Another great day

The temperatures finally rose above 0 today to a balmy 20 degrees. So we decided to go out enjoy the snow. It was sunny and perfect skiing conditions. We spent the morning cross country skiing and now it is back to work and giving our tired legs a break.

Packaging

Packaging makes up about 30% of consumer waste. Over the past month I think it has been accounting for 75% of our waste though. With the holidays there are all those boxes and wrapping paper, the shipping boxes, the peanuts, plastic wrap, and who knows what else. The other day we received in the mail a replacement bulb for our happy lamp because the first one arrived broken. Take a look at the amount of packaging that it took to get this one bulb to us. What we wanted (the bulb) is the thing on the far right and the rest of the stuff is what it took to get there.

But not all packaging is created equal. This product came from Gaiam an environmental conscious store. So the box is reused, the peanuts are made from vegetables and can be composted or disolved, and they have thought through everything else too. Check out the little piece of paper they give you to explain it all (yes I know that creates more waste but education is some times worth the extra waste). Click on the picture to make it bigger if you can't read it.

We decided to dissolve our peanuts instead of feeding them to our worms (they already have too much food). It was pretty cool. Check out the before and after.

Before
After (which went down the drain)There really are some cool ways to recycle out there that does make a difference. If you want to know more about where all this stuff comes from and goes check out the Story of Stuff at http://www.storyofstuff.com/

I'm about to go outside

I'm sitting here, and it's 30 minutes before class, and I'm debating with myself what to wear. I mean really, how much clothing can I put on? It's minus 8 degrees outside. All of the schools in southeast Michigan are closed for the day. But I've got a 2 hour lab to go to.


So Moshi and I are just sitting here, staring out the window. I'm thinking about how cold it is out there, but I think Moshi is just watching for birds at the bird feeder.

Holidays

Today it is back to the real world. Or wonderful month long vacation has come to and end and classes start again. We had a great break. We drove Moshi east to NYC to see my parents. Bebeth and Mark were there and we spent x-mas, and ate so much good food. We then put the poor cat back in the car and went to DC to see Arthur's family. I even learned how to play paddle tennis. I am not very good at it though. We ate more good food, drink more wine, and saw the whole family. It was back in the car to Starlight for a relaxing five days behind the fire reading, playing games, and tromping through the snow for hikes. After a 10 hour drive we all made it back to Michigan ready for a new term.

To see photos from our vacation check out click here: Holidays 2008

Winter is here!

Michigan decided it was time to live up to it's reputation... it snowed!!! That meant it was time to go cross country skiing. Our skis had been in the bag way too long, we had been in side way too much, and we were itching to ski. So we got up this morning and drove 30 mintues on very snowy roads to a local park that grooms and went skiing for two hours. It was beautiful but man do my legs hurt now.

Us on the bank of the Huron River

Arthur getting cross country skiing confused with downhill skiing

Hundreds of Pets!

My Christmas present to Courtney arrived in the mail today. Covered in stickers that say “live red worms” on it, the UPS man wondered whether we were making worm omelets. Nope, we’re vermi-composting!

Michigan is way too cold to compost outside during the winter, so during the colder months, we’ve decided to compost indoors with worms. The worms eat our food scraps (no meat, just veggies, fruit, eggshells, coffee grinds ,etc), and with the help of other little bugs they poop out worm castings, which is really fertile soil! (I think this is how it works, but really I’m guessing.)

And best of all, we don’t have to wait for our new worms to mature before filling our composter with food scraps, thank to Sally’s city slicker worms all the way from Brooklyn! (Courtney explains this below.)

Courtney and the worms, with Moshi looking on (jealously?)

Adding in the Brooklyn worms

A disclaimer about vermi-composting (technical term for composting with worms): Apparently, worms are an invasive species in Michigan. True, they were here before the last ice age, but they haven’t yet made their way back since the glaciers retreated (poor little buggers are pretty slow). But since fisherpeople have been spreading their worms all over Michigan forests, worms have gotten in the soil and caused a bit of havoc out here. Ecologists, including some people at my school, are pretty concerned about the effects of worms on our local ecosystems, and are therefore apprehensive about worm composting. But I did my research, and the earth worms are much more harmful to our environment than the redworms that we use for composting. And we can be diligent about keeping our worms out of the outdoors by freezing our dirt from the composter for a week before putting it outside, killing all the worms but leaving in all the good nutrients.

Lots of worms!

Worms!

I got a very creative Christmas gift this year…worms! Ok it wasn’t just worms but that was all I had to open. I opened up my present and there was a yogurt container full of dirt with red worms in it. The other part of my present was a worm composting bin, so the worms made sense. But the composter wasn’t going to arrive until we got back to Michigan. The coolest thing about these worms is that they were well traveled. These worms were the offspring from my past venture with worm composting. In 2006 my roommate Sally and I bought a worm composting bin for our apartment in NYC. She still has the bin and Arthur went and got some of the worms from her. So these worms started living in Bergen St. in Brooklyn, bumped around from apartment to apartment in NYC for two years, arrived under the Christmas tree this year, traveled to Washington DC, took a vacation with us in Starlight PA, and now are safe and sound in Ann Arbor MI. Boy do these worms have a large carbon footprint.

Me opening my gift

Me with the bin, worms, and Moshi