Sustain Ability

Jan at thanksfor2day has a meme Sustainable-Living-Project. Last year I shared what we do, how we live. Now I am made aware that we have added nothing new, to what we always did. Three-challenges-to-sustainability.

We get muddled up, which of the Rs is the important one. First, reduce. If you don’t need to print this page, you don’t need to use the toner (which they say weight for weight is more expensive than Joy perfume), transport the paper and toner, manufacture the paper and toner, fell the trees, use fossil oil, to print a page you will never look at again?!  I am befuddled by the new minimalism. The A B Cs of simple living. We are so materialistic, such great consumers, that we need a glossy magazine called Simple Life, to explain it all to us. If you have a solar panel to heat your hot water – South Africa doesn’t need another nuclear power station. Carbon-neutral-blogging with coopette. And this is my dream for a new world an intelligent green office building in Golden Colorado. Dreaming New Mexico. Meanwhile, back in Cape Town guilt free green rides. From WWF  Brave-new-world-fuelled-by-clean-economical-energy-possible-and-imperative-by-2050. Renewable-energy-across-the-globe

Solar panels for hot water

Second, what you cannot reduce, at least reuse. One of our neighbours objects to the local golf course using water straight from the dam. Untreated, unmetered, ‘free’. I object to people with boreholes. Their water is just as untreated, unmetered, ‘free’. Oh, said she, I never thought of that … We use most of our treated, metered water twice. What goes into the pond, and the people, is used just the once. But we have a four legged grey water system.

The Ungardener's grey water system

A close second is repurpose. We have no lawn, at the old house, or this one. Turn a jaundiced and realistic eye on your lawn. Use that water, and money time and resources in chemical fertiliser, weed killing and mowing – either to feed people, or to sustain wildlife. While we are sustaining wildlife, be mindful of invasive alien species. Podcast with Doug Tallamy.  NOT just plants! Look again at those thatched English cottages.

Cape laughing dove, bathing in the relined and refilled Ungardening Pond

And the poor fourth is recycle. Which would only be meaningful if you actually use, what is made of what you so thoughtfully and carefully recycled. If you won’t/don’t buy recycled, you might as well send it to landfill, and be done. Recycled goods are only worth something if they can be sold on, converted back into a link in the consumer goods cycle. Post consumer waste with Meredith, rather than what they can harvest in offcuts at the factory. Compost, not methane from landfill.

Blue sage

This post is dedicated to the people of Japan.

Particularly to the workers risking their lives

for our greater good, at Fukushima nuclear reactor.

Lichen as a symbol of unpolluted air

Greenpeace Switzerland is keeping a vigil for the people in Japan, even in the village of Schonenwerd, where the Ungardener was born. While reading blogs in German, on Schweizergarten, I found a comment by Borkergarten. So many garden bloggers are tortured by - how can I prattle about My Garden NOW??!! Remembering the bombing of Dresden. Quoting Martin Luther  

If I thought the world was going to end tomorrow,

I would plant an apple tree.

The apple tree as a symbol of hope. Johnny Appleseed, for my USA readers.

March lily, Amaryllis belladonna
Already blooming in Cape Town

Closing with youtube Jesus Christ The Apple Tree. And some light relief  Investicatting.

Pictures by Jurg and Diana,

words by Diana of Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville,  

near Cape Town in South Africa   

   

(If you mouse over brown text, it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links)