Happy Earth Day....I Mean Birthday!

Today is my beloved daughter's (first) 29th birthday. You can see more about this from last year's post. It is also Earth Day, so try to live green a little bit.

She is pictured here, at about one week of age with me and my Mom. I was 25, Mom was 58. Kate weighed about 6 lbs., down from 6 lbs, 4 oz.--an amazing three pounds less than her son Alex weighed at one week!!!

All I can add this year is thanks so much for the wonderful gift of Alex, a most welcome addition to the clan and look out--the big 3-0 is breathing down your neck!! (How could I possibly be old enough to have a child this old?

To the right is me in 1976 with the quilt I designed and made for my nephew Paul's birth. I called it "The Ecology Quilt". I hand appliquéd the blocks and hand quilted them in a quilt-as-you -go method. It is very 1970's in a Mountain Artisans or Great Noank Quilt Factory kind of way. Maybe because these were the popular contemporary quilt books of the day, ya think?



To help celebrate Earth Day every day, consider doing some of the following things:

• Make or buy some reuseable grocery shopping bags. Check out this incredibly cool idea!
  
• Re-use your plastic produce bags or buy some cotton ones like these. Use zip locs to store at home and wash and re-use them.
• Compost! You'd be amazed at the wonderful stuff that can come from your yard and kitchen waste. We get about 3 huge loads of wonderful compost every year from stuff that we'd normally just put in the green waste can.
• Religiously recycle or separate your trash if your community offers separate cans for recycle and regular garbage.
• Plan your trips to make maximum use of the times you must take the car.
• Replace your light bulbs with compact fluorescents--the bulbs are a bit more expensive, but they last longer and save electricity.

It really isn't hard to organize your shopping bags. I have an African style market basket that we use for the Farmers Market. I keep it in the pantry with a fabric tote bag that contains all of my washed and recycled plastic bags and a large zip-loc with folded fabric grocery bags that I purchased at my grocery store last Earth Day week. Every Saturday is Market Day. First the Farmers Market which is open every Saturday all year. In Sonoma County, California, we are blessed in that some kind of fresh produce is always available, enabling us to eat mostly local food year round. After Farmers Market, we hit the grocery store and all the bags are right where I need them. When I get home, I organize the produce (much of which I don't even bag at the FM anymore), put away groceries and put the bags away all in the same place and ready for the next week. Easy!

I saw something on PBS this morning about considering the carbon footprint of your food and who really thinks about that? I never really did. People buy imported bottled water from Italy when an excellent local brand is readily available. We buy imported pasta, though lately I've been making my own with the Kitchen-Aid attachment. With that new insight, I'm going shopping next week with my eyes open just a bit wider.

Here's why: