Thursday, September 11, 2008

Summer's Green Wrap Up

There's no denying it any longer - summer is done. 

There might be a few hot days left, but there are brown leaves on the ground, school's been in session over a week now, and tonight was downright chilly at my son's soccer practice. Wish I had a sweatshirt with me type chilly.

Time to reflect. This was my first "green" summer. Last summer I had made a few changes. I was contemplating making more and considering starting one of those blog things I had heard so much about. I thought I could blog about the things I learned while trying to go green. 

Not only did I start this blog late last fall, but I'm also now writing for Green Option Media for a couple of their environmental blogs. I started doing that this summer. What else did I 
do this summer to further my greenness? 

  • I, along with my family, planted and took care of a garden that as we speak is producing tomatoes in quantities I never imagined.
  • We successfully grew radishes, basil, oregano, parsley, green peppers and four types of tomatoes. 
  • I have worked my way down to only drying one load of laundry a week (socks and towels combined). The rest gets hung out to dry.
  • I started taking navy showers (not every time, but more frequently)
  • I cooked several local meals.
  • I made it to the farmer's market every week unless we were away. 
  • I rode my bike more this summer than I probably have in total in the many years I've had it.
  • We raised our thermostat 4 degrees higher than we've had in previous summers.
  • I threw a big birthday party for my husband and when it was done there was only 1/3 garbage can full of trash and the recycling bucket was only about half full. A huge improvement on past parties.
  • I didn't buy any new items before going on vacation. 
I'm sure there's more. It feels good to know that this summer I stepped up my environmental actions. I still believe that going green by being A Little Greener Every Day is the way to do it. All of the little steps I've taken over the past year have yielded some good results this summer.

What did you do this summer that made you a little greener?


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3 comments:

Janine said...

Garden and Farmer's Market, hung some out to dry but you're inspiring me to get more out there:)

However to start off fall, I have to be at school three times a day since my daughter is in 1/2 day kindergarten and my sons are full day and with 5 days of school there was only one pick up that involved a car (because of major rain) because we've been biking!

Robin Shreeves said...

I had to do the three times a day thing last year. Made for a hectic day.

Glad you're still biking it. We're still walking even though my six year old is unhappy about it.

Audrey said...

Regards drying laundry outside. I stopped using my electric dryer end of May and have faithfully dried everything outside. I've just been checking my electric bill for same period last year, what a disappointment; last year we used 16.1 whatever they call them, this year we used 16.6. I think I'll call the electric company on Monday to see what's going on since we haven't added anything electrical in the house.