FIMBY

Enough eco-friendly orientated posts.

What I want to know is what's summer like in your backyard these days? If you care to share, leave a comment with a link to a blog post or flickr photo (my latest photography foray). Oh, and please share something sunny. Because summer in my backyard these days is, in a word, wet.

But I did manage to take this cheery photo at the farm yesterday after I gleaned peas. Today when I went for our weekly share pickup these beautiful strawflowers were all closed up from the rain (notice those foreboding clouds in the background). And what a rain we've had. Today, every hour or so the sky simply opens up and lets down literally sheets of water. And booming, bone rattling thunder at 9am, what's that all about? Weird.

But honestly, I'm glad for the break from the intense pace of summer sun worship. We live in Maine so when the weather's warm we grow food, harvest food, go to the beach, hike, camp, come home again and harvest some more. I needed a break, and this week I got one. Just don't tell any other Mainers I've enjoyed the week of quiet indoor weather.

There's been a lot of potty talk these days and not from the usual under-four-foot tall crowd.

It started over a month ago when Samantha at Our Green House wrote about hating waste and hum... could she somehow reduce that daily, down the toilet, paper waste??

Right around the same time I was feeling pretty good about our family making the switch to recycled, save-the-trees, toilet paper. That didn't last too long though as my friend Cori upped the anti with her Uber-Eco recycled, for real save-the-trees, cloth toilet wipes.

I'm not the only one noticing all this potty talk. Even my friend Rich (not so much of a tree hugger but great guy who plays a mean uilleann pipes), just posted this week about the growing cloth trend.

What's going on here? Until just a couple months ago I was blissfully ignorant of any toilet "alternatives", excepting of course composting toilets which are very cool but kind of impractical in our current bathroom directly off of kitchen house arrangement.

I'd of been content, for now, to stop the discussion here. However, my research-happy husband, whose RSS reader keeps him up to date with all the techie-eco trends, has one-upped ya' all.

I should of started to worry when he innocently asked "how much do we spend on toilet paper each month?". Next thing I know, "because for a year's worth of [kind of expensive recycled] toilet paper we could get a bidet. And it would fit right on our current toilet." (like this is a good thing)

Oh brother! We are weird enough already. This would shoot us right up into the eco-wacky stratosphere.

I gleaned peas from the farm this morning. No altruistic motivations here (wish I could say I donated them to less fortunate folks), just taking advantage of stocking the freezer with free, organic veggies. This isn't the norm though. Obtaining local, organic and sustainably grown foods costs, sometimes a lot. So why do we do it?

Basically, our family has made the choice to value the health of our bodies, community, planet and the farmers who grow our food. Incidentally, these are also the reasons, more or less, for us choosing a plant based diet.

But the health benefits of sustainable foods aren't just physical. Knowing your farmer is good for your whole health and well being. Buying food from local farms is spiritually grounding and a return to our roots. I am connecting myself to a person, not a corporation, brand or store. That person is directly connected to the land - blood, sweat and tears. My connection to them connects me to the land, albeit somewhat vicariously, and returns me to the original Divine mandate to tend the garden, the task we were created to do.

Valuing everyone's health and "returning to the garden" is all fine and dandy but let's get down to the nitty-gritty, what about the cost? I'm not even going to address the long-term environmental and health costs of eating a fossil fuel dependent diet, that's a book. But if I did the cost question would be blow out of the water. However, I know most people think of cost in terms of next month's paycheck so I'll stick to the here and now.

My sis-in-law wrote a good article on garlic over at her blog Inside Out. No need for me to reinvent the wheel, check out what she has to say and while you're at it stock up on garlic next time you're at the produce market.

My 9 year old beauty peaking out from behind her handmade (by her) rag doll.

I'm getting tired of waiting to get my new DSLR so I'm pushing all the limits of my point and shoot. Last night I took it into total "manual mode" to try and capture the sun as it peeked out from behind the clouds. This is the best into the sun shot I've managed to get so far.

Shutter: 1/60
Aperture: f 8.0
Canon PowerShot S60

Is it possible for a bean blossom to blush?

I'd say so. Seems to me the barely pink blossom is almost hiding behind the leaf but in spite of "her" best efforts is being "exposed" by the sun. Oh My!

I didn't even notice the bean pods already growing (I was so caught up in the blossom's veiled beauty), despite being only inches away, until I downloaded and looked at the photo. Such sweet surprises a garden patch holds.

I thought I was green in using recycled toilet paper. That didn't come out right. I mean toilet paper made from recycled paper. My friend Cori is taking to the next level though with cloth toilet wipes. I am nowhere near there yet and not sure if I even think it's more green what with the soap, hot water and electricity required to wash the load of butt wipes (sounds crude but that's what they are folks!).

But (bad pun) I thought this would be a great post to add to the earth friendly tutorials at Natural Family, the newest FIMBY addition. Check it out.

I especially love well crafted sentences and paragraphs. But words in general will do. Through Blogs of Photographers I found this way cool on-line application called Wordle, "a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide". You can input any text or even input a blog address or RSS Feed to generate a beautiful word cloud that you can play around with and edit to your liking.

I had planned to do this as a word-y activity with my kids yesterday but they had other plans. So I did one myself using the text of the blog I wrote about their crafting endeavors. Follow that??

I stayed up way too late last night, having a lot of fun creating this. I can think of so many applications for this - poetry, a gift of words for family or friends, memory/photo album embellishments etc...

Check it out and have some fun.