Mostly Excuses

Here's what I want to do to live more sustainably:

1. Plant a little garden - if I plant a little garden, there's half a chance that it would succeed. A big garden would be a definite fail. I'm not a gardener. I like knowing what the plants are and how they grow, but I've got a yellow thumb and I forget to take care of the plants. Just now, I realized that Seth has eaten the second to last leaf of my shamrock. How unlucky is that?
2. Buy locally - I used to belong to a CSA, Jubilee Farms. They were wonderful, farming as organically as they could, growing unusual produce for me to experiment with, stretching my palate, and generally teaching me and Nick more about farming. I learned that I don't particularly want to farm. See the first on the list. But as a child, Nick picked strawberries, peas, green beans. I allowed him to play with a collard leaf one afternoon if he promised to eat it. I had to look it up to see if he could eat it raw since he said he didn't want me to cook it. Raw was good. The reasons I stopped being a member of the CSA were that I ran out of time to pick my produce in the summer even though picking peas always reminded me of my grandma. I stopped because I didn't get to pick what I wanted and there were lots of foods I couldn't eat. I stopped because it got to a point that I was the only one eating the produce because Mike couldn't and Nick didn't want to and it clogged the refrigerator and spoiled. I reasoned that being a member of a CSA was not helpful if the food was going into the garbage too often. Plus, I got really sick on the same day I ate burdock root and even the sound of the word makes me a little sick to my stomach even though it is years later. My revised and reduced plan is to visit more farmer's markets. I could find time to do that, buying more locally, buying more sustainably-grown foods. Plus, I think it would be fun to see what people were growing and making out there. But most of the farmer's markets start in May. What are we supposed to eat until then?
3. Tell you more of my ideas - I admit that the idea of getting all those gym people to put energy back onto the grid was a strange one, but you should hear my idea for wind-farm house paneling to capture breezes. There is always a breeze. When the air is completely still, it's weird. Still, I have no idea if harnessing the breezes would bring in enough power to make the whole idea worth it. But I'm certain it would be pretty.
4. Donate - When I get money, if I get money of my own, I will donate to endeavors that are working to educate us, to change our hearts, to implement their own ideas for living sustainably. Right now, I don't earn enough to make any percentage of a donation worth anything. So far, I've given $6.00 to the Indivisibles group that was my donation from my Angry Housewife Fights Tyranny book royalties. Six damned dollars. Pathetic, right? But at least I had the idea to benefit the Indivisibles groups with my royalties. A bonus is that if we get Trump out of the Oval Office, we might get on with our fight against climate change. With royalties from a climate change book, I'd support the Sierra Club or the Environmental and Energy Study Institute or - do you have any good ideas? I might even buy carbon offsets, but I have a little problem with the idea that every single person in the world could make enough carbon offset donations to actually fight climate change. See what I mean? Someone has to lean the other direction to make it balance.
5. Compost - The hard part about composting is that it attracts rodents. Living out here in the forest, we have rodents. We even have a bear. Do they make a bear-proof compost bin? I could see a heavy-duty plastic bin that's been clawed and rolled around until the contents had no need to be turned. Leaves and yard debris would be fine. I could start with that, but we already do that by leaving our yard alone so much of the time. Debris just goes back into the earth without being dug up. See? I'm good. All I have to do is eliminate all yard work and let my yard go fallow. Perfect, right? In a hundred years, I'll have a good inch of useful topsoil. When you ask me to add food scraps into the mix, I start thinking of the rats that plague Mike's power tools in the garage. We lost a drill press to a nest. This was a drill press that could drill a hole into your tailgate. It was a serious piece of equipment. It would still be working if mice or rats hadn't nested inside it, if they hadn't chewed the heck out of the wiring inside it. So, whenever I mention composting, Mike goes all gray in the face and clenches his teeth. He has a war going with the rodents in the garage. He won't even buy grass seed and put it into a hard plastic bucket. Those beasts chewed right through that thing. But I might be able to quietly put some leaves and sticks into an old plastic tub and make my own dirt so I can stop buying that crap they sell at the garden center. Yes, I could make my own dirt, eventually.
6. Sleep more and do less - just kidding.

I'll have to go to one of those big lists and see if there are any other things I can do to fight climate change. What I've got here are a bunch of excuses. I'm feeling rather ineffective right now. But at least I'm still thinking about how I can have an effect, how I can maximize my impact.

Thank you for listening, jules