Green is the Color of My Life – Get in Touch with Nature and an Environmentally Sustainable Lifestyle

Insulate During a Home Remodel

Today is the two year anniversary of the beginning of our major home remodeling project. In 2015, we remodeled our main floor which is the living room, dining room, kitchen, and sun room. It was a big undertaking. It all started with our 13-year old dog having an accident on the very old, very gross carpet. We knew the carpet had to go, but we also knew that he would not be able to get around on the wood floors that I wanted to replace it with. His 13-year old Golden Retriever hips did not work so well on slick surfaces. Our poor old buddy Murphy was the only reason we still had the carpet. One day, we left him alone in the house for two hours while we went out to dinner, which was not unusual, but he could not hold his bladder and so he had an accident. But not just any accident, instead of going in one place, he made laps around the living room and dining room. It was impossible to clean. I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning, I ripped out the carpet. If you have ever read the children’s book, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, you know were this is going. If we were going to replace the flooring then, we should also remove the 1960’s wood paneling. If we remove the wood paneling then, we should go ahead and move the wall and open up the doorway. If we move the walls then, we should move and redo the kitchen. If we redo the kitchen, then we need to put in a new header and open up the sun room. And that is how it all began.

One of the things we wanted to do before we finished patching up the walls was to insulate. Our house was built in 1968 and has awesome thick lath and plaster walls, but no insulation. Even though this was the least gratifying part of the project, I am glad we did it. Why was it the least gratifying? Because once done, no one would be able to tell. It was not pretty or eye-catching. It was completely hidden, but very important. After our remodel, our house was much less drafty on the main level.

Long ago, in the last millennium (1999), I gutted a 2,800 ft²bungalow built in the 1920’s. My partner and I were trying our best to make our dollars go as far as possible. After putting on a new roof, tearing out the old leaking cast-iron plumbing, patching most of the walls, dry-walling all of the ceilings, replacing the old knob and tube wiring, and installing all new hardwood flooring, insulating was not on the top of my to-do list. In hindsight, insulating should have been a priority. It could easily have been done after the wiring was finished and before the walls had been patched. But honestly, it was not even on my radar.

A friend who came to help lift drywall to the ceiling one day asked if I was planning to insulate. He was a student of architecture with an emphasis on sustainable design. I emphatically told him no. I was drained, not financially, but emotionally. There was no way I was going to add another major project, let alone another major expense, to the project. It was short sighted. I sold the house in 2004, so it is no longer my problem, but it would have been the right thing to do. At that time, I did not even bother to do the math to see what it would have cost.

On our current home, with the help of my very handy dad, I drilled five-inch holes between each stud in all of the outside walls of the living room and the dining room, which is where the new kitchen was going to be. I rented the insulation blower from the local big box home improvement store. I estimated the amount of insulation I needed and bought a little more than that. (Because we all hate running out and having to make an extra trip back to get more, right!)

The insulation was a blow-in cellulose with 85% recycled material and an R-rating ranging from 13 to 30, depending on the thickness. For sidewall application in 4 inch stud walls the most we could expect was an R13. The outside walls are 8 feet high and the stretch of walls that need the insulation was 50 linear feet. I estimated that the space inside the walls to be filled was 132 ft³. According to the package, we needed 7 cubes of insulation at $7.99 per package; the total cost was $55.93. With the purchase of the insulation, the blower rental was a deposit which you were refunded once the blower was returned, in other words, free.

Running the blower with my dad was comedic. I wish someone had it on video. Because the blower was so heavy, we opted to leave it in the back of the truck and park the truck as near to the front door as possible. The downside is that we had to communicate while one of us was inside the house and the other was outside the house. Oh, and the blower was loud. Our first attempt resulted in more insulation being blown around the living room than actually in the wall. But once we figured it out, it was smooth sailing and did not take very long to finish the entire room. We saved the 5 inch plaster cut-outs and glued them back in to patch up the holes.

After blowing the insulation in to our house in 2015, I know now that do-it-yourself insulation is not that expensive. It is a messy pain, but I was actually surprised at how inexpensive it was. It took a little extra time and dry wall mud to patch up the holes, but the money and extra time was a great investment. We lowered out winter heating bills by about $XX per month, meaning that the ROI (return on investment) was only X months! Looking back at my old bungalow, I probably would have saved money on my $400 heating bill hand-over-fist if I had bothered to insulate. Lesson learned. Take it from me, always take the time to insulate if you are doing a major remodel of an older home!

I Want Chickens in the City

I live in the city and I want chickens. Not for dinner, but in my backyard. I live in a small mid-western city that does not allow the backyard birds. I am hoping to change this soon. I have oodles of friends who live outside the city limits and are enjoying their feathered friends. Not only do the chickens produce eggs, and take care of garden pests, but they also become a part of the family. They are given names and one friend even knits sweaters for her hens!

My city just recently reversed a ban on backyard beekeeping, so I have reason to hope. I am starting with an email to one of my city council members. The email begins with an inquiry to find out if anyone else has recently requested that the city allow chickens. My case primarily centers around the benefits in support of urban agriculture as a whole. I give examples of other cities that allow chickens. I state limitations that these cities have placed on having chickens. Finally, I request that our city change its rules to allow backyard chickens.

The email:

Dear Councilwoman,

I am writing to inquire whether the city has recently considered or been requested to consider allowing residents to keep chickens. I know that the city reversed its rules to allow backyard beekeeping and I commend the city for doing so. It has become the new standard to allow beekeeping in cities throughout the United States. I would even love to see Peoria become certified as a BeeCityUSA. Small scale agriculture is so important for a number of reasons:

1. Food Security – Provides high quality food which is very cheap to produce. In the U.S., poverty leaves families without enough food to have three meals a day. School-aged children are fortunate to have free lunch programs during the school year, but their families may still not be able to provide enough food for hungry growing children. Sometimes parents go without so that their children have enough. Growing food allows food insecure families to produce food to supplement their meager pantries with high quality healthy food.

2. Economic Benefits – Eating food grown locally means fresher lower cost for healthy food. As small grocers have been squeezed out by fewer larger grocery chains, urban areas develop so called food deserts where people have to travel an unusually far distance to find food. In low income areas where people may not have reliable transportation, traveling to a grocery store that has produce can be a huge hurdle to eating health. Fresh grown food give people a way to produce healthy food which is cheap without having to travel. Even for low income people who can travel to grocery stores, fresh produce is usually an expensive luxury.

3. Social Benefits – It connects people to the earth when they grow their own food. Children can learn first hand how vegetables grow and see the various stages from seedling to the final edible product. Actively engaging youth in urban agriculture is a positive alternative to avoid other less productive and even harmful activities, ranging from watching too much TV to becoming involved in gangs. For older residents, urban agriculture can become a hobby that instills pride and enjoyment in life.

4. Rural Ecology – The environment is improved through urban agriculture as the ecosystem benefits through increased numbers of plants, animals, and insects thriving and contributing to a rural ecology. A city void of nature becomes a harsh concrete jungle. Hot temperatures contribute to death among the elderly and increased violence. Urban ecology can even lower inner city temperatures during hot summers. Additionally, raising food locally cuts down on carbon emissions from transporting food from all over the country to the grocery stores.

Gardening allows residents to grow highly nutritious vegetables and fruits. Beekeeping gives people a much healthier alternative to sugar while supporting pollinators which is so important to the environment. If city residents were able to keep backyard chickens, they would benefit by having a great source of protein for very low cost. For families who struggle to put food on the table having fresh eggs is a wonderful source of protein for growing children who would otherwise be food insecure.

Many cities across the country have recently allowed inner city chicken coops: Ann Arbor, MI, Ft. Collins, CO, and Portland, ME. Cities in Illinois that allow backyard chickens include Chicago, St Charles, Naperville, Downers Grove and Oak Park. The city of Chicago allows hens for egg laying, but restricts hens raised for slaughter. In Chicago you can own any kind of livestock – chicken, goats, pigs, bees – as long as you do not intend to raise it in order to kill it for food. So, you can own goats for milk, pigs as pets and bees for honey. There are no restrictions on how many you can own or what type of housing you need to provide, however you must also be in compliance with other ordinances, such as public nuisance ordinances, think smells and noises. In addition, any structures you build must be in compliance with building codes and permits. Further, there is a restriction on bird keeping facilities as a home occupation.

Generally ordinances for keeping chickens in urban areas do not allow roosters because they are a nuisance and have a limit to the number of hens that can be kept. Similar to my city’s recent city beehive ordinance, chicken coops may also have restrictions for size, placement and distance from property lines. Please consider allowing chickens to be kept within the city. The benefits are numerous and will align our city with other progressive cities across the country.

Respectfully,

Kate

Keeping my fingers crossed. I will update when I get a response.

By Kate | August 7, 2017 | Chickens, Small Scale Agriculture | 0 Comments | Like

Ditch the Plastic Sandwich Baggie

Packing lunch is usually healthier than buying lunch in a cafeteria, restaurant, sandwich shop, or a fast food joint. And bringing lunch from home is almost always cheaper. But it is not always greener. Convenience is king when racing around in the morning and trying to get yourself and the family out the door. The plastic sandwich baggie is so convenient. They are cheap and slim. They keep the mess inside and can even contain all the other lunch garbage into one waste packet; stuff the dirty napkins and banana peel inside, zip it up, and throw it away. Think no more of it until the next morning.

I am not perfect. Remember I am on a journey to do better! My confession: I am guilty of using plastic sandwich baggies. They are especially great for containing a PB&J for kids eating in the car on the run. For a family of four who packs sandwiches, chips, carrots and cookies, this can mean 16 fewer washable containers in the sink at night. And heaven forbid anyone forget to take the containers out of their lunch bag and have to deal with smelly warm food leftovers. So there is the ick factor as well. Plastic baggies reduce the ick factor big time.

It sounds like I am rooting for the plastic baggie. Let’s see, convenient, cheap, fewer dishes, less ick…it is true, they have many great qualities. Except that they are disposable and create a lot of waste which takes a long long time to decompose in a landfill. Plastic baggies cause major problems when animals encounter them in their habitats, especially in freshwater or saltwater environments.

This year I am committing to ditch the plastic sandwich baggies for good. Even though we may have to rinse and load 16 additional containers into the dishwasher at night, we will save about 1,000 plastic baggies from going into the landfill each year by using washable reusable containers. Since the first day of school is right around the corner, I just stocked up on reusable sandwich sized containers and smaller snack containers for my kids to take to school.

There are a number of alternatives for taking lunches without creating unnecessary waste that will go into the landfill. Here are some of the alternatives:

Plastic containers – Tupperware and Rubbermaid are probably the most well known brands of plastic storage. This is what we use mostly in our house. Most of our containers are the cheapo ones that we picked up at the grocery store out of convenience and low price. Sturdier plastic containers generally last longer, but cost more initially. We have also accumulated a few from purchasing lunch meat that comes packaged in a plastic container. One plus for plastic reusables is that they are great for kids. For one, they are light weight. Many have latching mechanisms that are easy for little hands. And they do not pose a dangerous risk if dropped, as opposed to glass containers. I know plastic is not the best health-wise, but I do not plan to replace them until they crack. Once they have outlived their usefulness, the containers are recyclable. As my kids get older and I need to replace my food storage containers, I do plan to invest in something other than plastic.
Glass containers – Rubbermaid, Pyrex, and Anchor seem to be the leaders in glass food storage containers. Most glass food containers have plastic lids, but the glass is the only material in contact with food. Glass containers are a safer bet for reheating food in the microwave than plastic. One downside to glass is that it is heavy to carry in a lunch bag. Another downside is that it is breakable which poses a risk to kids especially. When a glass container breaks, it may need to be disposed of as trash, not recycling unfortunately. Our recycling hauler prohibits broken glass in our recycling.
Metal containers – Metal food containers are newer as a food storage option. In response to BPA found in plastic years back, quite a few metal stainless steel containers came on to the market. The first ones I saw were in the form of bento boxes for kids’ lunches. Metal tends to be heavier than plastic, but it is nearly impossible to break. Some metal storage containers even have metal lids, while others have plastic lids. Because metal containers are unlikely to ever break, they will just about last forever. If there ever was a reason to dispose of a metal container, it would be recyclable. One downside to metal containers is that you can not see what is in them unless you open the lid. I personally like to see what is sitting in my fridge without opening each container. But for lunch containers this would be a great solution.
Mason jars – I considered lumping Mason jars in with glass containers, but I feel that they are in a category of their own. Typically used for canning since 1858 (according to wikipedia.com), the Mason jar was the first screw top lid on a glass jar. Previous to the iconic Mason jar, canning in glass had only been around since the turn of the 18th century. Before the patented Mason screw top lid, lids were made of wax, glass and metal wire. Recently, Mason jars seem to have become popular as storage for food, not just for canning purposes. Mason jars are great for taking soups and salads to work. I have even seen Mason jars used for drinking glasses in kitsch restaurants.
Silicone baggies – Silicone seems to be gaining in popularity for a number of kitchen uses. There are formed silicone containers similar to plastic food storage containers. And now, I have just recently found silicone baggies! This is very exciting. Silicone baggies may be the key to my breakup with plastic sandwich baggies for good. No rebounding! I have some sitting in my Amazon.com cart as I type. One huge benefit to silicon containers and baggies it that they are collapsible and require much less storage space than plastic, glass, or metal containers. They can also be washed in the dishwasher, which is a huge plus for me. While being most similar to plastic sandwich baggies, silicone baggies have the benefit of being able to withstand very cold temps (-58℉) and very hot temps (482℉). Silicone is very durable and does not breakdown, however it is not impervious to being cut. When I googled, it does say that silicone is recyclable, but I am not sure if silicone recycling is common. Check with your local recycling center.
Cloth & plastic baggies – There are a number of options for using cloth and plastic baggies to replace disposable plastic sandwich baggies. If you opt for cloth without a plastic coating, then you will be limited to storing dry foods, such as chips and cookies. If you opt for plastic coated baggies, depending on how they are made, you may be able to store wetter food items as well, think fruits and vegetables. There are also some baggies made out of a more durable reusable plastic without the cloth; these are typically transparent. Most cloth baggies have very stylish patterns. Closures are either zippers, Velcro, or drawstring. The downside of these bags is that most are not dishwasher safe and must either be hand-washed or laundered. The plus is that if you can sew, you can make these yourself!
Waxed paper – If you are looking for something in between reusable and disposable, compostable is another option. Good old fashioned waxed paper. You can buy waxed paper in sheets or bags. There are varying thicknesses available. It is not going to be good for liquid tight storage, but will work just fine for sandwiches, chips, cookies, and even vegetables. Lay flat and wrap your food as you would a present, hold together with masking tape. Parchment paper may work too, but do not confuse waxed paper with freezer paper. Freezer paper has a plastic coating on one side which is not compostable. You may think that using waxed paper is a cop-out, but understand that waxed paper will biodegrade in about one month, whereas a plastic sandwich baggie can take 20 to 1,000 years! If you want to be greener without the added dishes, this is a great alternative.
Aluminum Foil – Another oldie, but goodie. Aluminum foil can be used to wrap food for lunches and is still a better option than the plastic sandwich baggie because the aluminum foil can be recycled.

As you can see there are a lot of alternatives to using the plastic sandwich baggie. Some of us just do not have the time to wash the extra containers and waxed paper may be the best. Others may be trying to live a completely plastic free life and metal is the way to go. Whichever you choose, any of these options is better than the plastic sandwich baggie, so DITCH IT! I am.

End of July Plant Sale: 50% Off

By late July, most people are over their gardening frenzy for the year. According to a friend of my husband who manages a local greenhouse, most plants are purchased before Mother’s Day. The peak being Mother’s Day itself, then it slowly tapers off until the July 4th holiday. After that, people are pretty set until it is time for mums and pumpkins. The plants that are left over in late July are drastically reduced. I could not resist as I drove past the greenhouse up the road. I stopped in to see what was left. I was actually hoping to find more vegetables for my garden since I had just harvested most of the cauliflower and broccoli for the year which left a big opening for something else.

However, no vegetable plants remained. Only flowers and decorative plants were left, mostly perennials. The larger perennials were all 50% off and some were only $1 a piece. Did I really need a trunk-load of perennials? Need? No. But I just couldn’t pass up a deal. We still have spots to fill in our flower beds and the price was right. I also got a few annuals to replace the ones my dog ate out of my pots!

Another nice thing about buying flowers in late July, besides being super cheap, is that many of the plants were flowering so that I could see what they really looked like. I already had purple cone flower in two beds in our yard and I love the way they look. At the greenhouse, I found cone flower in red, orange and yellow! Same with yarrow, I have a white one already and love it, so I bought a yellow and a red.

When I got everything home, it was nearly noon and it was already pretty hot and sticky. So I set everything in the shade and decided to wait until it was cooler out before planting everything. The weather report said that there was to be a big thunderstorm coming in from the west around 7:30 PM. At around 4:00 PM, the sky became overcast and the air started to cool down. I put on my grubby shorts and my garden sandals, grabbed the shovel out of the garage, and headed for the backyard.

I went to work figuring out where to put everything. This is really not my forte, I will admit. In fact, I often move plants around years after I originally plant them because they flower at the wrong time or they are too big for where I put them. So for me, the most difficult part of planting these new additions is figuring out where to put them. I need to look at my beds and simultaneously think about what color the flowers are, when the flowers will bloom, and how big the plant will get.

First, I needed to think of the plants that are already there and what color their flowers are. My goal is to have nice mix of colors throughout, so that I do not have a monotone garden. As is the case for one of my beds; in early June all the pink flowers bloomed, following that, all of the yellow flowers bloomed, never achieving a good mix of color, as I intended.

Which brings me to the second requirement, not only do I need to think about the particular color of my old plants and new additions, but also when they flower. Some flower in early spring and are done for the year. Others flower on and off throughout the seasons. And still others wait to flower until summer or late summer. Since it is now mid-summer, it is still pretty fresh in my memory which flowers bloomed and when, with many flowers in full bloom at present.

The third consideration is the plant’s height and width. It can be deceiving to see a potted plant in the greenhouse. It may be only twelve inches now, but the tag says it reaches up to five feet! This is where I have a hard time visualizing. I think I can see something working well in a particular spot, but when the plant reaches maturity, it sometimes just looks odd and so I move it. I really try to foresee the end result because I hate moving plants after they have been established. They often do not take being uprooted very well. It can take a couple of years for it to recover and sometimes it works out, but sometimes moving a plant kills it.

We have six areas of flower beds. Two in the front yard and four in the backyard, not including our main vegetable garden. In the front yard, one bed flanks our front porch and the other borders our western property line which is buffered by the neighbors low retaining wall. In the backyard, the largest flower bed is really just a continuation of the western flower bed from the front yard which is separated by a fence. It continues along the entire length of our western property line with the retaining wall on our side in the backyard.

The second of the four backyard flower beds was half flowers, half vegetable garden, but last year we established a thorn-less blackberry bush and a strawberry patch in this area. This year I squeezed in a couple of green bean plants to share the trellis with the blackberry, but the blackberry keeps trying to take over.

Bed three borders the top and bottom of a low boulder wall where our yard changes grade. This is the bed that challenges me the most. Because it is in the middle of our most usable yard space, it is weird to have the plants too high, so I keep planting and reorganizing this bed especially. Having plants that are too tall have felt all wrong. The kids and the dog often go through this area while running around the yard. I may be inclined to ask my husband to redo it when we put in a new patio and a deck eventually.

Which brings us to bed number four which has been completely neglected for the past five years. When we first moved into the house 10 years ago, we pulled out masses of rose of Sharon saplings and added some other flowering plants and hostas and kept it looking tidy. Over the past 10 years, we have slowly redone all parts of our yard and this area happens to be the last frontier. Needless to say, we do not spend much time on this bed since we know that we will be ripping it all out to build a new retaining wall and deck off of our kitchen. Stay tuned for that! I am hoping for this fall!

Back to the new plants: I was in the middle of planting when my husband came home at 5:00 PM. He jumped right in to help. I had set everything where it was to be planted and he grabbed another shovel and did twice the work in half the time as I was doing. I had picked two plants to fill in holes in the flower bed by the front porch: one lupine and one geranium. The rest went in the backyard. We planted 3 cone flowers, 2 yarrows, 3 hollyhocks, 1 red flame?, 2? white striped leaves, 3? hot pink boarder, and 2 red dianthus. (However, after deciding where to place the dianthus, I decided to buy about 10 more to edge the entire side of the driveway in the western backyard bed. I had better get back to the greenhouse before all the plants are gone!) We mulched using a pile of mulch Jake brought home last week. We finished by 6:00 PM and the storm blew in at 7:30 PM as promised to give our new plants a well needed watering. It all looks lovely!

How NOT to Compost

I always have the best intentions. I have guilt when I throw organic matter in the trash. In my renewed conviction to compost my kitchen scraps this summer, I dug this lovely container out from under the sink. I had heaps of scraps from cutting up vegetables from the garden in order to freeze them. I put them all in the compost container knowing that I needed to go get more red worms to begin my vermiculture back up. (More on that later.) But I have procrastinated and there they sit, rotting. Which is what compost is, but not very pleasant on the kitchen counter.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the stainless steel kitchen compost container. Jut the composter….me! I have my putrefying vegetable scraps sitting on my kitchen counter. You would think my house smelled like garbage, I’m sure. But surprisingly it does not. The stainless steel compost container ha s two carbon air filters to keep the stink out. Only when you lift the lid, you get hit in the face with the awful smell.

And the worm bin in the basement, does not smell at all. It looks super gross, but it mostly smells earthy. So I have my nearly worm-less vermiculture bin in the basement. A few years ago, I began composting kitchen scraps in my basement. I kind of let it go for the past year and there it sat. I couldn’t hear them screaming and I got busy and just forgot about it. I should be arrested for wormicide. I checked my worm bin to see if there were any survivors. Worms are pretty hardy little fellas. There were a few remaining in the goop.

Tomato Killer: Green Hornworm Caterpillar

Today in my garden while watering, I came across this big guy attached to the underside of a leaf near the top of one of my tomato plants. I had never seen this creature before. I thought it could be a monarch butterfly caterpillar, but it seemed too big and not stripey enough. I posted a photo on my Facebook page asking if anyone could identify it. The next morning there was unanimous consensus that it was a green hormworm caterpillar and I needed to get rid of it immediately. Not only that but, that this little guy and his friends could wipe out my tomato plants quickly if I did not get rid of them.

One friend through experience said that I should check my tomatoes twice a day and kill these critters by hand. She had just dealt with the same in her tomatoes and warned that they would quickly strip my plants bare. She said to look at the top of the plants under the leaves – which describes exactly where I found my guy. She kept at her twice a day worm search for a week until she was satisfied that they were all gone.

Another friend concurred saying that one hornworm stripped her tomato plant in one afternoon! She suggested putting white poster board under the plants because the worm poop will be easily seen. Green hornworm caterpillar poop looks like the lead of a pencil. She said if you see the poop that means the worms are still there. If you want to more polite about it, we can call it insect frass, according to some of the other websites I searched.

A third friend said that they are easy to find by following the path of destruction. Simply look for the eaten damaged leaves and there will be sure to be a green hornworm close by. I decided that this was the easiest way to start, so I went out to survey the damage, expecting the worst and worrying that it would be hard to find my guy in the viney tomato jungle.

At first look, I could see no eaten leaves. Upon close inspection, some of the leaves were withering but definitely not eaten. I went to the spot where I had seen my green hornworm caterpillar and found him to be sitting just about where he had been the day before. Not only that, but I could not see any sign that he was destroying my plants! Why the good fortune? There is more this story.

See those white pill shaped things all over? Those are not part of the caterpillar, those are wasp eggs. I am not sure which kind of wasp; I see quite a few different species of wasp in my yard. The wasp eggs are actually good news for me. Bad news for the caterpillar. The wasp eggs are a parasite and are feeding on the caterpillar and they will eventually kill it. So after reading more about it, because the wasp eggs are present, the recommendation is to leave the caterpillar so that the natural predator of the green hornworm caterpillar be allowed to feed and hatch.

After carefully assessing the rest of my tomato plants and being pretty sure that there were no other worms. I took the one green hornworm caterpillar from my big beautiful tomato plant and moved him to another volunteer over to the side of my garden in case he started to feel hungry. The following day, I went out again to check on him and he had hardly moved. His top appendages (arms?) were not even holding on to the stem and he seemed paralyzed. I believe the wasps were feeding on him and he would not be around much longer.

Named for the horn at the end of the larval body, there are actually two types of green hornworm caterpillars: the tobacco hornworm and the tomato hornworm, obviously we are dealing with the latter. The green hornworm can complete two life cycles per year between May through October. The eggs are very small (0.05 inch) with a light green to white color and are deposited on the underside of leaves. The egg stage averages five days. There are five larval instar stages which average 20 days during which the hornworm grows larger during each successive stage to a final length of up to 3.2 inches long. At the last instar the larva develops to a pupa, dropping to the soil to burrow and form a pupa cell. The moth that develops from the pupa stage has a wingspan of nearly four inches. The complete life cycle of the green hornworm is between 30 to 50 days.*

Besides tomatoes, they also have an appetite for peppers, eggplant, and potatoes. It is really too bad that the green hornworm caterpillar is such a garden pest because it turns into quite a lovely moth. The moth is a type of hummingbird moth and like hummingbirds they are pollinators and can hover over flowers to drink nectar with their long tongues. They may also be called Sphinx moths or Hawk moths.

* Source of life cycle information: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/field/hornworm.htm

Living in the Mid-west without Air-conditioning

July in the mid-west is hot. Not just hot, but humid. (Say it with a long drawn out “h” because that is how it feels.) So humid. Here in the middle of Illinois not many people live without air-conditioning. Why am I torturing my family with this medieval atmosphere? My husband and I actually like it warm. Maybe we are crazy, it is a possibility. We have a handful of days that are downright sweltering and miserable, I’ll admit it. But even then something about living in it makes me feel alive. Sweaty, but alive.

I remember visiting my grandparents as a kid. They kept their modest St. Louis ranch like a deep freeze. In comparison, the house I grew up in was not so frigid. My childhood home was built somewhere around 1865. Because it was old and drafty and expensive to heat and cool, my dad opted to install A/C only on the second floor where our bedrooms were located. Downstairs remained reasonably cool but not icy.

Perhaps because I have bad circulation. Or I am part snake. I hate being cold and I love being warm. Perfect to me is 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I know some people who would melt at this temperature. I have had co-workers and bosses who would freeze me out at 65 degrees in the office. There have been times that I would wear heavier clothes to work in summer months than in winter months.

We have lived in our home for 10 years now, since 2007. Up until three years ago, we had functioning central air. In the summer of 2014, we needed to have the Freon recharged. Then in July 2015, the Freon ran out again. Diagnosis: there was a hole in the line and our a/c unit needed to be replaced. We also happened to be in the middle of a huge remodeling project (kitchen, living room, dining room, & sunroom). For our kitchen remodel, I had decided to keep our stove and oven electric, and not switch to gas as I originally wanted to. (I do love cooking on a gas range!) My decision to stay electric was because of my future desire to get solar power.

What does this have to do with my no A/C story. A lot, actually. Here is my dilemma: if we get a new A/C unit now, we would either have to go with an older style to match our older furnace (2000) or pay more to replace the coil to upgrade to a better A/C unit. The lowest quote for the former was for around $2,100 and for the latter, around $3,500. For most people this may have been an easy decision to make, but for us, this means spending two grand on something we literally use for maybe two weeks out of the entire year.

There is also the possibility that our old furnace might not last that much longer either. It could last ten years more, I suppose. But it is a natural gas, forced central air heater. Remember, I want to convert to all electric. In short, I guess we are willing to suffer through a few miserable weeks of stickiness to uphold our ideal of eventually converting to electric climate control. Plus, I think of how much less electricity we are using in the summer months. One of these days, I am going to figure out how much less CO2 and other harmful air pollutants are being emitted from the coal-fired power plant because we are not using A/C.

How do we survive? It is really not as bad as it seems. You see, we have a whole-house-fan. (Hear the choir of angels sing!) This is our life saver in the summertime. I do not think we could survive without it. We turn the whole-house-fan on at night when it is cooler outside. The WHF sucks the cool air inside and the hot air gets sucked up and out through the attic. (add link to article on how to optimize using a WHF) Most nights during the summer, it actually gets chilly and I have to turn it off before I go to bed around midnight.

During the past three summers of no A/C there are other ways we have learned to keep our house cooler. (add link to article on top 10 ways to keep your house cool without A/C) I would still like to improve on these efforts. On the top of my list, installing awnings or shutters to the south and west facing windows of our home. Maybe by the time our gas furnace quits, we will be so good at keeping cool by other means we will not even need A/C. Wouldn’t that be great!

Special Delivery, Recycling Cardboard Boxes

Every month I get a special delivery brought to my front door. It saves me time and money for the staples that I know we will need every month. I like it especially for big bulky items. I was buying dog food from a local big box store, but the store discontinued the exact food we need for our dog. I requested that the store keep that item in stock, but they said it was a decision that was made at the corporate level and they could not change it. I buy two thirty pound bags of giant breed dog food each month for my Great Dane. I would have continued to buy it at my local store. When they told me that they would not carry it anymore, I could have searched other local stores to see if they had it. However, I have spent hours driving from store to store in search of other items without luck, so I was not looking forward to hunting for the dog food locally.

Convenience won out and I searched online instead. I know I am not alone in shifting spending habits from brick and mortar to online purchasing. Not only did I find the dog food I was looking for, but it was cheaper and the heavy cumbersome bags are now delivered right to my front door. I save probably an hour of my time each month and a half a tank of gas to drive to get it.

By Kate | July 9, 2017 | Conscious Consumer, Everyday | 0 Comments | Like

How We Recycle

In our small city, the way we recycle has evolved through the years. It used to be a paid curb-side pick-up, once a week, in small 10-gallon tubs, and certain items had to be separated: glass, plastic, metal, and paper. The tubs for the program were free, or borrowed rather, but each household had to pay for the service for the pleasure of recycling. The other option, if you did not want to pay to recycle, was to take your recycling to a drop-off center; there were and still are about half-a-dozen locations around the city.

Then about ten years ago, to encourage more people to recycle, the city changed to a free single-stream curb-side pick-up. Now everyone can recycle from home without having to pay for the service. I know, I know, nothing is free. The caveat is that the pick-up changed to once per month and residents have to pay a one time fee of $50 for the 95-gallon tote. This recycling scheme was thrown in to sweeten the deal for the new waste hauler to win the contract for hauling garbage for the city residents. And overall, it really is a better way to recycle.

Let’s breakdown why the current way is better:

Single-stream vs. sorting – Sorting recycling at home is a pain. It requires multiple storage containers which takes up more floor space in the garage (or wherever it is that one has room to store recycling): one for glass, one for plastic, one for metal, and one for paper. It means that you have to either take recycling directly out to the garage bins or that you have to handle each item again from a co-mingled collection in the kitchen to sort later into the garage bins. Single-stream, on the other hand, is recycling that is mixed together in one big bin. Glass, plastic, metal, and paper all go into one recycling container. You can collect all items in a co-mingled container in the kitchen and dump the entire contents into a large bin in the garage much like taking out the trash.
Paid bin vs. paid service – The city knows that all citizens have garbage and likely 100% use the city’s trash pick-up. (And they should, they pay for it after all!) However, I am not sure if there is a community anywhere in the U.S. that voluntarily recycles at 100%. So the hauling company did not want to drop a 95-gallon tote off at every house in the city. They only wanted to drop totes off for those who would actually use them. And to off-set the cost, they charged a one-time $50 fee for the recycling tote. They do have a program for low income families to request a tote with the fee waived. There was no fee waiver for the weekly curb-side pick-up that I know of. Those who could not afford the service only had the option of driving to the drop-off center. Paying for the weekly recycling service was something like $10 per month, if my memory serves me right. Paying $50 once, is a much better deal than paying $120 per year, every year.
Once a month vs. once a week – Collecting recycling only once per month on the surface seems like a bad deal. In fact, I was upset and pretty dead against this new way of doing things at first. But bear with me, I will admit that I was wrong and I have come to appreciate the once per month schedule. The once per month schedule is why this service can operate for free. This is twelve times per year, versus fifty-two times per year. I have no idea how much is costs to run all of the routes for the entire city, but this is a 77% decrease in trucks, fuel, and man-hours. Let’s guesstimate: if say, per day that it costs $250 per truck, $200 per man, for 20 routes throughout the city the total is $9,000 to run the recycling routes for one week. If we still had the once a week pick-ups (52 times per year) this would total $468,000, versus the once per month pick-ups (12 times per year) at $108,000, for the year. I may be way off on my numbers, but you get the idea; it is way cheaper as often is the case it is greener. If it takes a tank of diesel per truck per day this is also a 77% savings from burning fossil fuels and all of the associated emissions. Now you can see how I came around to appreciate the once per month pick-ups.

Single-stream recycling is dumped into a garbage truck and taken to the recycling center where it is sorted through a series of mechanical and manual methods.

Our city has truly made recycling as easy as possible and it is hard to understand why some people still do not recycle. I actually think my family needs to get another recycling tote so that we can recycle more. Toward the end of the month, I know my husband starts trashing the recyclables because we are running out of room in the tote. There were also a few months when I missed putting the tote out on the curb and then we would have to wait an entire month for the pick-up. (Admittedly because we were too lazy and busy to take it to a drop-off center.) I called once to see if they could come back because I had missed the truck. That is when I found out that there is a free opt-in text reminder to alert you to put your recycling out the night before pick-up! Since signing up for the text alerts I have not missed any pick-ups. Now I just need to get that extra tote and make sure everything makes it into the recycling.

10 Ways to Stay Cool this Summer

List 10 Ways…

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