tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-369735212024-03-07T00:47:25.463-05:00littlegreendotFreyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.comBlogger189125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-65134634045295549722007-10-19T21:51:00.000-05:002007-10-19T21:51:51.241-05:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwIX8GqtVzOhyphenhyphencSDTVUo5euO9z5b9ruuPVMxER67RA-UAwJkEHx9ccZzuvcw-tD2u-4rdlmI5MPC_zOB_NyByXNa7JkH26-Uq8NhBCERFFcWt1LCS6jx_V4OJGS90_zFq4v2U/s1600-h/pic11431.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhwIX8GqtVzOhyphenhyphencSDTVUo5euO9z5b9ruuPVMxER67RA-UAwJkEHx9ccZzuvcw-tD2u-4rdlmI5MPC_zOB_NyByXNa7JkH26-Uq8NhBCERFFcWt1LCS6jx_V4OJGS90_zFq4v2U/s160/pic11431.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQEV4jYoK7vDJ2-61XNKp64J6I5IiAVZNBAHILwBdXGJg7nYVWO9bFTK5AfqYNsGMywgtT90HvZOndvUz5WyyfH1VpTp7yaxBnnQJgEB2CaCoAQ_NF-HcIlIm2aZk_RmfiYhqq/s1600-h/pic51601.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQEV4jYoK7vDJ2-61XNKp64J6I5IiAVZNBAHILwBdXGJg7nYVWO9bFTK5AfqYNsGMywgtT90HvZOndvUz5WyyfH1VpTp7yaxBnnQJgEB2CaCoAQ_NF-HcIlIm2aZk_RmfiYhqq/s160/pic51601.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiERRrKHwea0wM7pYDINpYQ1Rds7dtCogiaJgFGIdi-kTAXEaxBr-_oOucWEbXpmgz7WEq423_A9qaoprRomEcy_O4NMptiNkHewxnMba-b_kRvDncDa7ZJTdMlScJ5vVZbpLjE/s1600-h/pic21195.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiERRrKHwea0wM7pYDINpYQ1Rds7dtCogiaJgFGIdi-kTAXEaxBr-_oOucWEbXpmgz7WEq423_A9qaoprRomEcy_O4NMptiNkHewxnMba-b_kRvDncDa7ZJTdMlScJ5vVZbpLjE/s160/pic21195.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggSQRUrZKv84RYSVknXldmEOlpoxoHXMt2w_Lw5ETYLH-fLIe8yBoUUqLv_XKdB9QyAc6VFt_-XX8uQ6HsjcGVJC32RfO0Mc_KfEf6LxYgGoarKosTvy3qVV0xUErNYNat7NfH/s1600-h/pic23280.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggSQRUrZKv84RYSVknXldmEOlpoxoHXMt2w_Lw5ETYLH-fLIe8yBoUUqLv_XKdB9QyAc6VFt_-XX8uQ6HsjcGVJC32RfO0Mc_KfEf6LxYgGoarKosTvy3qVV0xUErNYNat7NfH/s160/pic23280.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-40067047136944899622007-10-19T20:58:00.000-05:002007-10-19T21:43:40.511-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Cinderella</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Blimey. Have just logged on and realized it's over a month since I last posted. I doubt even my parents are still checking in. Ah well. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">We're upstate and it's raining hard. The nights are drawing in, the leaves are ablaze and there's woodsmoke in the air. All of a sudden it's nearly a year since we moved upstate to begin our experiment in country living and I'm finding myself terribly nostalgic for that wood-stove-warmed bubble we created for ourselves in our little wooden house in the snow, when my life was all greening, Dotting and blogging. The best four months of my life really. Although to be fair they're all pretty great now we've got a hilarious little person laughing, pointing and boogie-ing her way through our days.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">It being October I'm indulging myself in my pumpkin fetish. For those of you who don't know, I'm so obsessed with pumpkins I actually scheduled my wedding for October 30th so I could have miniature white pumpkins as the table centerpieces (then the florist couldn't get them in England so that showed me, but anyway). So far the hubby's only had to munch his way through one batch of </span><a href="http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1363627,00.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Nigel Slater's spicy pumpkin soup</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> but I've just rediscovered a book called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Pumpkin-Growing-Cooking-Carving/dp/0882669931"><em>The Perfect Pumpkin</em> </a>my dear friend Courtney bought me as joke a few years ago and spent this evening poring over all manner of pumpkin recipes to experiment with in the coming weeks. Pumpkin Cheesecake, Pumpkin Cookies, Pumpkin Torte, Pumpkin Curry, Pumpkin Dinner Rolls, Pumpkin Ale...well, maybe not the ale.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Today I roasted a large sagey green specimen I'd bought from River Brook Farm two weeks ago. I think it was a </span><a href="http://www.localharvest.org/store/item.jsp?id=6145"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Gray Hubbard</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">, and anyway it seemed to weigh more than my daughter. By the time I pulled it from the oven the noble beast was listing to starboard and oozing shiny juice. I let it cool and set about scooping out the seeds and flesh. This took a lot longer than I'd anticipated and was no less involving (or messy) than stripping down the carcass of a large turkey but the flavor was excellent and I now have a panful of pumpkin sitting in the fridge ready to be blended, beaten and baked into pumpkin muffins for breakfast and soup for lunch tomorrow before it's off to the farm to try a new variety. What I don't have are the seeds I painstakingly pulled from the strings and set aside to dry roast because the hubby threw them in the bin but I suppose he wouldn't be him if he didn't do things like that all the time.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Right, must get to bed before I - well, you know what. I'll add a pic of the pixie in just a minute.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-44661745693404159382007-09-04T12:06:00.000-05:002007-09-04T12:48:02.844-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Whither willpower?</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I'm so weak. You remember all that stuff I wrote about in my last post? Yeah, so last night we drove back from our Labor Day weekend late to miss the traffic. We'd had a lovely weekend but not a brilliant one for sleep - someone had a dicky tum and kept waking herself up with farts quite extraordinary for one so small (I'm not talking about myself here, by the way). </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">As we pulled up outside our Park Slope pad around midnight, little Dot's eyes pinged open. She clocked where she was. She grinned. She squealed 'Daddy!', then 'meow!', 'woof!' and 'door!' (presumably in anticipation of the riches she knew awaited her within - she LOVES this apartment and its treasure trove of dogs, cats and doors) and finally 'mummy mummy mummy UP!'. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">So I took her upstairs and went about getting her to bed. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I tried the dim lighting, the boob trick, lullabies, walking, the lot. She was having none of it. I sat her on the floor for two seconds while I went to the loo and she was off like a shot, trying to climb on the sofa, getting reaccquainted with all the birthday pressies she'd opened on Friday, flinging books gleefully on the floor and flirting happily with the baby in the mirror ('baby! baby!'). Cute for about five minutes. Less cute two hours later at twenty to two on a work night. I finally wrangled her down after a bit of protest around 1.45. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">This morning, bleary and puffy, I stumbled to work. Exiting the subway I passed my favourite coffee shop. I was running late. I was knackered. The reusable cup was on the 14th floor. I checked no one was looking then nipped into the coffee shop and ordered a skim cappuccino in a double paper cup and a sandwich in a cellophane wrapper.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Before leaving the shop I did a furtive double-check to ensure no one was looking and made a dash for my office, trying vainly to conceal the evidence of my hypocrisy. I don't think anyone saw. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I shut the door and downed the cappuccino while waiting for the pediatrician to call me back about the nappy sitch.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Oh dear. Only yesterday I was mulling a post about the long-lost virtue of self-control and rediscovering the satisfaction of delayed gratification. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Well, so much for that. Went out the window around six this morning along with what remained of my sanity. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">I'm pleased to report though that the coffee seems to have done the trick.</span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-18675367913818680122007-08-29T15:13:00.001-05:002007-08-29T15:39:26.903-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Green Geek</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I'm getting a bit of a reputation for myself around the office as a green geek. Equipped with my (now fairly battered) <a href="http://www.reusablebags.com/store/reusable-bottles-sigg-bottles-c-19_33.html">SIGG bottle</a>, my Williams Sonoma reusable coffee cup (which keeps the coffee far too hot for too long but you have to suffer for your planet), a bag to stuff all my paper in to take home for recycling (the building doesn't do it - it's cheaper for them to pay the $2000/year fine than to recycle) and a ceramic plate which I dutifully cart to the cafeteria to collect my lunch, I'm doing fairly well in the no-garbage stakes. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">A few weeks ago I caught my partner in greening the agency drinking coffee from a styrofoam cup. He claimed it was greener than paper or somesuch nonsense. He now keeps trying to catch me out by offering me coffee. I get all excited until I remember I haven't got my cup on me so I tell him I can't have one but not to let me stop him. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">This makes me seem like a total green matyr and definitely boosts my credibility as the go-to person for matters green. I also turn down bottled water in meetings, preferring to go thirsty if I've forgotten my SIGG than have a plastic bottle on my conscience. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The plate thing is the gesture which draws the most attention. As I take my sandwich back upstairs in the elevator it's almost as if people have forgotten that lunch doesn't just manifest wrapped or boxed in plastic. But I like it. Somehow lunch at your desk feels a bit more like proper food when eaten off china with a cloth napkin. My next-door neighbour at work has adopted the plate too and reports she's finding it a great awareness raiser for the good fight.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">With all the spoddy gestures, people have to taken to saying to other people of me, 'oh Freya, she's hardcore'. This in turn is helping keep me on the straight and narrow - don't want to wreck my credibility by getting caught with my green trousers down (or a styrofoam cup in my hand).</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">But I must be careful not to let it all go to my head. After all, hardcore by New York ad agency standards is...well I can't think of a good analogy but compare me to, say, <a href="http://noimpactman.typepad.com/">No Impact Man</a>, and I can assure you I am really pretty useless.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-20339646144074324412007-08-26T21:12:00.000-05:002007-08-29T15:11:49.120-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Does not compute</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Every so often I lose my momentum a bit for the green thing. The something comes along to give me a kick up the backside. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">This time it was a recent Newsweek cover story Entitled "Global Warming: a Hoax" which charts the deception perpetrated on the US people - and government - by industry groups seeking to deny climate change. You can read it </span><a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">here</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">We knew this, but this article reminds us of how systematic and calculated the deception has been.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Ugh.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">What staggers me about this above all (and it staggers me on many levels) is that, when it comes down to it, these people have put the health of their business (so I suppose their wallets) above the health - indeed the survival - of their children. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">How does that work? </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-49354460689226077892007-08-23T21:04:00.000-05:002007-08-23T21:40:58.260-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Odds and Ends</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">We're staying in the city this weekend. Although I absolutely love being at the house, this somehow feels like a holiday. But it </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">reminds me there were some anecdotes from last weekend I'd meant to post. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The first: as we drove across the river to the house at the end of a rather long journey up, I became conscious of a sort of high pitched wheezing which I realized had been going on in the background on and off since we left the city. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">'What's that noise?" I aksed the hubby.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">"Oh, that's the gaffer tape I stuck over the hole in the engine," he replied in an offhand way, like he mended car engines with tape every day of the week.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">"What, so our car really is stuck together with sticky tape?" I replied. How very Blue Peter. I'd only thought it felt like it was. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Then there was the trip to Pecks, the local supermarket, where as usual I was forced to eat humble pie. As I was trying to fit far too much stuff into the one reusable bag I'd brought with me while wrestling the credit card from Dot, who was lording it over the supermarket from the vantage point of her first ever go in the child seat of a trolley (in our poncey Brooklyn supermarket she sits right in the basket on one of those mini-basket-trolley things), the cashier said, "Oh, hold on, I need to take some off because you brought a bag."</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">This was new. "Really, how much do I get back?" I asked, thrilled. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">"Three cents," she said. Well, ok then.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">As I was manoevring Dot's chariot out the door I noticed a pile of red cloth bags with a 'Shop Rite reusable bags' sign next to them. I think they cost 10 cents or something. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">How brilliant is that? </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Next time I'm going to spy on the other shoppers to see if the plastic bag message is doing any better there than it is in Manhattan. Here I keep seeing people on the subway, <a href="http://www.anyahindmarch.com/division/environmental_bags.aspx">an Anya Hindmarch 'I'm not a plastic bag'</a> in one hand and...a plastic bag in the other.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I think I also meant to tell you how unbelievable the selection is at River Brook Farm at the moment. I go to the UK for 2 weeks and they go harvest festival-tastic. Quite unbelievable - garlic, (pink) potatoes, watermelons, squash, spinach, basil, (purple) carrots, aubergines, peppers, broccoli, dill, fennel, salad, (green, purple) tomatoes and so on and so on - and there are only three of them doing the whole thing. Incredible. We also got the most delicious white peaches, blackberries and plums from the Callicoon farmers market. Good times for farm market geeks like me.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I think there was more to tell but it eludes me and I better get to bed. The hubby's sighing and yawning in a way that suggests he's trying to get my attention.</span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-83659348641931103372007-08-23T20:31:00.000-05:002007-08-23T21:01:48.721-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">I'm channeling Bon Jovi. Please help...</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I can't believe how long it's taken me to get round to telling you this, but I think the mother-in-law has cracked the shampoo issue. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">She came to see us several weeks ago laden down with gifts, among them a bottle of <a href="http://www.greenpeople.co.uk/productdetails.aspx?ProductID=d637f6c7-55ce-4f19-9029-df058ad01de2&CategoryID=6edcc635-0e7c-4407-a1ea-61257354e356">Green People moisturising shampoo</a>. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">It's great. Leaves my hair all smooth and silky, like it hasn't been since the Kerastase amnesty. It is of course paraben-, petroleum- and sodium lauryl sulfate-free. Hurrah. I could even use it on Dot (though she has her own <a href="http://www.californiababy.com/">California Baby</a>, don't you know).<br /><br />She (the MIL) subsequently got me the conditioner too for collection it when we were in the UK. It seemed full of promise. Then the hubby packed it in his hand luggage on the way from Dublin to Bristol and it had to be relinquished at check-in - bugger.<br /><br />Am now trying to decide if I can justify ordering some online and incurring the airmiles. I've done a bit of </span><a href="http://www.greenpeople.co.uk/About.aspx"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">research</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> and they're such a nice company I think I might have to. Or if anyone reading is planning a trip over soon, will you be my Green People mule to cut down on postage and packaging? Humid August in New York is not a good place for anyone's hair. </span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-75931675928287551382007-08-14T21:55:00.000-05:002007-08-14T22:03:18.391-05:00Some holiday snaps<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRpRIbg5hMefDqHxrzJ21mub2y39HcNWqialC3xIW0SPL4ajSdJmf1efgcluJMff_dYPIgzLyUmxKXzxCpB1FXJDwxcRM8F1zVuzRSclbvP2V7dV8OJt621Wbs5nosJIO5GqYe/s1600-h/P1020487.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRpRIbg5hMefDqHxrzJ21mub2y39HcNWqialC3xIW0SPL4ajSdJmf1efgcluJMff_dYPIgzLyUmxKXzxCpB1FXJDwxcRM8F1zVuzRSclbvP2V7dV8OJt621Wbs5nosJIO5GqYe/s400/P1020487.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098757062667357954" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbbp7FPvujddhx-PNTYOHGe5Rwn96Bp-lNSLqEiywyTvbgtu0FBudipjIMf7DPheIYIa3-sT81GzXOczfSAYGsMntOWpVoEaKsKX1xc6VKbOms9H3xeye-Bfz-bOrhzs985wt/s1600-h/P1020462.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkbbp7FPvujddhx-PNTYOHGe5Rwn96Bp-lNSLqEiywyTvbgtu0FBudipjIMf7DPheIYIa3-sT81GzXOczfSAYGsMntOWpVoEaKsKX1xc6VKbOms9H3xeye-Bfz-bOrhzs985wt/s400/P1020462.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098757079847227154" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUamJhmAn7DINV19z5WEqGtnRmVbV71uJJ0cJvd2R6diOdJiSRKppww5NPtaYiQT3HwjB90O3wk8LqP6yrT4W5B06sSqxeWowk47pjI_AXi_IaeAWk4FfLmS1Cl8zJx5ESnmO/s1600-h/P1020436.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrUamJhmAn7DINV19z5WEqGtnRmVbV71uJJ0cJvd2R6diOdJiSRKppww5NPtaYiQT3HwjB90O3wk8LqP6yrT4W5B06sSqxeWowk47pjI_AXi_IaeAWk4FfLmS1Cl8zJx5ESnmO/s400/P1020436.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098757088437161762" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwD1UBQk0kDNKjfj-sjdwiTxEvfHeUYVoKNFlUayxP4z1k845SIlGPa-LaprX-8Aosnxh-ac1AgdRxhNG874wvviEFs3Zfdd3LXtVBpPKfbMD4zsB5duZ00ub3QO1gli1SHBaR/s1600-h/P1020305.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwD1UBQk0kDNKjfj-sjdwiTxEvfHeUYVoKNFlUayxP4z1k845SIlGPa-LaprX-8Aosnxh-ac1AgdRxhNG874wvviEFs3Zfdd3LXtVBpPKfbMD4zsB5duZ00ub3QO1gli1SHBaR/s400/P1020305.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5098757097027096370" /></a>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-21194210987308681212007-08-14T20:51:00.000-05:002007-08-14T21:50:19.626-05:00Dazed and confused<br /><br />Dear friends, I'm so sorry I've been quiet for so long with not even an explanation for you. We went off to see the family in England and attend our friends' wedding in Ireland, in between which we stole a few days to ourselves in a cottage on an organic farm in Tipperary with an overnight sojourn to the Aran islands. <br /><br />Ah, it was blissful. Over two weeks hanging out with my darling girl and the hubby exploring, slowing down, walking, breathing, reading (real books!) and staring at the sort of landscapes that heal the soul (I can recommend the view across to Connemara, the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher from Dun Aengus, a 4000-year-old fort on Inishmor, at sunset, especially if surveyed while inhaling the scalpy scent of the flaxen-haired 11-month old pixie snoozing in the baby bjorn on your chest). <br /><br />Seeing the grannies was also marvellous (and when I say grannies, I include grandpas and uncles and aunts, and great grannies and great uncles, too) partly for the extra pairs of hands but mainly to share the pixie with people who get almost as big a kick out of her as I do. I have a nasty feeling I shall need to un-eco-friendlyly fly them here more often; either that or move home...<br /><br />Things seem to have gone a bit haywire since we got back. A jetlagged baby is never a pretty thing but tonight poor little Dot puked all over the baby food aisle of a supermarket (and her mother and herself) in Battery Park City (downtown Manhattan near the World Trade Center) and was found to have a temperature of 100.6 on arrival home (she's sleeping peacefully now so fingers crossed). We were in downtown Manhattan because the hubby and I think we've decided this commute is no good for me (it cuts into my Dot time too much, psychologically I feel too far away from her, it's nearly an extra hour on the trip upstate and anyway I want to be riding my bike to work) and we miss our old life (no subways, just strolling round the West Village of a summer's evening) so in a burst of activity we decided to look at Manhattan apartments. Whether we can afford to live in the city is something we're not really talking about; for now it's enough to poke about on the offchance we find something ideal. We tend to get lucky like that.<br /><br />And then we did. Well, if we find ourselves with $1.2M to spare, we did. A green building going up right on the river. Green roof, recycled water, fresh air circulating, bamboo floors, energy-efficient devices, a poet's cafe, organic bakery, kid's playroom and branch of the NYC public library on site, free bike storage, Zipcar pick-up center and swings and other kiddie stuff right out front. All with air that feels fresh and a 20 minutes from work. It's kind of greenie heaven (although I struggle with the fact it's a new build and the kitchen cabinets are decorated with hardwood - i.e. not that green but anyway...)<br /><br />The weirdest bit was the hubby loved the idea. I'd barely bothered to suggest a green building even though I'd been reading and dreaming about them, assuming he would scoff and dismiss it out of hand. <br /><br />"No, it makes total sense," he said. "Apart from anything else, everyone will want a green building in a few year's time so it'll be worth a fortune." <br /><br />So we went back to look today. Dot was laughing and boogieing all over the apartment. The bathroom was a bit naff but otherwise it was lovely. The sun was shining, there was a refreshing breeze, people were biking, blading, sailing and kayaking past the front door. The hubby was sizing the place up to see if he could shoot there. <br /><br />Then Dot was sick. Then I hit a rough patch. Was it worry about her puking? The thought of dragging her in the buggy back to Brooklyn and up endless stairs on my own in shoes that were rubbing and with 73 bags of crap to carry? The hormones from being back at work, apart from Dot? Being a spoilt brat at seeing a dream apartment which ticked all the boxes but that we couldn't afford? Or the reality of another manic day in the office, dreaming of the greening/Dotting/blogging days of yore? <br /><br />Ah, who knows. And now I'm home in Brooklyn it's cool and peaceful and I wonder if we should just stay. The other option is to go and live on Inishmann for a year to grow vegetables and write a book. That's what I'd really like to do. <br /><br />At least I think it is.....Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-77854115744436290552007-07-09T20:24:00.000-05:002007-07-09T21:04:02.881-05:00I promise soon to be good but....<br /><br />Back in the city today and New York summer is in full, sultry effect. God it's hot - didn't realize how lucky we were upstate with the shady trees and cool breezes. Here the concrete and tarmac hold onto the heat and everywhere you got there are air conditioners blasting hot air in your face. You can barely catch your breath. <br /><br />I didn't realize how bad it was until I left work. I got that my-feet-are-about-to-explode feeling as soon as I stepped out of the office. And no respite in Brooklyn either - I thought it would be cooler than Manahattan but I almost feel like it's worse - with no skyscrapers there's even less shade. <br /><br />So my guilty admission is that we have the AC on. Not on high, but on. Not quite sure how we'd manage without, not now we've got Dot. She had a sweaty top lip in the car this morning as it was. Wonder if having no AC upstate and doing the lights out thing cancels out the carbon emissions from the journey there and back?<br /><br />Anyway, at least we had lots of lovely fresh fruit and veg to remind us of the weekend. For those of you interested in my farmer's market exploits, find of the weekend was a punnet of tiny, juicy tart little gooseberries, closely followed by some gorgeous redcurrants. But then Alice's special mix of eight basils (including my favourite thai basil) was pretty amazing, as were her English peas and the first sweet little yellow tomatoes. Oh, and as I was checking out of River Brook Farm on Sunday, Neil came into the barn with a surprise for Alice - a colander full of little red potatoes, fresh out of the ground - the first of the year. I bought a big bagful and we had them with a smudge of mayonnaise on Sunday, the freshest potatoes I've ever eaten. Yum.<br /><br />Right, time to go because I'm starting to sound like a wannabe Nigel Slater but before I do, one more thing. I spoke at a panel a couple of weeks back. If you want to see some hideous pictures of me (and get a flavour for what i do as my day job), go to <br /><br />http://adage.com/article?article_id=119058 <br /><br />and click on 'watch video'. That harsh lighting is not kind...Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-3748183562489656362007-07-09T20:08:00.000-05:002007-07-09T20:22:18.841-05:00Cardboard box fun<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHK71OUd7LkLPmpN-8jEJU7WGt5y7HN69SPwxtIRC8iSePWQL8ahKblQ9wC_ylMETFU98FpnXxwvnAXZAjnHvP7n4_TaFCmDsbzDHvlg-g0CWB9zFLMxc32t0EnSAreQd4i6nM/s1600-h/P1000682.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHK71OUd7LkLPmpN-8jEJU7WGt5y7HN69SPwxtIRC8iSePWQL8ahKblQ9wC_ylMETFU98FpnXxwvnAXZAjnHvP7n4_TaFCmDsbzDHvlg-g0CWB9zFLMxc32t0EnSAreQd4i6nM/s400/P1000682.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085371006044193234" /></a><br /><br />The good ship Dot<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-j3KF6F1W7V6WbOLsX47-ozjCW8WaZ-MBe1NkX4sRA2Z_94lxeSi9ZQbqdEmbaTiVcLpFdESeDtu8S3TqbuaX50J5hGpMR6hkBR0tmy5pj1BvROx_0zWMBVRNBGf-pWfiJ_gY/s1600-h/P1000716.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-j3KF6F1W7V6WbOLsX47-ozjCW8WaZ-MBe1NkX4sRA2Z_94lxeSi9ZQbqdEmbaTiVcLpFdESeDtu8S3TqbuaX50J5hGpMR6hkBR0tmy5pj1BvROx_0zWMBVRNBGf-pWfiJ_gY/s400/P1000716.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085371023224062434" /></a><br /><br />And that naughty shady crab<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5uQHJKE0qjxjemywXVMZDFGXox5tZVzi6INRc57fCsmaQUiOiR9e1lDDVedJkFpR08EX2mk0Rim_SmJ0q6JGB8xd241Pr5yXAcTX5TdBl6DDpLOV4T58narLzY1nBm3P1ovzm/s1600-h/P1000779.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5uQHJKE0qjxjemywXVMZDFGXox5tZVzi6INRc57fCsmaQUiOiR9e1lDDVedJkFpR08EX2mk0Rim_SmJ0q6JGB8xd241Pr5yXAcTX5TdBl6DDpLOV4T58narLzY1nBm3P1ovzm/s400/P1000779.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085371040403931650" /></a><br /><br />Eating sand is quite eco-friendly though...<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0tQK6Xbhb4QGhy-OhIH4wQUO504-fzFCH-XVzY8-pXSr_IKy2AYN3bKKiuwLIlUA_guGkX55ogpvvFbC-V5G33jhmvzHLk-jmhR71z3AQ8LBPV1KUakhLyJqraT2d-L4LLk95/s1600-h/P1000775.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0tQK6Xbhb4QGhy-OhIH4wQUO504-fzFCH-XVzY8-pXSr_IKy2AYN3bKKiuwLIlUA_guGkX55ogpvvFbC-V5G33jhmvzHLk-jmhR71z3AQ8LBPV1KUakhLyJqraT2d-L4LLk95/s400/P1000775.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5085371036108964338" /></a>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-86127934615109564772007-07-06T21:28:00.000-05:002007-07-06T22:06:25.989-05:00We are sailing...<br /><br />So of course I've completely changed my mind about the garden. It was inevitable - I do this about everything, all the time. <br /><br />Maybe it was the seed of doubt sowed by the brother, or the erstwhile charming weeds starting to look a bit tatty, or the strange triffid-like things that have begun to overtake the entire house and garden, threatening to swallow a family member whole (and which I discovered this evening could be pulled out of the ground with barely a flick of the wrist) or maybe it was the neighbour's perfectly ramshackle country garden overflowing with rustic roses, columbine and these lovely golden foxglove-like things....who knows? But anyway, as the Nigel Slater chicken wings with black pepper crisped up in the oven, I was to be found out the front plucking armfuls of triffids from the ground while dreaming of being able to afford an organic landscape architect (Jamie's suggestion - well let's see, once the porch is done, you never know, J.)<br /><br />I could also just be a bit obsessed with the garden because me and Dot have spent much of our week together contriving ways to entertain ourselves outside (and as I type I'm in a deckchair on the lawn, feet to the fire, lanterns behind me, creek roaring in the background, fireflies out in force. Clearly she's in bed. Oops, a firefly just landed on me). Our three faves so far:1) careening around the garden on a plastic sledge (me pulling, her careening); 2) captaining the good ship Dot (an old rubber dinghy) into safe harbour using only salad servers as oars, then clambering out onto dry land to test out one's sea legs (the prognosis: wobbly. Well, we are still only just 10 months); and 3) setting up home in Camp Dot, a Manhattan Storage Large cardboard box last used to move one's parents to the country, but much more useful now it has a door and sides the perfect height for pulling oneself up to stand. <br /><br />The verdict? By far the best week we've had in ages (well, let's be honest, that I've had), and as a reward for mummy we're almost saying 'quack quack quack', might be saying 'dog' and have definitely said 'wow' once.<br /><br />However I do need to confess that we went to Wal Mart on the 4th - a waste of a holiday perhaps but the rain was torrential. We almost managed to avoid buying any new plastic toys, knowing none would be as fun as the cardboard box, but then we spotted the Shady Crab, a rubber raft with holes for little legs to go through and a sunshade to keep the sun off... <br /><br />Readers, I know how awful of me this was - it might be PVC, it could have been made in China - but if you could have seen the grin as we launched it and kicked about in the river today...<br /><br />Oh dear, it's a short and very slippery slope from here to $200 Nike trainers and BMW sports car. <br /><br />I promise she won't get me that easily next time.Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-33795800809507945372007-07-05T20:26:00.001-05:002007-07-05T20:26:22.508-05:00Treehugging<br /><br />So, I'm very excited. I've taken the week off and we're up at the house. I've got nothing to do but hang out with the hubby and Dot - bliss. Well, that and search for an eco-friendly fridge to buy, but more of that tomorrow (unless anyone can quickly tell me which one to get - I never was the consumer reports type and energy star searches are practically impossible - i need to get to bed this side of Xmas).<br /><br />It's hard to know where to start when you haven't posted much in a while (it's also hard to make the time when you've got out of the habit). There are the evenings spent round the barbeque in the back garden (not sure if this is eco-friendly but figure it must be more so than using propane to fire the oven), lit only by candlelight (we've taken to using no electric lights at night, just lanterns lit by candles. Keeps the insects out, saves electricity, is terribly romantic and doesn't wake Dot up when we go to bed. Reminds me of when we used to stay at a beach bungalow with my grandparents when we were kids. There was no electricity so we used gas lamps instead). Then there's my ludicrous over-excitement about the farmers markets and seasonal food going on at the moment (I spend half the journey up here trying to guess what will have come into season this week, buying huge bags of herbs and greens and using them liberally, shelling fresh peas with gay abandon (so much meatier than frozen, I find). Alice's shelves at River Brook farm are finally heaped with produce. This week I found a bowl of tiny black raspberries - then spotted loads more in our own back garden...) <br /><br />But I have for ages been meaning to write about the garden. So, I will. Our garden is approx 3/4 acre and the rough layout is house, stretch of lawn, barn, little bit of woods with a path through and beyond that a clearing surrounded by trees. On one side is a beautiful old drystone wall and the other a crappy hodgepodge of bits of fence bequeathed us by the previous owner. The wall is home to gophers and chipmunks. Our overgrown beds of wildflowers (read: weeds) attract butterflies, birds and bees. We have evidence that deer pass this way and we've had three snake sightings this summer (sorry, Pen). There are quite a lot of trees so from about 1pm onwards the lawn is in shade - perfect for hanging out with a little Dot on a blanket. <br /><br />What to do with this garden has been a bit of an ongoing debate. I know nothing about gardening and having rather a lot on my plate already have not found the time to learn. I did spend a couple of weekends last summer frenziedly wrenching weeds and roots from a couple of beds but by the time I got ready to think about plants, the buggers were completly ovegrown with weeds again - it is rather vigorous here - so I gave up. <br /><br />Then I stumbled on the idea of a wilderness garden (http://www.jackiefrench.com/wilderness.html - sorry, on the hubby's mac again). The idea is that you basically leave your garden wild so it can play host to all sorts of native flora and fauna as - get this - an eco-statement. No pesticides, no artificial fertilizer, no water-guzzling lawn and, the most appealing bit if you ask me, no work beyond mowing a little patch of grass to sit on. <br /><br />Since this was the first green thing I'd stumbled on in a while which was actually less work than the non-eco alternative I embraced it with both arms and we've been cultivating the meadow look with reasonable success ever since. Admittedly it does look very...rustic and I'd like a bit more colour around the place - some roses, maybe a hydrangea - and I'd LOVE a vegetable patch, but whatever.<br /><br />My brother and his lovely wife have just been for the weekend and little bro, who's become something of a garden expert in recent years and has a lovely neat one of his own back home in Bromley, wasn't overly impressed with the wilderness garden. He kept making kindly suggestions for things we could do to easily improve it. These ranged from 'you could replant that bed and it'd keep the weeds down naturally' through 'you could easily make a vegetable patch back there you know' and 'could you move the barn?' to 'if you cut the trees behind the barn down you could have a lovely huge lawn area and actually enjoy your garden. There are so many trees round here I hardly think it'd make a difference'. This in between leaping around in the woods extracting dead wood to tend the bonfire with - very eco-friendly and strangely satisfying - and scything weeds with a scythe from a local yard sale.<br /><br />But the thing is, I don't want a lawn stretching back to there, needing watering and mowing and all that - yes because I'm lazy and oversubscribed but also because it really wouldn't make sense to do either when I'm turning the tap off while brushing my teeth and paying someone else to plant trees in my name whenever I fly. And anyway, the little magical-path-through-the-woods-to-a-tiny-clearing effect is part of what sold the house to me in the first place. Plus he hasn't tried weeding these beds. I have. <br /><br />Actually, now I come to think about it, my brother is the one person I know who actually does have enough energy to tame a garden like this (80 mile bike rides at dawn, anybody?). Perhaps I could persuade him to give up his career as a high-flying dentist and become my PA gardener! <br /><br />There'd have to be ground rules of course. No tree-cutting, just tree-hugging.Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-23434755518375015512007-07-04T11:22:00.000-05:002007-07-04T11:40:57.034-05:00Happy July 4th<br /><br />(This is a bit of a crap post as can't seem to make the hubby's mac play nicely with Blogger, so apologies for that.)<br /><br />So, of course I didn't find time to do my bag-free-fourth thing. Luckily Sally at Carry-a-bag is on the case and has created a lovely bag for the occasion. Check it out on her blog at carry-a-bag.blogspot.com.<br /><br />Also, have you signed Al Gore's petition yet? I'm not entirely convinced that these things really work but since that nice Mr. Gore keeps emailing me I figure it'd be rude not to sign his thing for him, so why don't you all do the same? <br /><br />http://liveearthpledge.org/algore.php<br /><br />We're planning a Live Earth party for Saturday. Are you?<br /><br />And finally, thanks much to everyone who took the time to recommend shampoo. Best so far is Sarah from downstairs's - I think it's called EO. Also recommended: Aveda and Nature's Gate but I must let you all know that those two do contain parabens and those are part of what I'm trying to avoid (see previous post: http://freyaanddot.blogspot.com/2007/04/are-you-suffering-whole-foods-effect-so.html). So cheers, and happy (annoyingly rainy) 4th. xxxFreyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-83239069663872996512007-06-23T10:31:00.001-05:002007-06-23T10:34:20.948-05:00<span style="color:#33cc00;"> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Is vanity hereditary? And the lanky fringe</span></span><br /><div></div><div> </div><br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079283072265406050" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiINl0AjAn9cOB7_sAuOiymvQJKraH5vyg6ddfcpP6NK-TBksx7bclAjmE8ky7mjWfR2AJ-2Zpw4RziMJzBUbnUyckqsedifh24dME9nMTjRDo1LR2e0ZZXVAWDoYzZvQl8Jwha/s400/pic09955.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079283072265406034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9HuDTnuAOj_xm3dlXmC8G0ohcpc5ikP8VMCQmbLzdcruudqn_Ny_fFtLTXwOysQLKwozxkzrySoAmAvvBCO-R12qWDZoyMhVhTa4QW4EJxianBV7P6lKhVr4teXj2sRYggCzu/s400/pic08959.jpg" border="0" /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5079283072265406066" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAfWPvr4pfLoni5lAw3SSsvbPE0GnGd3-KJ59BLNtEwSd7He7Eut0T0qRfQ-vAZaIt36UdD6FFq5PRC2s97d5M4UpNk6zDoQ6U8Ur0inLWZrQjsWRC_V6cYUEP206Kma16B5lA/s400/pic54356.jpg" border="0" />Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-23775959987440790412007-06-23T10:03:00.000-05:002007-06-23T10:27:44.917-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#33cc00;">Shampoozled</span> </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Aaargh, am so completely over eco-friendly shampoo. Has anyone else found any that actually works? Not to get your hair clean I mean – although sometimes even that seems too much to ask – but that doesn’t leave it either stringy, lank, frizzy or dry as straw? Because I sure as hell haven’t and my research now definitely qualifies as extensive.<br /><br />I’ve tried Burt’s Bees (effect similar to using baby shampoo – dry, flyaway), Bumble and Bumble (dull, lanky), Aubrey Organics (stringy, grubby-feeling), Liggetts bar shampoo (dry again), Max Green Alchemy (dry and brittle) and even the No-Impact Man concoction of Dr Bronner’s castile soap, filtered water and olive oil (like straw). The worst bit is that even if they don’t work, I feel compelled to use them to the last drop to avoid waste, especially given they all come in plastic bottles about which my angst is growing daily (I read <a href="http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml">this article </a>via <a href="http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/plastic_in_the_.html">No Impact Man</a>)<br /><br />To be fair, I am perhaps overly obsessed with shampoo – I must remind myself that I had these issues with the chemical-laced stuff too whenever I strayed from Kerastase (which is why I always found my way back) - and in a strange paradox am also both incredibly lazy about getting my hair cut (I know it might help if I did this more than once every 8 months) or doing anything with it (besides washing it) and yet a trifle vain about it.<br /><br />So, dear readers, can anyone help, or should I borrow the hubby’s clippers and consign my glossy long brown barnet to the recycling bin of history - along with the Kerastase bottles? </span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-90294863513106016482007-06-16T10:34:00.000-05:002007-06-16T10:45:40.273-05:00<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgTTP0sOXu23tDiLfZTSfg7zOM62NaMN4lXuQIpZ1jTHChuqz5Q_FVhvS_Myyv88lDTXIjZaYHe3F_5pdxRE1odXs74QdItKr4LyQ6t1G7o7hplpWOhtX7HXbdIjQZ69goQ1v_/s1600-h/P1000597.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgTTP0sOXu23tDiLfZTSfg7zOM62NaMN4lXuQIpZ1jTHChuqz5Q_FVhvS_Myyv88lDTXIjZaYHe3F_5pdxRE1odXs74QdItKr4LyQ6t1G7o7hplpWOhtX7HXbdIjQZ69goQ1v_/s400/P1000597.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076688027255359026" /></a><br /><br />Dear Daddy,<br /><br />For your first father's day I thought you'd like to help me save the planet so I've bought you an acre of rainforest in Manuel Antonio (Costa Rica) so they can protect your friends the monkeys.<br /><br />http://www.kidssavingtherainforest.org/adoptameter.php<br /><br />There is is only one condition for this pressie and for my continuing adoration of you which is that you take me to Manuel Antonio very soon so I can see the monkeys and our bit of rainforest. Deal?<br /><br />I love you daddy. Thank you very very much for looking after me every day, for being such a cool dad and for making me laugh a lot. If you would like this loving and laughing to continue, you know what you have to do. It's easy. <br /><br />Big kisses and cuddles, <br /><br />Dottie.<br /><br />PS Don't forget to offset our flights, k?<br />PPS I am also quite up for the idea of Ibiza, yes, but I think we can really justify those flights<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrRJZcRjqIirQPHmzLckUtb26n4_r_qved-GGyNvoCqT9P70DwO2f4bxkK1w__buT9EAr1Eqty2AniibSVMQSDVOK4dwoZEqi8A8kHAtIWVIIo7SYVBhXZ2Mfgk3tsuAqiCZf/s1600-h/P1000584.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrRJZcRjqIirQPHmzLckUtb26n4_r_qved-GGyNvoCqT9P70DwO2f4bxkK1w__buT9EAr1Eqty2AniibSVMQSDVOK4dwoZEqi8A8kHAtIWVIIo7SYVBhXZ2Mfgk3tsuAqiCZf/s400/P1000584.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076688018665424418" /></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wANGLolDpYlIdu5u9LgZCvFgneHhdrhlR9w2Tw7y6_Zq5cnh1rqN26DmCennotA8Q7TL3MgBoxiHx9pABplF41_zkO8AQ7A5dHy3gNty5FnKd5ZjFVbns2wbs1jfnfUAveWj/s1600-h/P1000583.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wANGLolDpYlIdu5u9LgZCvFgneHhdrhlR9w2Tw7y6_Zq5cnh1rqN26DmCennotA8Q7TL3MgBoxiHx9pABplF41_zkO8AQ7A5dHy3gNty5FnKd5ZjFVbns2wbs1jfnfUAveWj/s400/P1000583.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5076688031550326338" /></a>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-21070517737989044662007-06-12T20:11:00.000-05:002007-06-12T21:12:08.913-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Greeny McDreamy</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I went to a green conference today for work. It was pretty good. The best thing about it was </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Bernstein"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Josh Bernstein</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> - he's like Ray Mears only tall, dark, handsome, charismatic, rugged, articulate, tan...ahem, anyway, as I was saying, he made some very valid points and let's just say that when he asks you to save the planet you say 'ooh Josh, of <em>course</em> I will'.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">He's going to be having his own show on Discovery soon in which he goes around living wiht the Inuit and suchlike checking out how badly we've messed the world up (much more severely than the media have even told us apparently - i.e. really really really badly). </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">In between swooning (not only gorgeous but trying to save the planet!) and nodding furiously at all his points (knowledgable, too!), I felt familiar pangs of guilt surfacing. No, not because I was being mentally unfaithful to the hubby (I wasn't anyway, honest) but because although I'm doing ok, green-wise, I have lately been committing some eco-sins I just know Josh wouldn't approve of - some of them smallish - not collecting compost during the week to take upstate - and some of them really big - last weekend we filled a skip with junk the previous owner left in the barn, none of it obviously useful (or indeed recognizable), but why did I not figure out a way to dispose of it sustainably? Lack of time, but is that a good enough excuse? No. Really not. I am useless and a hypocrite to boot. Ugh.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Actually, you know what? It was the hubby who ordered that skip, and filled it. I bet Josh wouldn't have done that. And if I was married to Josh, I bet I'd be collecting compost during the week, driving a hybrid (or a bicycle), growing vegetables, painting with low VOC paint, campaigning outside KC's headquarters...</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">You know, if every woman had a Josh Bernstein in her life, I bet you the world would be a much greener place. Wonder if we could clone and distribute him to the women of America?</span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-84138548540077829622007-05-31T22:40:00.000-05:002007-06-01T08:45:43.552-05:00<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#33cc00;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Blissful w</span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;"><span style="color:#33cc00;">eekend</span> upstate</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#000000;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;color:#000000;">New trick: waving</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070937259408389410" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ88Tctum_8Wcv1w9a0nES71SsRR7-SpXRs0c5mC7Fn_DLPAdGQSmQiAt1RgHkjqHkICGoLmt72d-_S8RSIkVG1PN1CDT3Z3PJVeNXMyXnXEtvovlv_XVLUQtoROPAveYed_OI/s400/pic29529.jpg" border="0" />Daddy's girl<br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGWL1UC4YdUUpWTqKuQZl7OEm6vxay5HrniiRrS5MYPNoAv4gm4g05ctLeoVCq_Mp70e6nNVpuBSQlZTUw7fIG6pXUNVuIGJMYxq7IBy-65JjbSLIa1HSbqogocOeVDstqUUS/s1600-h/pic06013.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070936963055645938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGWL1UC4YdUUpWTqKuQZl7OEm6vxay5HrniiRrS5MYPNoAv4gm4g05ctLeoVCq_Mp70e6nNVpuBSQlZTUw7fIG6pXUNVuIGJMYxq7IBy-65JjbSLIa1HSbqogocOeVDstqUUS/s400/pic06013.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0kxTGdwozFgzlfl6z8VwtjWmQYomJ9CZSQMFhLO32ayYreIyjleXQK9H9X3-wahv367hkd0Do08_Kqbh91bYPcAdJuP7vKJk4sRRT6aGbLX9W5c_xS5MUSlxIZ96ZOXhj-tV/s1600-h/pic46011.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070936963055645954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ0kxTGdwozFgzlfl6z8VwtjWmQYomJ9CZSQMFhLO32ayYreIyjleXQK9H9X3-wahv367hkd0Do08_Kqbh91bYPcAdJuP7vKJk4sRRT6aGbLX9W5c_xS5MUSlxIZ96ZOXhj-tV/s400/pic46011.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> Swimming - v. brave (please pretend you never saw my thighs)</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHGHjyG_YKQ5RqsedYBDfNlqVIrtt6VswRedxbdNJlIk0Ys8SXb9g-95UfB5Vo6yS0kNlKw1-mII7GGfK0_3FBqjuxSrbBPpcJRm270mHG-h0QgsmJmcQxW75ZZpjabjwDQQA/s1600-h/pic06937.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070936967350613266" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQHGHjyG_YKQ5RqsedYBDfNlqVIrtt6VswRedxbdNJlIk0Ys8SXb9g-95UfB5Vo6yS0kNlKw1-mII7GGfK0_3FBqjuxSrbBPpcJRm270mHG-h0QgsmJmcQxW75ZZpjabjwDQQA/s400/pic06937.jpg" border="0" /></span></a>Great grandma's vintage towel.<span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNhEc6IA5MDB3dGX3eor3iHrOBC88lsdpK6SSPY48RlopkXBz6Fli5bo37oITWBue9MXWyKbFDwbkq-kzYdvqR2a2TilJo7j8208w_HIqxX1amyfwTGHMb2WRD5DyUngdrYJS/s1600-h/pic55681.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5070936610868327650" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNhEc6IA5MDB3dGX3eor3iHrOBC88lsdpK6SSPY48RlopkXBz6Fli5bo37oITWBue9MXWyKbFDwbkq-kzYdvqR2a2TilJo7j8208w_HIqxX1amyfwTGHMb2WRD5DyUngdrYJS/s400/pic55681.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> </span></span></div>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-5306977438052957192007-05-31T22:11:00.000-05:002007-05-31T22:11:45.794-05:00<div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="color:#33cc00;">On the swings<br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF7asPHjuu3b5q3iv-844lWp4WBNqbUtJX1H2Glz152vwJqaSeGEValadqZktMJRJTvgjNE_pHTSdIRRdCzo89uSXPtS1LJtq1OYup6UUMQty1g0NWUDttE5T_1sbbpmgckPHb/s1600-h/pic12871.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF7asPHjuu3b5q3iv-844lWp4WBNqbUtJX1H2Glz152vwJqaSeGEValadqZktMJRJTvgjNE_pHTSdIRRdCzo89uSXPtS1LJtq1OYup6UUMQty1g0NWUDttE5T_1sbbpmgckPHb/s160/pic12871.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVWyWrqSr0JjiMUIx89xIM-fna_OZL0m29lQqhKFYl1IHClQz5nIxTlVmdBiqV2V-duxqZhlwtpVodds_rAHYjyMD5AJheu6WCwykonA4Dz_aaVHbrm7BG_CQaK7xkSO_O7hf/s1600-h/pic61861.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpVWyWrqSr0JjiMUIx89xIM-fna_OZL0m29lQqhKFYl1IHClQz5nIxTlVmdBiqV2V-duxqZhlwtpVodds_rAHYjyMD5AJheu6WCwykonA4Dz_aaVHbrm7BG_CQaK7xkSO_O7hf/s160/pic61861.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1M7I9lu1eKRKZ7NyAzHlGvv1E44WWA6vkW0G0fAiTy6iAKB8nDFdIYAKQZtScAWGyv-hH3pWAMpdBs_GpXCRcyKQdV15iAyhgbvWNjK0klIa81YN0dTdnDOJyX08w1Fhwf9P/s1600-h/pic18462.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn1M7I9lu1eKRKZ7NyAzHlGvv1E44WWA6vkW0G0fAiTy6iAKB8nDFdIYAKQZtScAWGyv-hH3pWAMpdBs_GpXCRcyKQdV15iAyhgbvWNjK0klIa81YN0dTdnDOJyX08w1Fhwf9P/s160/pic18462.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><br /><div style="MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrqfJcCK_WnqJFPcyDMdT38mxgDa5dMIArVXl_ms-6_UvLYxq9tYVxLOHPrZt9iC7Ar_pTKrlJssC6d_rKdjGqLdjuxj2Od_sj_O9GbKxUGm-jOAaTKRFeFlnehEyH8QDz8rV/s1600-h/pic32427.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilrqfJcCK_WnqJFPcyDMdT38mxgDa5dMIArVXl_ms-6_UvLYxq9tYVxLOHPrZt9iC7Ar_pTKrlJssC6d_rKdjGqLdjuxj2Od_sj_O9GbKxUGm-jOAaTKRFeFlnehEyH8QDz8rV/s160/pic32427.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-27862369559340094892007-05-31T21:24:00.000-05:002007-05-31T22:05:51.478-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Useless and trying to pass the buck</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Oh dear. Silence from me in over a week and what have I got for you? Nothing but confessions of un-green creep. Soz.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Regular readers will know that I've been getting fairly worn down by some aspects of my frenzied greening - handmaking all of Dot's (strictly organic) baby food late at night, always making my own lunch to take to work, never drinking coffee in paper cups (recycled or not) or water in plastic bottles, never printing anything, using only eco-friendly, paraben-free beauty products, cleaning only with baking soda, vinegar and elbow grease, wearing a hair shirt (oh alright, I didn't really do that) etc etc.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Well, what I can tell you? I've been out for a few drinks with the girls, had lunch with friends, hosted a lovely bbq for 16 in our garden upstate at the weekend and been frantically busy at work, and before I knew it with all this relaxing and rushing about, Dot had had three jars of baby food, I'd bought lunch in a plastic container three times and double-cupped cappuccino from my favourite coffee shop twice (damn, those felt good - my first real caffeine in 18 months), there was kitchen roll in the kitchen (outlawed till now for several months) and Neutrogena face products and even non-eco-friendly loo roll (horrors!) in the bathroom. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">And here's the awful bit: it's all been so much easier. The stress-induced spare tire is shrinking, the eczema on my hands (from washing up the magimix) is calming down, I could enjoy the weekend instead of frantically pureeing (Dot survived) and my horrible acne has all but disappeared. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Damn you, you convenient, available, tasty products that work! You are trying to pull me over to the dark side! </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I kind of knew it would be like this - that as soon as I got a bit slack in one area, it'd all go to pot. (apres moi le deluge and all that (actually am a bit gutted because I always thought that meant something along the lines of 'open the floodgates a tiny bit and a huge flood will follow' but apparently </span><a href="http://tradicionclasica.blogspot.com/2006/01/expression-aprs-moi-le-dluge-and-its.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">am wrong</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">. Oh well. Ahem, I digress...)). It's the same no matter what you're trying to give up - let yourself have one ciggie and you'll soon be back on 20 a day (just from observing friends, you understand) - or at least it that's the way it is for me. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Am aiming to go back to relatively cold turkey as of tonight. My week off felt good but that's all it was - a week off. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">So please, dear brand owners, retailers and entrepreneurs of the world, can you hurry up and figure out ways to make it so that lapsing isn't so much more wildly attractive than sticking with the program?</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Many thanks. </span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-44094372039312621422007-05-17T12:58:00.000-05:002007-05-17T13:32:37.859-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Cleaning contretemps</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">I went out for a drink last night. I know, a drink! It felt wildly liberating. I hadn’t realized how long it had been until I did it. Walking down the street at night on my own, meeting a friend, sitting at the bar…It all came back to me surprisingly easily. In fact before I knew it I was halfway through a bottle of vinho verde and it was 10.30.<br /><br />Anyway, that’s not really my point. My point is that I got home in a fabulous mood which only got better when the hubby announced he’d booked a cleaning lady to come today (a cleaning lady – such luxury!) and we were having a lovely chat until he mentioned The Shopping List. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Ah, The Shopping List. For those non-New Yorkers among you, The Shopping List is something every cleaner here has. It almost always features Ajax, bleach and ream upon ream of kitchen roll and your cleaner is within his/her rights to refuse to clean your house unless his/her exact specifications are met (at least, that's how they make you feel). It's been so long since I've had a cleaning lady I'd forgotten about it.<br /><br />“I have to go and buy her a load of cleaning products in the morning,” he said. "She needs Ajax, Fantastik with bleach, toilet cleaner, Windex and kitchen roll."</span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><br /><br />“Er, no you don’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “We have all that Seventh Generation and Babyganics stuff, and she can use white vinegar for the windows.”<br /><br />What happened next was weird. “I am <em>not</em> going to tell her to wash the windows with vinegar,” he exploded. “It’s not fair.”<br /><br />I was a bit taken aback. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve been particularly quiet about my stance on cleaning products - you'd think he'd have noticed by now. Then it got weirder.<br /><br />“Freya, she can’t do her job without this stuff. It’s like if I took your computer away and told you to do your job. She barely speaks English, she’ll be trying to clean with your crappy products and worrying if she’s doing a good job. It’s not fair on her. I won’t do it.”<br /><br />See how he did that? Sometimes it’s really annoying having a sweet empathetic husband - one always come off looking like the b*%$h in the house. But I’ve been playing this game too long to fall for that one.<br /><br />“Do you know women who stay at home have an 80% higher rate of breast cancer than those who go to work and it’s because of those cleaning products? And you want to expose Dot to this stuff because you won’t stand up to the cleaner? Blame me, tell her your wife is crazy, I don’t care, but I'm not having it,” I said - my turn to be all righteous and indignant. “And anyway, the products aren’t crap.”<br /> <br />“Yes they are. I want the house to feel clean. I want my oven shiny not all full of crusty shit,” he said, and then played his trump card. “If you want to clean the oven with baking powder that's fine but <em>you</em> do the cleaning.”<br /><br />It's so boring when he does that. He knows I'm finding it hard to keep body and soul together and am indeed doing as much cleaning as I can muster on an almost full time job, mum-stuff, making Dot's food and five hours sleep a night and have devloped acne and a spare tyre as a result. (He does the same thing about the laundry. "If you don't want all your woolens shrunk to Dot-size, <em>you</em> do the laundry." Well, yes darling, but WHEN? And in case you're wondering, I write this on the subway these days so that's not a solution.) He flounced off to bed. We rolled to opposite sides of the mattress and went to sleep in frosty silence.<br /><br />By this morning he’d mellowed. “Give me a list of what I have to get then and I’ll go,” he said grudgingly.<br /><br />At lunchtime I called home to find out how things had gone. “Oh fine,” he said insouciantly. “She said she really likes Ecover products.”<br /><br />And this evening? The house looked lovely. The lovely cleaner had been completely accommodating and was Dot's NBF. And the hubby was passing the Ecover off as his idea.</span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-11303996829847587962007-05-12T20:06:00.000-05:002007-05-12T21:13:53.118-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Lawn Lunacy</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">As we savoured the River Brook farm organic local sunchoke risotto this evening (I realized after I'd posted about it before that I'd left the bloody sunchokes up here, sorry. Oh, and for your information they were delectable - crisp and juicy, looked like root ginger, tasted like globe artichokes, texture of jicama or water chestnuts), I kept looking out of the window at the new leaves shooting and the trees covered in blossom and doing a little mental jig at the wonderfulness of it being spring at last. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The day had begun with a trip across the dewy fields to the river in our pyjamas for Dot and me. It was 6.30, misty and beautiful and the birds clearly shared our enthusiasm for the intoxicating spring air. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">We spent most of the rest of the day in the garden, Dot waving things around on a rug, T in the hammock (I don't usually stick up for him but having already done the laundry, been to the dump and cleared out the barn, he'd earned a rest) and me trying to mow our very uneven lawn with an old push mower - you know, one of those lawn mowers that isn't electric or petrol-powered, but that you just push. This took equal parts brute force, patience and sheer bloody-mindedness and I stuck with it only because I'd decided that a manual mower was the most eco-friendly option and I was determined it would work. Also, we already had it, bequeathed by the previous owner, which of course differentiated it from other options. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">If you needed further proof I've lost the plot, persisting in this fool's errand would be it. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">It took hours. Our lawn is lumpy and contoured and covered in clumps of very woody super-grass. I had to pre-cut much of it with the shears. I had to lean into the mower with my whole body. Most bits needed several goings-over. I then had to rake up the clippings and chuck them in the wormery (which, by the way, looked like it had compacted, thanks presumably to the efforts of Dot's worms - goody). </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">When I was done, it looked like a six year-old's fringe (bangs) she's cut herself, or, as my grandpa would have said, like I'd cut it with a knife and fork (I almost had). No suburban stripes for our lawn. </span><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">My shoulders, back and arms are killing me this evening and I'm sure it'll only be worse by tomorrow. </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">So, as seems to happen from time to time (cleaning the oven springs to mind) I have to concede that the greenest option isn't really viable. I think the next-least-bad option is to explore the principal of shared ownership as it relates to un-eco-friendly lawn mowers - that is to say, borrow one from a kindly neighbour. To make up for the power we'll incur, I'm unplugging all digital clock-radios as of tomorrow. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Come to think of it, why on earth are they even still plugged in? </span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Bad Freya.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">PS. Forgot to tell you, T saw a snake on our lawn last saturday. A snake! Lock up your babies. I mean my baby.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">And PPS, just a reminder to check out Sally Walton's bags at <a href="http://carry-a-bag.com/index.php">carry-a-bag</a>. They are totally gorgeous reusable bags and are getting lots of attention so get em while you still can. My Mum is being a mule for a shipment over to the US next week to save on incremental carbon (she was coming anyway) so if any readers want one and let me know by tomorrow night, we might be able to persuade mum to squeeze an extra one or two into her suitcase...Nina, if you're reading, reckon you'd love the superman bag on <a href="http://carry-a-bag.com/bagsdetail.php?item=45">this</a> page.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;">And PPPS, Alice at River Brook Farm is raising money for some gorgeous goats she just rescued in a parlous physical condition. If you want to donate a buck or two, let me know and I'll connect you. She's truly a saint.</span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-69738714726260948842007-05-09T11:38:00.000-05:002007-05-09T11:52:37.496-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Wormery Squirmery</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Ah, what a glorious weekend. Can’t help thinking life would be even lovelier if I could spend more of it sitting in the garden in the sun watching my baby girl try to figure out what grass, stones, sticks and daffodils are. Ho hum.<br /><br />Dot’s nature discoveries this weekend also included worms – 1000 of them, to be precise - about which she was rather less squeamish than I was. Yes, we finally installed the worms in the wormery. We stopped at Tom’s Bait and Tackle in Narrowsburg to pick up a ‘flat’ – that’s a large polystyrene container housing 1000 worms. At first it just looked like soil, but the owner Cliff plunged his hand in and brought out a handful of wrigglers all clumped together in a ball. He tried to get me to grab some but I hate to admit I squealed like a silly schoolgirl and leapt backwards across the store. Dot, on the other hand, encouraged by her father (who allegedly grew up eating worms) was only too keen to touch; she didn’t want to let go of her new pets and I intercepted several on their way to her mouth in the nick of time.<br /><br />We took the worms home. Grady gallantly came over with a garden fork to assist. The rest of it wasn’t very dramatic; we just took handfuls (I was much bolder once I had my gardening gloves on) and placed them gently around the top of the compost bin, then covered them over with some slightly damp old leaves to keep the sun off. I checked on them today and there was no sign of them so I hope they’re doing their work down there in the compost. Being a wormery novice I am a bit worried about them – have I done it right? – but I guess we’ll know more in a couple of weeks.<br /><br />While I had him, I decided to put my latest idea for Narrowsburg to Grady. The idea is to make Narrowsburg a plastic bag-free town, like Modbury in England, and to kick the commitment off on July 4th with a bag-free weekend. I’m calling the idea plasticfreefourth and the slogan is ‘this July 4th weekend declare your independence from the plastic bag’. Obviously this is partly because I hate plastic bags but also Modbury has attracted <a href="http://environment.guardian.co.uk/waste/story/0,,2067577,00.html">loads of press </a>(more <a href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/04/modburya_town_w.php">here</a> too) and I’d love to see Narrowsburg do the same; could lead to a good summer for the local businesses. He's already been discussing this kind of idea with the chamber of commerce so could be up for it. Would be fab if we could pull it off; the supermarket is the tricky piece though. It’s not a big chain so if anyone has ideas as to how we could help them do it without spending $$, do let me know. (Did I mention that Modbury is about 5 miles down the road from my Granny and that I practically grew up there? So am very proud of them. It's lovely, by the way. You should go if yo uget the chance.)<br /><br />As for the hybrid, I hate to tell you but it fell through. Long story involving UK drivers’ licences and car availability (they only had an SUV in the end. I couldn’t do it). So no Top Gear stylee car review from me; we may still sign up for the service but I'll keep you posted.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><br />That’s all for now. Sunchoke risotto for dinner tonight using freshly harvested sunchokes from River Brook Farm, total food miles: 5. (Well, not counting the rice. And the drive back to Brooklyn…) </span>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36973521.post-53474700026278131452007-05-03T11:44:00.000-05:002007-05-03T12:00:17.340-05:00<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;color:#33cc00;">Dilemmas...</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Hi all. So I'm now starting to feel bad about having the place upstate at all because now we're not there full time, how can we justify the driving? (I don't think it increases our carbon foorprint any ohter ways as we live greener when we're there than - eating local, keeping lights off, low-flow loo, composting, etc). </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">But then look how idyllic it is for the little bubba, below (and, alright, for us). I want her to have this as her antidote to nyc where we have to be to earn our living. So for now the challenge is making the drive less bad. With this in mind we're hoping to test drive a hybrid this weekend from zipcar (shared ownership concept alert). I'm excited to see how it drives. Will keep you posted. In the meantime, since we've been so crap at keeping up, I think you deserve some piccies.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidglv1hDLYicKkyDmy3IwATffxufB1qI5Yg9FnF89z1gNOy5WV8hZy8LV5CwC4f1dRpRj24PVXoujioQN92H44djjcTBQ1Nbl5-MUeapM2pPy-mTraHtyKzJDXYH1z3jeCOtTV/s1600-h/beach+3.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060377305896319794" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidglv1hDLYicKkyDmy3IwATffxufB1qI5Yg9FnF89z1gNOy5WV8hZy8LV5CwC4f1dRpRj24PVXoujioQN92H44djjcTBQ1Nbl5-MUeapM2pPy-mTraHtyKzJDXYH1z3jeCOtTV/s400/beach+3.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> Messing about on the river.</span><br /><br /></span><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWmOWBg_IJ5ZFNhVbD5CbAUINWHDuxMa7NTBweoCgZW0zxzA3AaDlYfe10Cqw_h0z1waoKE9Vy2D0Jvr_2vW2FXuuSNXsv9422yNTkisp1qZgn2rlmTMV110e6lGHc21u3ygd/s1600-h/beach2.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060376962298936098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieWmOWBg_IJ5ZFNhVbD5CbAUINWHDuxMa7NTBweoCgZW0zxzA3AaDlYfe10Cqw_h0z1waoKE9Vy2D0Jvr_2vW2FXuuSNXsv9422yNTkisp1qZgn2rlmTMV110e6lGHc21u3ygd/s400/beach2.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> Who needs plastic toys when there are rocks to eat?<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060377494874880850" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFAWueF3462pUXZQhi9yPW6CWmwa9B2Ys6f9i2v-UT-ixx5tfIOawK_aXOtEJccwSPIBLudmTfy79Plhmj0MnaTtJLQUownNhEladpaGfkAx00yYJ5a4o8w1piaNTFyOtUoOC/s400/bottle.jpg" border="0" />Or (empty) beer bottles?<br /><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060377494874880866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfpxSkxsZTKQXaYEwU-iUwONNHuTzxzG8NPOieV1nG4dW83HuxAH8Bta0-XhyphenhyphenI58Y78X3dNBI5Uyg8WryaOG01B_xLZSMXOon7d8wkfJpSp8Vu82iZB3T4y3B10GfLSpbLmSRJ/s400/shoulders.jpg" border="0" />Or daddy's glasses?<br /></span><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUt_9hsXBlTlImOB5aZXBTOCX9veyXIVjORzpx1NkC_yJ-HCjliUXxrTTMTDU4FlmxgsyKXS9OZsZ_TafnAOyT1fo4tfdIBMHmXjo43Icmh6HNNC9E9dloUys9Mv_eeoufZjh9/s1600-h/bath.jpg"><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5060376232154495762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUt_9hsXBlTlImOB5aZXBTOCX9veyXIVjORzpx1NkC_yJ-HCjliUXxrTTMTDU4FlmxgsyKXS9OZsZ_TafnAOyT1fo4tfdIBMHmXjo43Icmh6HNNC9E9dloUys9Mv_eeoufZjh9/s400/bath.jpg" border="0" /></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"> Bathing in the washing up bowl to save water. Such a greenlittledot.</span></div></div>Freyahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17681139931221745044noreply@blogger.com2