No Impact Project

The No Impact Project takes the environmental "gateway" action concept to a whole other level.

I'm kind of tempted to try this. But maybe not this week, when I evilly have to fly to Rotorua and Auckland for work.

Ooh, new garden shop! *wriggles toes happily*

Very excited about Grow from Here, the garden shop on Abel Smith St that just opened TODAY!

Although I've been doing extremely well on being plastic-free in the garden this year, I thought I'd show them some support (and divert my dollars to help create the world I want—ie one where there's a garden shop five minutes walk away :) by buying a basil plant in a (plastic) pot and a (plastic) bag of potting mix.

Did make me laugh when I got to the checkout after thinking about all this and they carefully asked me if I needed a plastic carry bag instead of automatically giving me one, saying "We try not to use too many plastic bags."

Makes me realise that I've moved on from just thinking about plastic bags to noticing disposable plastic everywhere.

Some people are dismissive and say that focusing on not using plastic bags is a waste of time because it lets people feel they are being "green" when in fact plastic bag use (or not) has only a very small impact. But I think that maybe taking a reuseable bag shopping is a gateway action, like drug scaremongers say marijuana is a "gateway" to harder drugs. Making one (easy, obvious) change makes you realise that change is possible, and gets you thinking about stuff.

Good on you Grow from Here. Bless your little heart for taking that first step.

Plastic-free Evans Bay

I filled a plastic supermarket bag (ironic, no?) with bits of plastic picked up off one of the beaches on Evans Bay Parade this weekend. Still thinking about the Pacific Garbage Patch.

That'll be 0.000000000000001% of it fixed, then.

Apricot, nectarine and peach season

Ah ha, brilliant find on the interweb:

I have always felt unsure when apricots, nectarines and peaches come into season. I think of them as summer fruit, but they seem to appear in the markets at a time that I still think of as spring, making me suspicious ...

Have just found a brilliant summer fruit calendar, listing when each one comes into season. And—hooray—apricot and peach season is just around the corner. To celebrate, I'm adding them to the "in season" list, even if it is maybe just a teeny bit early.

Note to self: The Three Sisters

As an experiment I planted The Three Sisters in the garden this year—that's a traditional Native American system where sweetcorn, beans and pumpkins all planted together. It's amazingly efficient—the beans grow up the corn stalks and the pumpkins grow around on the ground between them.

I wasn't sure how to do it so I planted everything together. It looks like I should have waited for the corn to grow a bit before planting the beans—right now the beans are zooming ahead.

Glimmer of hope

HOLD EVERYTHING!

Baking soda PLUS cornflour!

I'll let you know how deodorant 2.0 works out ...

More plastic-free takeaways

I've updated the plastic-free takeaways post, thanks to some info from a friend :)

I'm thankful for the timing, because lately I've been thinking a lot about Beth Terry's line "There is no 'away'" (I usually think about this while I'm throwing some piece of plastic "away" in the rubbish bin), and also about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre.

Someone recently told me that this is like an iceburg—what you see on the surface is only a tiny portion of what is below the surface. The thought of all that plastic rubbish floating around in the ocean makes me want to rush out to the nearest beach and start picking up every bit of rubbish I can see.