A few months ago I was asked by a friend to give a talk at a Muslim youth group in our town about how we try to live an eco-friendly lifestyle.  I was honoured to be asked, and keen on principle to do do some green evangelising, but I secretly hoped that it would all fall through.  One reason was that I’ve never left Piper with anyone other than my sister (once) or my mom (this doesn’t happen often as my mom lives in South Africa), and I was unsure how to get around the obstacle of not wanting to have a non-family member looking after her for the hour.  I decided that if Ayrton would play with Piper in the youth group creche under supervision, then I’d be happy to go ahead with the talk.  And so I did, it was this afternoon, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The children were so switched on, really aware of the problems the planet is facing, so different to the way that I was at that age, living unaware of what was really going on around me.  The hour flew by, my powerpoint presentation actually worked, and I feel like I’ve done something good.  I’m also very relieved it’s all over!

We will be taking part in International Walk to School Month, and it will be a good habit to get into again, because it’s something that I let slip every so often.  Any excuse really, rain, tiredness, haven’t had a shower yet!  So more about that next week!

But while I’m on the subject of school, I found two great websites last night: Clean Slate sell organic and fairtrade school uniform, and Uniform2 is a free, online exchange where you can buy and sell used school uniform, books, sports equipment and musical instruments.

I sent an email to Ayrton’s school’s headteacher about Clean Slate and look forward to finding out what he thinks.

Since my post last month about my battle to find an effective natural deodorant, I’ve struck gold!   The Bicarbonate of Soda (or sodium bicarbonate) option has been by far the best odour controller that I’ve come across.  Instead of mixing it in a paste with lemon (this sounded just a bit sticky to me, and so I’m yet to try it out), I have been dusting some bicarb onto my armpits with an old blusher brush (throwback from the 80s).  The results are amazing, it’s very effective.  You can get bigger, cheaper containers of sodium bicarbonate from a pharmacy than you get at supermarkets.

We were given a second-hand  playframe by a friend who no longer needed it.  It’s just Piper’s size and she is enjoying it immensely.  Once we’ve finished with it it will be passed on again to another little person, these things last for a lot longer than our little ones need them for and there must be hundreds of thousands of them out there.  It’s a wonder that new ones ever even need to be bought.

Pete was invited to see An Inconvenient Truth earlier this week, and came home saying that it was a good job that we decided to stop at two children.  I can’t comment as I haven’t seen the film, but I hope to have the opportunity to see it in the near future.

We continue to work at improving our home.  We have replaced all the nasty old manmade fibre carpets with 100% British wood carpets, and have fitted curtain rails in Ayrton’s and our room to hang our curtains for extra insulation this winter (up until now we’ve only had blinds in these rooms). 

Our back garden tomato crop has been harvested, and I will be planting out onion sets at the allotment as soon as the weather allows.  I am waiting for the delivery of a blackberry to plant out in our home garden.  I have been a bit neglectful of our allotment lately, partly because of the weather, I think.

I received my long awaited evengreener order, only to find that they delivered the wrong size waterworms and my compost trowel was missing.  Hey! Ho! 

I’m not entirely sure where the past two weeks have gone, but gone they have, and its been a fortnight since Ayrton’s 11th birthday.  We had a birthday dinner for him with all UK resident family in attendance. Happy birthday Ayrton.

What happens when you try to carry lots of vegetables?

They become cucumbersome. 

This post has been a long time coming, mostly because we are still waiting for Pete to build the steps from the deck to the garden, and fix the metal trellis to the top of the screen on the one side of the deck.  But we are already enjoying the deck, so I thought I’d share some pictures.

The deck is made of hardwood that we ordered from a company called Eco Choice, who provide FSC certified hardwood decking that has been thermically modified (a chemical free, environmentally friendly process) to improve its durability.

Above you can see Piper having her lunch on the deck.  And to the right is the screen with the trellis waiting patiently to be installed.  I am planning to put a grapevine in a large pot and train it up the trellis as soon as the weather permits next year.

Piper, aged 2 and a half, has switched from baths to showers to save water like the rest of the family.  So I will no longer be able to siphon her bathwater out into the garden.  We’d better get that Water Two valve fitted pronto!

And on the subject of water saving, we’re still waiting for our Water Worm hoses from www.evengreener.com, ordered back in May, to fit to our water butts and snake through the garden as a passive irrigation system.  I managed to speak to someone at their call-centre last week who said he’d be back in touch when he knew what was going on with our order, we haven’t heard from him since. 

I put the potato tyre tower together a few days ago, using straw as the growing medium.  Now we wait!

I hope I’m not too late for late potatoes, but the weather’s still quite warm so…

Today I went to the local tyre-fitting shop and asked for 5 old tyres to make a tyre tower with.  I’ve dropped them off at the allotment and am going back tomorrow morning to plant my potatoes.  I found these simple instructions for a tyre tower at the Ravenswood Community Garden website.

If you have some old car tyres you can grow some potatoes.
Spread some newspaper on the ground.
Stack two tyres on the newspaper, and fill them with straw or soil.
Bury ten potatoes in the straw or soil and water your tyre tower.

When potato sprouts peep through, add another tyre and fill up with more straw or soil. Keep doing this as your potatoes grow, until you have at least four, five or six tyres in your tower. After the plants flower, take the tower apart and count your potatoes.

Photographs to follow and potatoes for December (I hope). 

Our friend, Azar Breakey, has just had his first break as a musician by being included in this Sony podcast on acidplanet.  We love his music, you can listen to loads of his tracks here.  Onwards and upwards Azar!

We bought a diesel Citroen Picasso in 2002 to deal with our growing family, and because of the options open to us at the time, we thought that a diesel car would be a better environmental choice.  Diesel cars use less fuel than petrol cars and so emit fewer CO2 emissions.  Also, diesel cars can use a bio-diesel blend with no adjustments to the engine, or pure bio-diesel with some small adjustments.  On the flip-side, petrol cars give off less toxic emissions.

There are unfortunately still no garages supplying bio-diesel in Surrey, but we live in hope.

Until we get to the point where we are running our car on bio-diesel, we try to minimise our car use for short journeys (walking to school, cycling more) and we’ve also switched from AA roadside rescue to ETA, where for the same price as our AA membership we now also offsetting 8,000 miles worth of CO2 per year.  We received our climatecare certificate in the post recently.

When our car insurance comes up for renewal early next year, we intend to re-insure with CIS eco-insurance who offset 20% of your vehicles emissions annually, and have a network of eco-friendly repairers who recycle materials like used oil and bumpers.

I had to stop in at Sainsburys supermarket today for a few essentials, not realising it was the second day of Organic Fortnight (2-17 Sep. 2006).  I was given a free organic jute bag for buying 5 items from their SO organic produce range and discovered their absolutely delicious SO organic Fairtrade Santo Domingo chocolate bars.  I’ve only had some of the milk chocolate so far, and it is really good, but I have a bar of their 70% dark chocolate stashed away for later.  The jute bag is the first of it’s kind in the UK, being accredited by the Soil Association, and it has longer handles that many reusable shopping bags, so comfortable to sling over your shoulder when out shopping.  They are only giving these bags away during Organic Fortnight, but hopefully they will be selling them in the shops in future either instead of, or as well as their other reusable bags.