After reading month five titled, "Waste" that encouraged readers to become Greene through growing gardens, reducing waste, and recycling I realized that we've been green for awhile. We definitely can be greener but I feel pretty good about where I am with this one and after talking with Heather she and I felt that we could read, reflect, and consider ways to reduce our carbon footprint. We both have gardens. We expanded ours this year to include tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, corn, okra, eggplant, bell peppers, jalepenos, banana peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, blackberries, blueberries, green beans, Lima beans, and crowder peas. It's a lot of work but I really do love it for many reasons. One it gives us a family work project. Everyone helps. The girls help weed and water. Eli loves to pick the vegetables and check on their progress every day. We eat what we pick fresh and what's left we can, putting up salsa and tomatoes, pickles, and jam lines up in jars on our shelves in the garage. We freeze gallon bags of corn, squash, and zucchini as well as bags of strawberries we pick at a farm right up he road. We have nine chickens we keep in a coop in the backyard we call the ladies parlor that yields fresh eggs each day and free fertilizer. We give what we don't keep away to neighbors and friends and family and are grateful for the fruit and the harvest. I married an environmental engineer who loves the outdoors so we rinse out and recycle as much paper, plastic, and aluminum that we can. I have to say there are times that I forget or get lazy and toss and I feel guilty for it. I'm working on not taking the blessings of convenience for granted.
In Hatmaker's book 7 she quotes a passage from a text that convicted her titled, Green Mama by Tracey Bianchi. It convicted me too. It reads: "there are a limited number of resources in the world, and when we take more than we need, simply put, we are stealing from others. By pillaging the earth for more than our share, we break the 8th commandment. To my dismay, I realize that even in my own, sort of green-world , I was stealing from people, present and future. Turns out I constantly steal from my kids in years. I'm static goodies like clean air and water while millions of families clamor for a drink and struggle with disease. I'm throwing away excess paper and packaging for rain forest disappear. I am a kleptomaniac. But I am determined to address my failings."
I am too. I don't want to waste my time feeling proud of what little I am doing for the environment. I want to proactively look for ways I can continue to reduce. Less of me, more of Christ. Less waste, more to enjoy His creation.
I know we are in the middle of a two week vacation but we are trying to apply good stewardship out here too.
On our trip west we opted for real dishes that we wash by hand in a bucket of sudsy water at the campsite instead of easier paper plates. This may be a little too crunchy for some, but my girls love it and have made a game of pretending to be Mary and Laura off of Little House who wash their dishes outside on the prairie too.
While we can certainly do better and live greener my hope is that we will stay green, going outdoors for our road trips both near and far, choosing to spend time in some of what nature offers us that may not be here forever, to admire God's handiwork, and most of all, to spend as much time as possible together as a family.
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