TRASHED DAY 3

A word about today's trash. I have a cold and have been using Zicam to make it go away quicker. The packaging is ridiculous! Check out my Facebook page and watch my video rant about packaging.

Pet Milk Remains White

Our esteemed Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin has decided not to require dairy farmers to put black dye in the raw (unpasteurized, unhomogenized) milk they sell to us for our pets to drink. You know of course that it is illegal for us humans to drink raw milk in Georgia.
God bless Tommy Irvin for keeping me safe. I'm so glad he realizes I am not capable of making my own decisions on this issue.
Thanks to Chad Carlton of Carlton Farm for fighting the good fight. Carlton farm sells raw cow's milk for pets. They have several distribution points around metro Atlanta including one at The Urban Gardener.

Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

The Grocery store bags we reuse at our store The Urban Gardener, the glass and cans go into the recycle bin the city picks up ( we don't really know what happens to it after it is picked up but we hope it actually gets recycled) and the food scraps go into our compost pile where it is reduced to essential plant nutrients by our friends the microorganisms.

TRASHED DAY 2

Trashed

In the latest issue of Orion magazine ( a great magazine, excellent writing, fantastic photography and art) there is a piece about Tim Gaudreau who photographed they stuff he threw away every day for a full year. He is a self-proclaimed recycler, is "ecologically conscious, limited what he bought and didn't participate in any of the traditional consumer holidays." Still he threw away a lot of stuff. And don't we all.
I've decided to follow in his footsteps and post photos of the stuff i throw away every day for the next year. I hope that this exercise will make me a better steward of the earth and maybe it will help you to be better too.
Being a recycler myself i think it would be only fair to also post photos of the stuff i recycle too. We can all learn from that as well.

Learning to Like Radishes

Does anyone really like radishes? I know I don't. But ever since i've been a gardener i've grown them. They are easy and they grow fast. I guess there's satisfaction in that even though i don't like the taste and the burniness of them.By leaving them in the ground until they flower i am doing the beneficial insects a favor. Thats a good thing.
When i was in grad school we used to drink vodka with some russian dudes who ate black radishes that were grated up and salted. We thought they were good but salted dogshit would taste good too after all the vodka we drank.

Are they nutritious? I'm not sure. Hold on while i look that up.....
According to http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20g2.html
The Good
This food is low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol. It is also a good source of Riboflavin, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Magnesium, Copper and Manganese, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Vitamin C, Folate and Potassium.

The Bad
A large portion of the calories in this food come from sugars.
Ok so they would be good for me if i were to learn to like them.

Communication

I've been dicking around on facebook recently. I think i read about it in a article and wanted to see what it was all about. I had a myspace page and found it to be rather childish so abandoned it. I got a message on my "fun wall" on facebook today from my niece asking me if i was going to post to this blog more often now that i had posted it on my facebook profile. She actually reads this blog. I'm glad somebody does. My family are not good communicators. I rarely talk to my family even though i love them very much. At least with facebook, which all of my sister's family use, we can know a little more about what we all are up to without having to communicate directly like by talking on the phone. Why is talking on the phone so hard? I don't know but is seems to be.
My best friend and adopted son John Henry and I haven't seen much of each other these past few months because she is carrying a very heavy load this semester in graduate school but we do use instant messaging to stay in touch and keep each other informed about hot topice of mutual interest. She is also one who abhors the telephone and rarely returns my phone calls. I told her the last time we were together that it would be nice it hear her voice once in a while during the long periods when we can't find time to be in the same room together. She asked me why and my answer was that hearing one's voice is a much richer more complete form of communicating. One can learn much from tone of voice, inflection, timbre. One can tell if someone is tired, sad, angry, bored. All of that is lost with email or instant messaging. It is a very flat form of communicating which can sometimes lead to misinterpretation of meaning without the richness that one's voice adds to a conversation.
I guess the point i'm trying to make is that in some ways the internet has opened up ways for us to stay in touch which is good but if we are not careful we'll end up making personal physical communication a thing of the past.
That won't be good!