Too tired to cook: May 2008

It might not be easy, but I'm trying to add a little "green" to our lives. Now I haven't done anything drastic like change our heating to a geothermal system or add solar panels to our roof. Those are things I would like to do, but they take quite a bit of up-front money to accomplish. So for right now I'm settling for making little changes that don't take much of my time or money.

So far this spring I have:
• Started hanging laundry to dry outside (I'd guess about 90% of our laundry gets hung to dry)
• Planted a garden (OK, I cannot take credit, Alex has done all the gardening planning and planting, he even built the raised beds!)
• Called our utility company and signed up for summer appliance cycling. They installed a switch on our central A/C unit and during peak demand times during the summer will cycle our A/C in 15 minute increments. We get a monthly credit on our bill for doing this.
• Nearly stopped drinking water from plastic water bottles. Instead I'm mostly using re-usable cups or hard plastic (washable and re-usable) water bottles and tap water.

Here's a few pictures of our "green" efforts:

The raised garden boxes - the closest one is narrow and will have herbs (planted but not yet sprouting). The next one has green beans (just coming up) followed by a box with cantaloupe and squash. The fourth box is tomatoes and peppers (yummy, my favorite!) and the last box that the kids are by is lettuce and strawberries.

Natalie and Andrew are helping me pick some lettuce for supper. We have a green leaf, a mixed variety and spinach. Andrew ate a piece of raw spinach and declared it goooooood. Now that's a first!