I think I have a romantic idea of summers….
and in that romantic idea of summer I always seem to leave out the fact that I work every day…and that Columbus, Ohio can sometimes be oppressively hot and humid…and that there’s still crap to do like cleaning the house and cooking dinner.For the Summer I would like a housekeeper…and a cook…and a light bar tender even. I’d also like a pool in close-proximity to my body, but all of the work associated with having a pool…very far away from me indeed. I’d also like to press pause with work…but still get paid.
I also have romantic ideas about living a more green life. I’d like to have a big! huge! garden! (organic! without weeds! or bugs! that is self watering! self harvesting in fact!) I’d like to raise 2 or 3 chickens in a (clean! unobtrusive!) small coop and have fresh eggs. I’d like a rain barrel (which really would require non-crappy-roof-drainage….insert public shame on my landlords here) so I could water my yard and garden and easily fill up the koi pond.
And as I learned last night, I also have romantic ideas about my garden in general. I mean….this year we opted for variety (it’s the spice of life, have you heard?) We have 6 tomato plants, cucumber, zucchini, spinach, purple beans, radishes, snap peas, cauliflower, chives, edamame, and artichokes. We also have some bushes – a hardy (and well-established) raspberry one, and kiwi and blueberry ones too. Oh right – and strawberries.
Here are some of my notes on gardening @ the 172 this year:
1. The strawberries are in a perfect! vintage! container (an old wash basin, so cool) along the fence. The squirrels all agree with a hearty cheer and high-fives all around.
2. We didn’t stagger our planting of tomato plants, like, at all. I anticipate that we’ll have 27,358 pounds of tomatoes all of a sudden one week, and then nothing.
3. I think we only planted about 1/7th of what we should have for the sweet peas. Our current harvest is SIX ripe pods EACH DAY. (“Thanks for coming to dinner! Can I interest you in six peas? Sharing? Okay you get three.”) They’re very good – we’ll have to treat them as a delicacy.
4. I would like to announce that spinach, in the shadow of dusk, look like weeds. I was informed of my mistake after I’d hoed a row. Oops. Sorry honey.
5. Dear Chives, you’re too little. You look like grass. Sorry I stomped on you…but you’re going to have to be more hardy than that…so really it’s your own fault. (Yes, I’m blaming the victim.)
6. Cucumber is a plant that I would lump into the “sonofabitch” category….because every time you touch it and forget that it’s leaves and stems are prickly, you ultimately yell out “sonofabitch!” It’s also incredibly tenacious and won’t stay within the confines that I would really like it to. It’s creeping all over the place – I better get at least 20 cucumbers out of it.
7. Zucchini plants aren’t cucumbers, but they sure do look like them. In fact, they look exactly the same….but aren’t producing anything.
8. Cauliflower: I’m not holding my breath.
9. I was really, super excited about the artichokes...until I read that they’re a perennial plant that doesn’t fruit until seasons subsequent to its first year. (That means next year…and this year we’ll only get things that look like weeds growing out of our mulch.)
10. Edamame: GROW GROW! I’m really getting excited about these guys because they’re actually producing right now and they look SO CUTE while they’re at it! Except again we have only…8 plants that have come up….and they’ll all mature at the same time. Hence, we’ll be eating tomatoes and edamame for EVERY meal that week, I’m sure.
11. Radishes are gross. Spicy and gross. They remind me of big toes. GAG.
12. Raspberries – you are my favorite breakfast and I love you. I’m trying to come up with a way to tell Steph that the raspberry bush isn’t producing this year so she doesn’t wonder why there aren’t any berries on it every day.
14. Several weeks ago we had a terrible wind storm come through our parts and it blew a big piece of wood over on the blueberry bush. I’m going to start calling it “Tiny Tim.” It looks like we fed it a lot of coffee and tried to stunt its growth, unfortunately. It’s another (like the kiwi) that won’t really produce for a few seasons.
So obviously I have a fair amount of reality to deal with. Our garden (and the processes therein) are so far from my romanticized version of Summertime Gardening.
Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and sign up for the local CSA.
Or maybe I’ll have you over for dinner….
offer you a single sweet pea
…and the three of us can split the only ripe cherry tomatoes.
Filed under: Uncategorized
So here I’d updated twice in the last couple of weeks…one about the differences in the #2 and the #7 bus, and another about my foray into making my own laundry detergent…..
….and they’re still sitting in “drafts” … LO is the way of someone new to WordPress I suppose. Improvements in technology…and to think I used to develop the north american intranet of a worldwide company…
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SO I’ve officially been “Sans Car” for a full month. I’d love to say I have a list of things I’ve learned…a number of insights…funny stories about public transportation….any number of things. The truth is, I don’t have that just yet.
It’s become hot as hell here recently, I haven’t been able to ride my bike…in fact I’ve been pretty much taking the bus every single day. As a result, this past month I feel like I’ve given my patience a good stretch…due mostly to the ENFP-part of my personality has come to hinder me in the last week-plus.
I don’t do well with…….deadlines. Okay well that’s not true. I’ll work on the deadline, work right up to it pretty happy with what I’ve got…and then in the 11th hour I’ll come up with something I LOVE MORE…or some addition…or THE NECESSARY ingredient. So sometimes I end up PUSHING the deadline, but it’s my process. (But don’t call me a procrastinator….I’m far from that.)
I’m also someone who’ll work all the way up until I can’t any more…and then run to the next project. If I have softball at 7:15….but I’m in the middle of a great book…I’ll read right up until we have to walk out the door…and race out. (I think that’s called “skin of my teeth.”)
So when I’m dependent upon a bus system that runs on a pretty close schedule…..and I *know* I need to leave the office at 5:08 in order to make it to the bus on time?……well you can imagine I’ve pushed that deadline a little too much. The problem here, though, is that I never miss it by minutes….I miss it by SECONDS. This? This tests my patience.
I’m still not feeling as though I’m missing out on anything. While I think we consider cars to be our “key to freedom”….the reality is that I’m enjoying myself more without a car. And yeah, there have been times when I’ve thought “Well this sure would be easier if I had a CAR” but there’s always going to be instances of that.
….and the whole point of this for me is to spread those instances waaaay out.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Okay so…it’s been how long? Three weeks without a car? Two? Three I think. Crap I don’t know.
Here’s what I’ve realized in the last two weeks: while this is helping me to think differently…it’s also…making me a little…spazzy.
Give me a second here, I’ll explain. I’m not…a consumer. While I don’t think I ever really was, I really got a lot of the residual gunk out of my system a couple of years ago when I opted to not consume (or buy anything really outside the realm of gas, food and toothpaste). I literally went months without going INTO a Target. And when I did? It was like I was going into a museum I guess – I enjoyed it, but didn’t really touch anything.
So you can imagine now, a couple of years later, when I’ve adopted the “think about it until the next visit…” and “wait a week and see if I still want it” way of thinking….how I feel when I walk into Sams Club. On one hand, I love it because it’s fairly cost effective when you stick to what you use and what you have. On the other hand I hate it because it’s part of the WalMart Reich and made of pure evil, in my mind. On another hand (that’s your 3rd one) it’s great because the larger items sometimes equals less packaging even though it’s larger, and also they don’t provide sacks or anything, you have to upcycle old boxes or go without (go without!) On the other (4th) they really are still actively marketing to you while you’re in the store and around every turn you see more crap you really don’t need, could never use all of, and…..it’s not just one can….it’s 15 for the price of 10.
I could go on, but I’ll spare us all for the sake of time….and the fact that I was clearly running low on hands to count on.
So where am I now? Well I’m realizing that my muscle memory is still set to “I have a car and I don’t have to plan much or could just stop-by quickly and grab enough for a few days.” My brain, however, is in a bit of dramatic overdrive. Emphasis on the drama. I go into a store and think, “I’m here….I have to get everything I think I could possibly need in the next three months, who knows when I’ll be back.”
Okay well given that we live just a block away, that’s not entirely accurate…but when I end up at a store in a car? Pretty much.
I mean for real – that’s how I ended up with 1,600 toothpicks.
I guess maybe it’ll take some time to get up to a nice jog and not attempt to run from 0-60 immediately.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Quickly, since it’s been a very (very) long day, I think I figured out a little bit of where I am on the “New To Riding On The Bus” learning curve.
The bus came this morning, right on time.
I’d just walked out of the house, down the block 20 yards to the bus stop….and had enough time to pull out my ID.
The bus pulled up and I was so happy.
“Good morning! (showing my ID) How are you?!”
The bus driver looked at me. Like, “Uhm, for real?”
I turned and looked at the rest of the bus (about 1/3rd full) who were all…DEAD SILENT. So I quickly ran back, found a seat…and sat still and as quiet as I could.
But oh boy I smiled!!
Of course, I think I was the only person on there doing that. But that’s okay – I get that there’s a certain privilege, that I *choose* to ride the bus. Not everyone does.
I’m about to check the weather (to see if I should ride my bike tomorrow, or smile on the bus….which would be best)…and then get off to bed. Oh yeah, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a chance to update about my bike!!
The lady at Progressive Insurance was so excited for me last night when I called her to tell her that my lease term was up. “Oh that’s so fantastic! Did you buy it, or lease a new one!?” When I told her neither and that I wanted to cancel my policy, she actually started scrambling…offering me so many options I thought she might offer me HER car. (Motorcycle insurance? Nope. Renter’s? Already have that. Driver’s? Got that too, actually.)
In the end, she refunded my account 1/2 of the month I’d already paid for, and wished me well.
The reality of going sans car won’t actually be like I’m “living entirely off of the gasoline grid” or anything. I still have easy access to a vehicle…actually to several, if I need one. In fact, because of where I live, what I do (both with work as well as SewBendy), the proximity of my family, etc…..I’ll still need a way to get around outside where I can pedal or take a bus to.
I’m lucky to have a lot of options. In fact, if any one of these weren’t a reality for me, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to do this at all.
1.) My Address. I’m so lucky to live immediately north of Downtown in the Victorian Village. The walkability of my address is 89 (out of 100) which means that pretty much everything I need to live my life is within a reasonable walking distance. I’m a 3-minute walk to the grocery store, 18 minutes to church. I’m 2 miles from my front door to my office door. So clearly – my feet can do a great deal of the transporting.
2) COTA- (or Central Ohio Transportation Authority) otherwise known as: THE BUS. I’m lucky enough to live on the #7 bus line – so it not only stops right in front of my neighbor’s house…but it also stops just 2 blocks from my office building. (Plus I’m just 2 blocks from the #2.)
3.) CONNECT (by Hertz). It’s a pay-as-you-go car rental system on campus. Cars are parked throughout campus, you just reserve them and use your keycard to get in and drive. They cover the gas, the insurance, and the upkeep! So in a evening when I need to go out to Easton, or to visit my cousins in town, or need to go to the doctor’s or fabric store, I can just reserve one for a small hourly fee….and go. Gas is paid for, so is parking, AND I’m covered on their insurance.
4.) Car Rental Places – if I want to go by myself to my parents’ house for the weekend, or on a road trip, I’ll just rent a car. Most places have gas-efficient rentals and paying the one-time fee beats the cost of “wear and tear” on my own car anyway.
5.) Steph’s car. Especially in the evenings if I have to go to campus for an emergency, or if she’s not using it, I’m lucky to be able to borrow it. Plus we’ll be able to use it when we go out of town (which Sophie loves, as you can tell.) But I’m really clear on the fact that it’s HER car, we’re not sharing it 50/50 by any means. I WANT to be WITHOUT a car right now…look at all of the OTHER things I have so available to me!
Besides, I have a lot of stuff to relearn, a lot of priorities to set. But that’s a whole other entry….and I need to find Frank right now (he caught a beetle earlier and I still hear him batting it around!)
Filed under: Background | Tags: Background, car-less, going green, green, personal growth
Some people push themselves physically – they run marathons or bike 60 miles. Some aim to climb professional ladders – aiming high, always looking at the higher position, a better salary. Some people collect higher degrees, certifications, and professional accolades with fervor.
Me? On most days, I personally can’t muster up a Give A Shit when it comes to half of that stuff.
Lazy? I can say with much certainty that none of my friends would use that word to describe me. I just push myself in other…aspects of my life.
Maybe it’s the downfall of higher education in mental health….but I’ll take exhausting my brain over my legs. I’ll tackle personal fears over office politics. I’ll push my own emotional boundaries before I push my pen across a piece of paper, refining my research statement for the 82,395th time.
I don’t sweat Gatorade. I sweat “responding” vs “reacting.”
I’m a personal growth junkie. : )
But here I am, getting away from myself…in my first 150words.
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I’m starting this journal (yes a separate one from the blog I’ve had going for upwards of 14 years) mostly to document my own growth…in a different area…in growing GREEN.
This has been a process I’ve been building on and refining over the last 3 or so years:
From giving up TV (to create silence and listen more, 2006)
To a year of Non-Consumption (not buying anything, 2007)
To giving up plastic sacks (and sometimes paying penance, 2008)
To swearing off my own wasteful use of paper products (napkins & towels, 2009)
But today I took a bigger step than I ever have before. One that will present challenges both physical and logistical, one that took away my “easy button”. Me, in a sprawling, midwestern town with sub-par mass transit….I gave up what 16 year olds across the country would think of as their link to “freedom.” Today I gave up my car.
And I couldn’t be more excited about it.
So in the coming entries I anticipate that I’ll log how I got here…the challenges I’m facing…the things I encounter…and the humility that I bet I’ll find. I hope I’ll get over ME, MY schedule, my perception of “independence.” I HOPE that it will press my self and my heart ways very different than I’ve ever been pressed before.
Mostly, though, I know I’ll be changed by the experience.
