The Garden Shedde

When choosing your paint colors one of the best ways to go about getting what you like is to look at your favorite colors produced by nature itself. If you love blue, is it the blue of blueberry’s that make you shiver or the color of a clear blue sky? Do you love the yellow of the sunflower or is it the daisy that makes you smile? Picking colors from nature has a keen affect on our senses so it’s important to choose those that give you energy if you are painting an office or help you rest if you are painting a bedroom.

This also holds true when choosing colors for offices and conference rooms in commercial spaces. You don’t want to paint a conference room with colors that put everyone to sleep nor do you want colors that cause your staff and clients to bounce off  the walls during an important meeting! This is why it is very important to get your colors right and there are many interior designers who specialize in color theory that can help you choose the perfect colors for your home and office.

After using pesticides for many years on our lawn and in our garden, we have completely changed our approach to lawn and garden care over the last few years and now do not use anything but natural substances. I will admit it is not near as easy as going out and spraying or spreading but after learning what these pesticides are doing to our environment, we felt there was really no choice.

We also don’t know why others have not joined us because the use of these materials are killing thousands of insects and birds every year and polluting the water we drink. I am amazed how many people don’t realize that the ground water that we end up drinking can easily be toxic and full of all kinds of chemicals we are using on our lawns and gardens because they are absorbed into the ground. What is not absorbed is found in the runoff that ends up in our rivers and streams. This water kills butterflies, bees, birds and other small animals and it drank by livestock that ends up in our food system. Living with a few bugs becoames easy once you learn the high cost of pesticides.

The big buzz word these days is “green” but what does that really mean? In some circles it’s everything that is “earthy”, back to nature. In other circles it’s anything that is environmentally friendly like electric cars that have to have batteries, which are not earthy at all but help save energy. What green means to me is anything that brings more life to your world and to the world around you and that includes a robust inner life as well.

If you are doing everything you can for the earth and energy savings yet are neglecting yourself, then what you are doing, though wonderful, is not meeting your basic needs. If your basic needs are not met then you will eventually give out, give up or die. I see this in people who have gotten older and have just given up on changing the way they world works because they’re “tired” or because “nothing ever changes anyway”. These people have let the fire inside them go out because they have taken care of everything and everyone else but themselves. Don’t end up spent and tired. Take the time out today to recharge your internal batteries as this is the ultimate “greening” of the world.

Before the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, many of our friends and family have felt that becoming environmentally active was a little bit over the top. However, since this disaster has now come “home to roost”, so to speak, all of a sudden these same individuals who have given us a hard time in the past are stark raving mad! As much as I like the fact that they are finally seeing the light of day it’s too bad it took an actual disaster to make so many see that this has been a possibility for years.

It seems it’s much more popular in America to react to what is happening as opposed to anticipate what might happen and have some things planned out just in case. The environment is not the only place we seem to have a short sided view because we also do this in healthcare, military action, politics, taxes, business and finance, just to name a few. Is it not time we got involved with the environment as well as with every other thing that touches our lives? If not now, then when?

It is possible to have a lush green lawn and be concerned about the environment.  Research has been conducted at the university level using organic methods to improve lawn health.  A few of the methods are easy and inexpensive.  That makes them a breeze for the average homeowner to do.

The most important way to keep a lawn green is to compost leaves in the fall and let the leaves degrade into a lovely rich soil.  Then that compost can be spread on the lawn to return the rich nutrients from the leaves back to the soil.  It is time consuming, yet free compost.  The trees really do all the work for us.

Another great organic cure is the use of corn gluten meal as a pre-emergent. A pre-emergent is a product that keeps seeds form germinating—all seeds, not just weed seeds.  Pre-emergents can’t tell good seeds from bad seeds.  Usually, pre-emergents are toxic chemicals.  Corn gluten is completely organic.  It is easy to handle and not difficult for a homeowner to apply themselves.

I have been reading some books from the time period of World War II and I have realized something; entertainment and advertising have become ridiculously sex oriented. In the time before World War II, people would have never seen a woman in very skimpy clothing used to advertise something as unrelated as cigarettes or even jeans.

Some people don’t mind these changes but it continues to make women second class citizens. Sex had been used to sell products before our now but it was just not as overly visual even though the aspect was still there. Before we know it the advertisements will get worse.

In my opinion, this change is not something to be proud of. However, it is not something worth getting overly upset over either. It is just the way it is and since there is no pressure on companies to make the changes they will continue to use sex oriented methods to sell their products. They do it because it works and there is not much that we can do about that.

Buying bottled water has got to be one of the most wasteful things that human beings have ever done. The whole concept of bottled water is that it is easier to go to the store and buy it and bring it home than it is to just use the sink at your home. Some people say they prefer bottled water because is cleaner. However, there is little and no proof that they “purify” the water. We just take their word for it.

People who say that they get bottled water because it is more convenient are simply not thinking because they have to spend extra money to by the bottled water when they already spend money in the form of taxes to make sure the water in their sink is clean. They say that it is easier to transport but a water bottle that can be reused over again makes more sense because you don’t have to pay every single time you fill it up.

Finally there is the matter of the pollution. A huge amount of people in the world drink bottled water and sadly most of those people do not recycle. That means that millions and millions of plastic bottles go straight to the landfill. That is maybe the biggest waste of all.

Who needs to worry about an asteroid hitting the earth when all it takes is a single tiny sperm hitting their marks and making a new baby to kill this lovely planet we call home. “The world is overpopulated but people keep on f*#@ing, f*#@ing is how babies are made.” That is a memorable quote from the now deceased Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from his book Breakfast of Champions. Always made a mark on me and I still went ahead and made 3 new babies to add to global overpopulation.

And not even mentioning the stress on the planet to feed these billions of peeps, consider the mindless over-consumption with little or no regard for the waste in creating it or the waste refuse tossed in a trash landfill. Over-population is a real problem and a real bummer. This is a problem that can only be solved with birth control because people love to have sex and that’s not going to stop. If you look at it realistically, one solution is homosexual sex. Maybe it really is more natural than we would like to believe and a way nature is taking care of the problem of overpopulation. If we would stop and think how nature works, then we wouldn’t be so hung up with homosexuality and encourage it as a life choice.

I recently returned from a trip to Australia and was amazed at how the people lived there. For the most part in the cities it is the same as it is here in America, but in some of the more rural places, people have it tough and have to fight to survive.

These people had to work in very hot, very dry environments to survive and it is no walk in the part. They don’t get paid very much and if they’re not careful wild animals wait in the shadows and can attack them at any time. The people in these regions have really adapted well to the harsher environment that they have to deal with on a daily basis. There is a feeling of pride for these people as they feel they can survive anywhere. Many believe that is where the true strength of the human spirit comes from. Not the urge to do harm to one another or the calling for violence but the desire to survive and survive happily in the environment in which we have been placed. It makes me want to do better were I am and hopefully, will inspire you to do the same.

At our house we recently completed a survey sent to us from the power company to access the energy usage and potential savings we can have with some small and some large changes. I was very surprised at what they asked as it was more in-depth than I thought it would be. I had to go look at the frig and hot water heater to find out what the ratings were and how old they were. Unfortunately, there were a couple of things I was not able to do because of the weather but I felt I came close to getting it right.

It took about a month to get the results back and we have found them both informative as well as mostly doable. It broke the changes down into cost and let you know how many months it would take to recoup your investment, which helps you access what you should or could do. If you get the opportunity to do something like this I would highly recommend it because you learn what you have done right and what you can improve and; you save money!