Cleaning Up- 3. It's Not Easy Being Green

 

Today (4/2/2025) we held a family meeting with our 6 year old Young Cultivator (Fallon) to discuss what going green means and some things we could do.  

Since today is also trash pick-up day, we immediately got to work picking up trash and glass litter along our sidewalk.  We have a landscaping crew tidy up every fortnight but a lot accumulated in the week since their last visit.  Fallon tackled the "less gross" items like fly away candy wrappers.  Mom got to test out her new casabella "buy it for life" dish gloves picking up a cache of rusty razorblades dumped in the grass along the sidewalk.  We are across the street from an elementary school!  Fallon offered to pay mom $1/dog(?) turd from her piggy bank.  This was the going rate we offer when she is inclined to clean up the small family dog's deposits in the yard.  Mom was not convinced deposits of this size could have originated from a dog, and declined the offer, muttering something about the need to save for college and that biowaste was organic enough to break down on its own eventually.  Alas, our sidewalk is therefore not immaculate, but in much better shape than it was.  Once upon a snarkier time, Mom maintained a "trash faeries" instagram account documenting the crazy things that seemed to materialize overnight on the verge along the sidewalk.  No mattresses, milk crates of used motor oil, or Christmas trees today, but here is the 2 gallon bucket haul we collected just from our corner of the block.  

There had been some discussion of sharing seeds.  As it is spring and few things have viable seeds to share at this point, we had to improvise.  Fallon collected and packaged pine needles, dandelion greens, and materials for making humming bird nests.  Mommy transplanted some extra tomato seedlings into warp pipes, corralled several houseplant housewarming gifts that did not spark joy, and combined leftover trick or treat fun sized playdough giveaways with small seed packs of cilantro.  Everything was priced at "free" except for the Big Stick which Fallon insisted was worth $1.  To Mom's surprise, it was the first item to go; with a nice lady who was looking for ginger plants but could use it as a clothes line.  Mom thought it might also be helpful for scaring away whatever unchaperoned direwolves are frequenting the barrio overnight.  

Fallon and mom got in a debate about what types of foods have the highest water footprint.  Fallon felt almonds were problematic, perhaps she has been watching Pom Wonderful Central Valley agricultural vs urban water rights exposes.  Mom felt meat and animal products needed more water because they were higher up the food chain and consumed the plants and their water footprint before being harvested.  In our evening family debriefing, we asked ChatGPT to weigh in and on how much water per 100 calories of food produced for common whole food grocery items.  Mom thinks she won this meat vs nuts debate, but was chagrined to learn 100 calories of coffee tops the charts at 8,000 liters of water...  Let's think of that as a spice, no one is drinking coffee for gains, right?  How do you reckon corn takes 625 L, wheat 471 L, but a product made from those inputs, tortillas takes only 400?  What is going on with apples and lettuce needing more than cheese?  Is it supply chain spoilage?  Something fishy with ChatGPT?  We've been watching The Martian in installments and it looks like if one were to pull a Mark Watney and subsist for a year on just potatoes, they would need 719,000 gallons of water to do it.  That's like draining the backyard swimming pool 22 times for one person!

Sol 1 of this merit badge down, 20 more days to go!  

Sol 3 (4/4) - we read The Lorax, discussed and made a list of ways inspired by the story to live greener.  Mom rates it 5/5 stars.  Fallon rates it 4.5/5 stars because she feels the author took too many poetic liberties-- BIGGERING is not a real word.  

Sol 5 (4/7) - we read The Good Garden (Katie Smith Milway) to learn more about Honduras, where we are traveling in 2 days.  Mom was moved by this because she is also reading Open Veins of Latin America and most of the "technology" the peripatetic teacher introduced to the town like milpas and terracing was invented by Mayans and Incans in this region but seem to have been wiped out over several centuries of epidemics, resource extraction and sugar/coffee monoculture to fuel triangle trade.  Like the protagonist, Maria Luz, Fallon retired to the garden to plant her "cash crop" of radishes, for her next plant market driveway sale.  She couldn't resist also putting in a row of purple carrots which we may remember to look for despite their long germination time as they are planted along the faster germinating radishes.  Disappointed we didn't have any chitted potatoes to replicate Matt Damon's experiment in the Martian, she improvised with a purple sweet potato.  Mom has never seen anyone propagate  potatoes in quite this fashion and has doubts about top-dressing the mounds with pill bugs, but she remains open-minded and relieved Fallon did not hew so closely to Damon's method as to top dress with humanure.