Tiny Orchards

I'm still hopeful that my lemon tree will have some buds soon. Les assures me that he saw bees up in her lemon blossoms several times, so, fingers crossed, I hope I will soon be updating you with some lemon buds. But I haven't seen any yet.

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, my gardening successes have been a bit underwhelming so far. One green bean (now shriveled from the heat), one cherry tomato (still green) and a handful or so of surviving herbs. The green pepper plants are still chugging along, but so far no sign of fruiting.

So, I was getting a bit antsy about a "harvest". I decided that if I saw an established plant at that farmer's market that looked promising for a payoff, I would buy it.

And so, I lugged this beauty home last weekend:

A Fig Tree! Whoo-hoo! For $12!

With starter-figs on it! Just a few weeks to go, said the farmer, and these little nubbins would be ready to eat. And if you're asking yourself "Does she really eat enough figs to justify a whole tree?" the answer would be Yes. I love dried figs and I'm learning to love fresh figs. And they are not cheap. So, I thought that if I can 10 or 12 fresh figs from the tree this year, that would be a good start. Plus, it's just a pretty tree. Kind of swooping and sturdy and almost bonsai-ish.

But I am, in fact, trying to grow these guys in North Carolina. It is supposed to be 105 degrees today. And it almost hit 100 yesterday. I've been watering my new little tree every day, but it still looks a bit scorched and sizzled when I get home. Those plush figs in the photos are looking a little worse for wear in this nasty hot spell.

Oh well. They're trees, right? So if I can keep them alive we can try again next year. They are still young. They will live to see another figging. In the mean time, I can do more research about container orcharding.

Blast You, Green Washing!!!

I feel like an idiot every time I tote something home full of greeny, earth-happy confidence, only to discover I have been duped yet again by packaging.

Here's a run-down of some recent goofs and semi-goofs.

* Remember that on the Good Guide, a high score is GOOD. A 10 out of 10 would be a perfect score and the site averages a score of Goodness for your health, the environment, and society. Conversely (and annoyingly, if you are using both to compare) on the Environmental Working Group website, a low score is better. A ZERO would be perfect, and the higher the score, the more toxic the stuff.

OK, let's begin.

Tiny orange bottle of Kiss My Face sunscreen, purchased with a coupon at Whole Foods:

It only scores a 3 or 4 on the Good Guide, meaning that it really is not that awesome for me, the earth, or the people on the earth. BUT, the Environmental Working Group rates the ingredients with a low score of 1, meaning quite non-toxic.  Boo, and weird, for conflicting information. I guess maybe the ingredients are relatively safe, but perhaps KMF doesn't have a great track record of environmental or social stewardship. OR, maybe they just don't make a lot of that info public. Either way, Kiss My Face is a pretty well-regarded brand, so I'm disappointed.


Next up is one of the most bone-headed impulse buys I have made in a while. A long long while. I was at the salon, feeling good about my new hair cut and wanting it to stay cute. So I perused the ridiculously overpriced salon products and was drawn to these bottles of Bamboo Shampoo and Conditioner from Alterna:

The labels were full of suuuuuuper exciting words like "Eco-Certified Ingredients", "Grown Responsibly and Traded Ethically" and a long list of bad things that they were "Free!" of (parabens, petro chemicals, etc). Hooray! So exciting. Took them home and they worked like a shiny-haired dream.

But alas, I should have known better. They score only 4.6 and 3.9 on the Good Guide, respectively, and a shockingly TOXIC 9 out of 10 for the Environmental Working Group. Oh and they cost $15. Each.

Please hear the sound of my palm smacking my forehead repeatedly.

I've grown to trust, perhaps OVERTRUST my local Whole Foods with helping me to narrow my purchasing decisions. At least some part of me thinks things like "Whole Foods wouldn't stock really bad-for-me stuff, right?" Well. Maybe that is at least partly true.

I love love LOVE the Everyday Coconut Conditioner from the Alaffia brand.

Read the back of the bottle and you can read about Alaffia via headings such as Handcrafted and Unrefined, Gender Equality and Community Empowerment, Certified Fair Trade, and ingredients that include an impressive list of Certified Fair for Life and Social and Fair Trade components. Gotta be awesome, right?

The Good Guide didn't have a listing for this particular product, and their line had a lot of great high scores. The closest I could come to this conditioner, however, scored a mediocre 4.0 on the good guide. The EWG didn't have a listing for any Alaffia brands or products. So I guess we'll have to go with the packaging for all our info.

Good ole' Burt's Bees is made right here in Durham, which I love, and their products run the gamut from Rock Star to Craptastic on both the GG and EWG. This particular body lotion scores a 6 on the GG (decent) and an "Eh" 5 on the EWG. Not strong enough to keep buying it. I'll use it up and look for an alternative.

Yesterday I finally bought a couple of bars of this "CP Soap" at the Farmers Market that I had managed to walk past every time. But I'm out of my bar soap, so I gave them a sniff. It's hand made in Raleigh, and wrapped simply in some brown paper. It's made with 95% organic ingredients, and most of the varieties were "100% natural" (which I now know of course can include nasty things that occur in nature, like petroleum and phalates). BUT, this bar was listed Phalate Free. And even though I have no idea what "Hydrogen fragrance oil" is or what hydrogen is supposed to smell like or why it is good to have in a soap, I love the silky texture and the rosemary and "hydrogen" scent.

Of course, there are no listings for this home-made beauty bar on either site, but the ingredients sound like things I could eat: saponified organic olive, coconut, and palm oil, hydrogen fragrance oil, and rosemary oil.

SO. I still make biff after biff on the stuff-buying. Which sucks. Because we have limited dollars and I have limited tolerance for stupidity.

I finally took the next step and downloaded the Good Guide app to my phone. The EWG doesn't have an app yet, but you can donate $5 and get a Pocket Guide to safer shopping. I haven't done it yet. I might. I'm tired of doling out cash for fake-green products that are killing me softly behind pretty packages.

Super Unrelated Aside - It is June 24, and I haven't had ANY pop this entire month. The tiny but solid feeling of accomplishment may spur me forward to tackle a much bigger addiction next month....

You Win Some, You Lose Some. Or Why You Should Never Ask Me for Gardening Advice.

I decided it was about time to check in on my little garden for an update. It ain't so pretty.

For reference, here's the shot I took last month when I had just happily plunked my little plants into the vertical garden:

So cute, so green, so promising!

Well, friends, some combo of too much/too little water, too much/too little sun has turned my plump little basils into these straggly yellow miscreants.

They're still kickin', but I'm less hopeful that they will live to see themselves star in my "Totally Made From Scratch Tomato Basil Mozzarella salad" (yes, my plan is to make my own mozzarella from scratch to see that dream come true).

But speaking of tomatoes, I was delighted to come home from a long weekend away to see this little baby hanging out all round and chubby-cheeked when I returned!

Is it normal for your tomato plant to have only ONE tomato on it after several months? Don't get me wrong - I grew this little baby FROM A SEED, and I will eat it like it is the Most Amazing Tomato That Has Ever Been Grown. Because after it's inauspicious start, it will definitely be that incredible to me. 

Anyway, tomato baby is looking good. The green beans, on the other hand, have had their leaves chewed off and are sporting only ONE faintly green-bean-looking appendage:

It looks like I'm going to be making a pretty pathetic garden melange. Contents: One green bean, some droopy basil, and a cherry tomato. 

Even my mint, which I hear is supposed to grow like a weed, is suffering under my unskilled gardening thumb:

 Great. I kill weed-herbs too. I rock.

Besides my hopeful tomato, the only other plant that seems to have inexplicably thrived with me at the helm so far is.... drum roll.....

The Lemon Tree! Hooray! It's bursting with lovely pink blossoms just waiting to open up and get all good and pollinated by some of our frisky neighborhood bees. It's like prom season over here. My little girl is getting dressed up in her flirty frocks to bat her eye lashes and get smooched by some eager pollinators. That visual quickly turns my lemon tree into a trollop when I try to make the leap to her producing some sweet lemons, so I'll just end it right there.

So, this little porch garden is full of hope, pathetic vegetables, pink blossoms, and some too dry/too wet herbs. And it is still my favorite place in North Caroline so far.

Suggestions welcome for my brown-thumbed failures.

7 : A book Review with a warning label

I just finished the book 7: an experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker.

I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I have ever prefaced a book recommendation with a warning:

If you like the clothes in your closet and the food that you eat and the way you spend your time and money or the way you interact with media, don't read this book.

I first heard about this book via the Flowerpatch Farmgirl blog, which I linked to via my friend Roxanne's blog. You know, one of those "Let's see what's new on the interwebs" ramblings that accidentally changes your life.

Jen Hatmaker lives in Austin, Texas, where she and her husband planted a funky little church in 2008. She has written a number of Bible study books and a couple of other books about their life of faith. I had never heard of her until I wandered through the Flower Patch Farmgirl blog a few months ago and read her review of the book, but as soon as I finished reading the review, I emailed co-conspirator Jackie and told her we should read the book ourselves.

And I did, and now I can't sleep. Thanks, Jen Hatmaker!

Each month, Jen focused on one theme (clothes, shopping, waste, food, possessions, media, and stress) and did crazy stuff like eat only 7 different foods for a month or wore only 7 articles of clothing for a month. It sounded a little gimmicky to me at first, but I resonated with the idea that she was trying to explore. She wanted to get a better handle on how all the excess in her life was distracting her from the Lord, and to see if by cutting away the junk to get back to core necessities she might make space to hear Him, and for His work in her life.

I laughed and cried and prayed and got really really marvelously uncomfortable reading this book. Because even though I could lounge back and say "I've made good progress on the green stuff! I'm buying less junk!" Blah blah, the truth is, I have a long way to go. Especially on the Grace part of this G3 experiment. If I'm just buying less stuff to feel better and lighter and to have more space in my apartment or more money for something else, but my heart hasn't changed, then what good is it?

I'm going to be lazy and use the same excerpt that Flower Patch Farmgirl used in her review, because it really sums up the heart of the book and why it shook me so deeply:

7 will be a tangible way to bow low and repent of greed, ungratefulness, ruined opportunities, and irresponsibility. It's time to admit I'm trapped in the machine, held by my own selfishness. It's time to face our spending and call it what it is: a travesty. I'm weary of justifying it. - 7 Jen Hatmaker

Yes. Weary. This book gave hope to my weariness. The months of simplicity and fasting were all challenging and energizing, but the chapter that really smacked me hardest was the chapter on Stress. I wasn't sure how she would approach it through the 7 theme - if I tried to set a limit that I would only engage in 7 stressful things per day, I wouldn't get past 10am at work. But her Stress month was beautiful and dazzling in its simplicity: she practiced a weekly Sabbath and the Seven Sacred Pauses, also called things like the Prayer of the Hours or Liturgy of the Hours. Pausing seven times per day to pray:

The Night Watch

The Awakening Hour

The Blessing Hour

The Hour of Illumination

The Wisdom Hour

The Twilight Hour
The Great Silence

I honestly think I might print out the whole chapter and re-read it every day. It felt like a stack of heavy boxes sitting on my chest as I tried to squirm around in this chapter last night. I cried at least twice. Because I have been wondering what happened to prayer in my life lately, and it was one of those joyful/angsty moments when you sit up and realize that your prayer for a way to get back into prayer has been answered. With a set of prayers written right out for you. And a list of times to pray them.

You want to get in shape? This chapter on stress actually swooped into my life like a hand-delivered meal plan and exercise schedule for my flabby faith. I couldn't sleep last night because I wanted to get started. With prayer.

Now that I've read this book and Radical, I'm a little afraid of what might happen. Les is going to start 7 next if I ever let him have the book. Even now that I've finished it, I want to carry it around and read it again. Beware, friends, what could happen when you read books that scramble your lazy brain and slam you into reading the Bible and praying. Crazy shit could go down.

I'll keep you posted.