their fear but not be stopped by fear. May they feel their anger and yet not be ruled by rage. May they honor their grief but not be paralyzed by sorrow. May they transform fear, rage, and grief into compassion and the inspiration to act in service of what they love. 


May they find the help, the resources, the courage, the luck, the strength, the love, the health, the joy that they need to do the work. May they be in the right place, at the right time, in the right way. May they bring alive a great awakening, open a listening ear to hear the earth's voice, transform imbalance to balance, hate and greed to love. Blessed be the healers of the earth.

From "The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature"
by Starhawk http://www.starhawk.org/

Bathroom Cleaning

In keeping with our green ethos, I only use toxic-free products when cleaning our house. The key things are vinegar, bicarb soda, microfiber cloths and a home-made house cleaner. These keep everything sparkly and clean.

Bicarb is good for cleaning grout and together bicarb, vinegar and microfiber cloths are good at cleaning everything from toilet seats, benches and the bath (obviously not in that order LOL). But I was still having some trouble in the bathroom. The new house wasn’t kept clean before we lived here, and in some cases the dirt was very deeply ingrained (especially in the showers and toilets).

So I decided to try liquid Castile soap. Armed with nothing else other than a scrubbing brush, I went hard at the dirt. And the Castile soap was amazing. Cleaned it all away with no fuss. The grout is sparkling white again as are the toilets. I am in love with this as a cleaner now, especially since you can get it unfragranced.

So now between liquid Castile Soap and our household cleaner, I feel like I have all bases covered in the cleaning arena.

Home-made Household Cleaner

200mls vinegar

1 litre of water

40mls dishwashing detergent (I use Ecostore)

2 tbsps washing soda (also known as electric soda)

I just mix together in the order listed, give it a shake and then decant into spray bottles as required.

This is a great all purpose cleaner – cleans toilets, stainless steel, mirrors – you name it. It’s also really cheap to make, which is an added bonus J

If I was.....

After seeing this done by Thrift Candy, I was inspired to give it a go myself. If you feel like it, you should too!

If I was a month, I’d be November


If I was a day of the week, I’d be Friday

If I was a time of day, I’d be sunrise

If I was a planet, I’d be Earth


If I was an animal of the sea, I’d be a dolphin


If I was a direction, I’d be homeward bound


If I was a piece of furniture, I’d be a comfy reading chair


If I was a liquid, I’d be a raindrop

If I was a gemstone, I’d be a garnet


If I was a tree, I’d be an elder tree

If I was a tool, I’d be a screwdriver


If I was a material, I’d be soft organic cotton

If I was a kind of weather, I’d be the calm before the storm

If I was a musical instrument, I’d be a guitar

If I was a color, I’d be a rich deep blue


If I was an emotion, I’d be thoughtful

If I was a fruit, I’d be a strawberry

If I was a sound, I’d be laughter

If I was an element, I’d be earth

If I was an automobile, I’d be a cute little hybrid, like a Ford Econetic

If I was a food, I’d be home-made pizza

If I was a taste, I’d be salty

If I was a scent, I’d be freshly baked bread

If I was a place, I’d be Stonehenge

If I was a flower, I’d be a salvia

Lazy Sundays

Artwork by Art Harrison

Planted

- parsnips

Cooked

- Roast chicken with roast vegies & home-made gravy

Listening to

- No Baggage by Dolores O’Riordan

Watching

- The new Dr Who - hurry up and be 7.30pm already (though no-one beats David Tennant :-)

Project

- After watching Costa's Garden Odyssey this week, I spent today ripping up all my sheet mulching. We then mowed it down to the dirt, and started it all over again a la Costa. Also did this around our existing fruit trees (think lots of newspaper and lucerne mulch). Oh so very tired tonight.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see. - soulemama

 

Garden Update

I have carrots!! J We put copper around the edge of the vegie beds and lo and behold, the deadly snails have left the building. Now begins the battle with cabbage moths and caterpillars. I spent ages on Saturday squashing caterpillar eggs on all my pak choy mix. But soon I will start using organic garlic spray to keep the buggies at bay.

We have also dug over two of the summer vegie beds and put in lots of mixed manure and compost. Topped off with mulch we will leave these beds to rot down nicely over winter, in preparation for spring. In a few months, I will repeat the process so they develop nice rich earth.

We are still planting progressively for our winter garden and have had some really good growth.

The pak choy

Lovely new broad beans

Our cherry tomatoes are flowering again :-o

I’ve also been working heavily on the beds that I want to plant bare rooted fruit trees this winter. I’m trying to kill off all the grass, and improve the soil, so they can go into the ground at the start of June.

At the moment we have settled on a plum tree, an avocado tree, a few horseradish trees (which are edible and good for wood) and an elder tree (for the flowers and the fruit). Once the gardens are more established over the next 12 months, we hope to add some more fruit trees and a pistachio tree for Mr B.

May contain traces of.....

Cross contamination is really big issue in allergy families. I often feel like we live in an allergy minefield. Generally if Little B has a reaction (depending on that reaction, for example, soy makes him bleed internally) we know what has caused it.

But then we have days or in this case weeks, where Little B shows obvious signs of allergy (for him) and we quite literally have no idea what is causing it. Recently Little B had allergy shiners, looked very pale and unwell, was sleeping poorly and had really weird stools and we had no idea why. Nothing had changed in his diet or life.

So then you start to clutch at straws – is environmental?, growth spurt?, a new allergen?, cross contamination?....I could quite literally go on for pages and pages.

But then Little B started to bleed from his bowels and we knew that we had a serious problem on our hands. After numerous discussions with his paed gastro, we were resigned that we may have to begin the strict elimination diet all over again looking for new allergens. This was devastating to me as it would have been literally like taking 200 steps backward to 16 months ago.

Until we discovered that the rice milk we use is now cross contaminated with soy. They used to make the milks on different lines and now in the name of cost cutting and saving dollars, they make both milks on the same line. Which is sheer hell for allergy families like ours.

We have removed this milk from Little B’s diet and his health has begun to improve. Almost immediately his stomach and bowels settled down and he began sleeping again.

Cross contamination is hard enough at the best of times without companies banging soy into everything (but that’s another post altogether).