We need a lawn mower. We don't have one, and we have grass to mow this year. I have learned a few things about lawn mowers recently. The main thing being that mowing your lawn for 1 hour produces the same carbon emissions as driving your car 500km. Actually, I can hardly believe this. But, my husband, who has much more knowledge in this area says that it makes sense to him - so sure - Lawn mowers are HUGELY inefficient. The other problem is that we have no money - so buying a new fancy solar-powered green lawnmower is kind of out of the question.

So, I've decided to start a series of posts called "Going Green." These posts will record my attempts to minimize our carbon footprint and make better choices for the environment. Hopefully, as time goes on, I can make some good changes and make my home and garden more sustainable.

If you want to find out the size of your carbon footprint check this out:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

PS - My carbon footprint was about 13 tonnes of CO2 per year. The average in Canada is 20.

Also - anyone know why there was a question about what types of financial services I use? How does this connect to sustainability?

A quick trip to the newly opened walmart garden centre, and I came home with more seeds. I guess now I am growing broccoli, and cucumbers. I started them this evening along with the romaine lettuce I had previously purchased. I think I was slightly more conscious of "numbers" today than I was with the tomatoes and peppers, and only planted 12 broccoli, 18 cucumbers and 18 Romaines - which is still too many - but not anything excessive like 32 Jalepeno pepper plants I have started already... (I have the same problem at Walmart as Babs at Rambles and Brambles... I think I will be giving away plants to whoever will take them - and maybe even to people who wont...

Yesterday, my husband and I drove down to a local park to get some river rocks to use in our garden. This park is part of the local trail system and has paths that follow the banks of the Nechako River. We can actually walk there from our house - put walking home with 3 5-gallon pails of rocks would have been awkward (impossible for me - I could barely carry one from the riverbank to the car). Anyways, this winter the river was struck with a major icejam for about 3 months - houses were flooded, and roads/businesses were closed for a significant amount of time. This park was in the middle of the ice jam. Yesterday, we saw the devastaion that the ice had actually caused. There are still ice blocks there that are 10-12 feet high. The trail has been washed away in places - and bridges have been reduced to splinters, and there is trees, branches and debris everywhere. It's funny how you can live so close to a disaster like this, and not really know its full effects. We are only several blocks from the river - but up a hill, so there was no chance of it affecting us -and yet, we had never seen the extent of the damage. The park is still beautiful, but since parts of it have been washed away (several times in the last few years), it will never quite be the same, and will take a lot of money and time to fix back up.

I had a very busy work week, so I have had very little time to post on my blog, or comment on some of the fabulous things that happened in everyone else's gardens this week. And, when the weekend hit, and I was ready to spend some quality time in my yard, we were hit with the same coldsnap that has hit much of Western Canada, with nighttime lows of -10 degrees Celcius, and daytime highs of -2 degrees (which is very abnormal for this time of year). Yesterday it was so cold that I had to pull out my heavy winter coat just to go shopping. Today, it is a beautiful sunny day - but still quite cold and windy. I am hoping we can get a bit of yard work done - finish edging the gardens we changed, and finish putting the new composter together. I am about ready to burst waiting for spring to actually arrive. Just like these leaves...they are ready to burst as soon as it warms up.

I think the pattern inside this tulip is incredibly beautiful - I am always awed by the complexity and intricate patterns in nature. They are usually much better than anything we can come up with ourselves.

Maybe we should trust more things to the expert...

So one of the few perennials I am growing from seeds this year is Shepherd's Scabiosa. I bought the seeds from Wal-mart or Canadian Tire or somewhere like that one day on a whim because I thought they looked pretty. So far they have been a bit of a pain, because just after they germinated a whitish-yellow powdery mould covered the surface of the soil in the entire tray of plants. That seems to have dissipated since I transplanted them, and they finally seem to be taking off. I planted them 5 weeks ago - and this is what they look like now.

I was playing with my digital camera and my photo-editor today... Let me know what you like - and any suggestions for taking "artsy" nature photos. I am not very experienced, and I do my editing in Picassa usually - it's a free program from google, and it's alright - I'm sure people who actually know what they are doing don't like it...

Crocuses using the macro feature and edited to have a film grain

Tulips on macrofeature with the fill light increased and with the film grain effect:

Crocus with a soft-focus effect:

Things are starting to happen. There are sprouts and buds everywhere!! And, the grass is starting to dry out and turn green. And, I am starting to notice all the work that there is to do.

This week I hope to:
1-Shovel the rest of the snow piles around so they melt.
2-Rake the grass.
3-Clean up the branches, berries, and mess from windy winter weather.
4-Rip out front planters and replace with new ones. (My mother-in-law) bought me huge beautiful planters for my birthday!
5-Start ripping out garden at back to re-build and make room for my peonies and sweet peas.
6-Move and fix the composter.
7- Pull the BBQ out and have a delicious BBQ burger!

Here is some pictures of the fresh new growth in the garden. My crocuses were flowering this morning, but when I went to take a picture, they were closed up. Hopefully I can catch them tomorrow!

Rhubarb - 1 of 2 plants in my yard. I do not know what I am going to do with it all.

This is the garden I am going to dig out. I do not like any of the stuff in it anyways. Basically, I am going to turn it into a rectangle. I plan to put a peony where the roundish mound is right now, and grow sweet peas up the rails of the porch. And, maybe some other perennials - but I am not sure yet.

I cannot wait for the leaves to bud!

I transplanted some of my pepper seedlings into bigger pots today - and a few of them aren't quite so happy:

Hopefully they will pop back up in a couple hours...

I'm new to garden blogging and have been having a hard time getting visitors to my site, and getting my blog high up in the google search list. From what I can tell, links are the key - of which I have none - so I was starting to get a little discouraged about my blog - and then I found blotanical. Blotanical is an online garden community that connects garden bloggers from around the world together. Almost immediately after joining, I had increased traffic to my blog - from all sorts of places around the world. I have also met someone from my region, and another young couple also renovating their new house and landscaping their new yard - it encourages me that I have found some people like me. Unfortunately, (or fortunately - I guess it depends on your outlook) I have spent NUMEROUS hours on this website since I found it - and I may have to limit my hours once I go back to work at the end of the week.

Another reason I like blotanical is that it keeps track of the garden blogs I like for me - You get your own little "plot" where you can add favourite blogs and bloggers. I was having a hard time keeping track of what I was reading online and like this new organized way to read other people's blogs. It has a few little quirky navigational things that are somewhat counter-intuitive, and makes finding pages tricky once in awhile, but as far as I can tell - it is a fairly new community and the webmaster is working on ironing out all the little kinks relatively quickly.

I have added the banner on my sidebar to take you to the site (although I expect that's how most people have found lately)
and here's the direct link:
http://www.blotanical.com/

Happy Blogging!

Alright, so it snowed this morning...again. About an inch...sigh - But the new snow now mostly melted in the sunny areas of my yard, so I took a walk to look at the few things that are growing - and to try and get a picture of the birds that are trying to make their home in my garage. No luck with the birds, but I did find this: