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This weeks theme is Metal
Why I was wandering around my backyard on New Years day I can’t remember, but that’s when I decided to take a photo of the metal sun ornament that I’d hung up on the back of our enclosed porch last year.
Those poor beans that went to waste before I could pick them make an interesting accent against the cold metal sun don’t they?
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This weeks photo hunter theme is important and I decided to show you what’s important to me as far as gardening goes.
It’s no secret to anyone that reads this blog or any of my other blogs that my garden is important to me. Gardening is a great hobby and activity. I’m passionate about gardening.
The act of planting new plants each year and maintaining my garden helps keep me fit and gets me outdoors for some much needed fresh air. My garden is also a source of comfort and peace. It’s where I go to relax.
I’m off work due to Crohn’s Disease, but when I’d come home from a hectic shift in the ER, no matter how tired I was, I’d often head straight to the garden. Either to simple enjoy my plants and flowers or perhaps not so surprisingly to do some work! Just a few minutes in my garden would erase the stress of an ER shift.
I’m an organic gardener. I don’t use any chemicals in my garden beds or on my plants at all. Everything is natural and my garden is fertilized with manure, leaf mulch, and alfalfa tea.
I mainly post photos of my flowers on this site and others that I maintain, but I also grow a fair amount of veggies and fruit. Some of the veggies, particularly the leafy greens, are grown in large balcony planters beside my back porch.
Other fruit and vegetables such as Tiny Tom tomatoes and beans are grown in planters on the patio, while plants such as peppers, carrots, raspberries and strawberries are grown right in the garden beds among the flowers.
Now wouldn’t a nice bowl of fresh raspberries be great right now?
As gardeners we have the ability to grow a good portion of our own food items. Just by growing our own food and or by eating locally grown unprocessed food items we can save 2,268 kg in CO2 emissions over the course of the year? Let me correct that … just by eating these types of foods once a week you can save that amount of C02 emissions. Just think of how much more you could do to help protect the planet if you ate home grown or locally produced food daily?
How did I come up with that figure? Well I was reading an article about reducing C02 emissions and it had 20 great tips that are easy to follow and that I’m sure many people would be able to follow. If you were able to do even some of the suggestions listed in the article you’d not only reduce a substantial amount of C02 emissions, but you’d also lower your energy consumption and save a lot of money. Perhaps savings in the $1000’s each year.
When you don’t eat food that you’ve grown in your own garden, or that’s unprocessed and locally grown, you have to add in the toll on the environment that processing food items, and then transporting them, sometimes as much as much as 2,500 km costs in C02 emissions, not to mention fuel and energy usage as well.
I know that not all of the gardeners who read this blog grow vegetables or fruit as well as their flowering plants and perennials, but if you don’t, please think about supporting your local agriculture. If you do have room, you can grow some veggies in containers, or in a small area of your flower beds. I grow strawberries, raspberries, tomatoes, peppers, carrots and some leafy greens between many of my flowering plants and you know what? They blend in just fine and oh … they are so tasty! I also grow beans, cucumbers and tiny tom tomatoes in containers on my patio, herbs and even more leafy greens, radishes, and peas in window box like containers on a platform outside my back porch.
I have purposely utilized my gardening space so that I can grow food and lovely, lovely flowers. You can too!
Now that it’s getting warmer in most areas there are other ways to reduce C02 emissions such as washing your clothing in cold water and putting them out on a clothes line to dry. Almost all of the appliances in our home are new and built to save energy, but we still need to get a new washer and dryer. We’ve still got the same ones that were here when we moved in and they were said to be 25 years old when we got the house so I guess our elderly appliances are going on 31 years of age! There’s no way that they are energy efficient. I know that. So I always wash in cold water and a good portion of our loads go out on the clothes line to dry. Not in the dead of winter, but we do have a clothes line set up in the basement so we still save some energy and C02 emissions in the winter that way too.
The clothes that I do hang out on the line always smell so nice and fresh when I bring them in. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t do this more often.
The dryer is apparently one of the worst household offenders as far as C02 emissions go, and ours being so old must be the worst of the worst. Just by hanging the clothes out on the line for 6 months of the year you can save 318 kg in C02 emissions, and at least €55 (£37 or $73 USD). By hanging our clothes outside and not using our ancient machine I probably save three times that!
Please do take a look at that article and see what you can do to cut the C02 emissions that you produce in your home. Remember, many of the suggestions will also lower your energy bill and save you money too. It’s worth taking a peak at.