Sustainability has always been extremely important to my family of four. However, I never realized the full extent of our environmentally conscious lifestyle until I compared it to those of other people.
I was born and raised in Dana Point, living in the same house my entire life. South Orange County is not known for being particularly “green”. However, growing up, I never knew that. Our backyard is relatively small, but my dad used all the available space to build and nourish a garden. When I was little, my sister and I played in the dirt, helped my dad plant seeds and then eagerly awaited the tiny green sprouts, picked peaches, nectarines, oranges, cucumbers, tomatoes and planted flowers. My dad would tease us and “quiz” us on the difference between weeds and vegetable plants. He even constructed us a “Bean Teepee”---a tall, solid, wood center pole with strings extending from the top to create a circle and pole beans grew up the strings, creating a leafy playhouse. I grew up outside and spent so much time in the garden. My parents liked to joke that my first word was “coreopsis”, or the pretty yellow flowers that I loved (HAHA). We also have a compost pile in the corner of the yard, and periodically sift the steaming, nutrient-rich soil and put it around the plants. Our rabbit is also a little fertilizer machine, adding to the compost pile. Other aspects of our sustainable life include our clothesline along the sunny side of our house, a huge emphasis on cloth grocery bags, trips to the Saturday morning farmer’s market, and trapping rain water in garbage bins (this winter my mom went to a new level—using the trapped rainwater to flush the toilets! It didn’t last very long).
When you are younger, you tend to think that your world is the same as everyone else’s. I remember entering elementary and even middle school and being puzzled that no one knew what a compost pile was, or when friends came over to play, they were stunned that we had a garden and you could pull carrots out of the ground!!!! This was old news to me.
From looking at the Urban Homestead website (http://urbanhomestead.org/) created by the Dervaes family, I have gained so much respect for their lifestyle. It amazes me that they are able to grow so much food. It is not a walk in the park to garden successfully, and these people must put COUNTLESS HOURS into their gardens. It takes a lot of time.
Overall, I am definitely not claiming that my family is already “Super-Sustainable”; I know that we (and I) have a lot to learn. Jim Merkel’s Radical Simplicity has already forced me to really look at my lifestyle and evaluate my impact on our planet. I am looking forward to learning more.
Here are some recent pictures from spring break of our garden!
Lemon Tree
Vegetables
My Dad
Cinnamon the rabbit
Peach Tree in Bloom
Entrance to the Garden
Blackberry Blossoms
That's awesome! There is really nothing that tastes better than produce straight from the garden.
ReplyDeleteI agree, there is nothing more satisfying than eating fruits and vegetables that you personally pick in a garden! At the summer camp that I work at we have an orchard and one of my and my camper's favorite activities every year is to go and pick our own fruit!
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