Happy Christmas dear readers



Hope you're all having a lovely time. As you can see, Dot overdid it a bit on the Christmas dinner, but after 30-something years I'm still making that mistake so who can blame her.

We've had a lovely English country Christmas - lots of walks in the drizzle and pints at the pub - and tried to keep it as green as possible. For example, we wrapped all our pressies in recycled paper from our stash at home. But don't think this meant they looked crap; wrapping pressies is one of my all time favourite things and I take great pride in it, so recycled or not our pressies looked as chic as ever; see exhibit a for proof.



I also insisted on keeping all the paper which came off everyone's pressies. They looked at me like I was weird, apart from the mother in law who kindly amassed a stash of wrapping for me. When I said that all that paper and ribbon was so exciting it almost felt like an extra pressie, even she gave me a funny look and the hubby said "That's what I meant the other day when I said you have a really geeky side".

Anyway, we're off to my parents tomorrow so undeterred I've now wrapped the next batch of pressies in cast-offs from today. Two Xmasses for the price of one - a bit of a change from the innocent days I remember from childhood when we used to fill a black bin liner with discarded Christmas wrapping (no wonder the media are full of how many extra tons go into landfill around Xmas), and the pressies look just as good.

Xmas pressies

(Sorry, something up with the formatting again so no links and no text effects, most annoying. Anyway:)

Every green website and blog has done nice features on green Christmas pressies to buy people so I decided to do it differently and just tell you what green pressies I want for Xmas – in case anyone out there was thinking of getting me one (oh, and don’t forget it is my birthday on December 28th too). So here goes:

- I’d love this gadget that turns household waste into logs you can burn. Apparently better than recycling because you make your waste lighter and that reduces the petrol for transporting it. My mother-in-law told me they’re a bit crap but I still fancy giving it a go

- Getting someone a service instead of a thing is much greener. So, I’d like a Brazilian wax, a pedicure and my chimney swept (no, that isn’t a euphemism you naughty people – our wood stove chimney is in need of a clean, and a clean chimney is a more energy efficient one)

- A new jacket – not for me, for the hot water tank

- I’d love someone to do the trees to offset the carbon emissions from our flights to the UK…
…or, on a similar vein, we want to plant a load of conifers along the edge of our land, so trees themselves would be good. Think of all the CO2 our tree-fence would gobble up

- My friend Anna’s store Nest has green goodies I love, like Pangea organic soap – plant the box and flowers grow – and a beautiful minimalist dustpan and brush (weird to be asking for cleaning products but this is made from natural materials by blind people in Sweden and anyway, if you are getting someone a material good, something practical they’ll actually is much greener than some old knickknack they won’t)

- If I had a fairy godfather, I’d ask him for solar panels so we could generate our own eleccy ‘off the grid’ or to have the house insulated with eco-friendly insulation

- I’d love a new pair of Marc Jacobs shoes. Oops, sorry, that just slipped out. Er, scrap that one…

And as for Dot, well, she’s been spoiled so rotten this year she says all she wants for Xmas is her two front teeth. But since she won’t be getting those for a few months yet, I said how about a couple of nice long-sleeved organic cotton onesies and she seemed fine with it.

We’re off to England in the morning so we probably won’t get a chance to post tomorrow, so happy Wednesday, we’ll be back in a day or two. xxx

Festive Cheer

I'm struggling to stave off a cold that's threatening to lay me low so to cheer myself up, I decided to get going on the eco-friendly Christmas decorations. First some pine branches from the garden rigged up on the front door with a piece of ribbon recycled from last year:



We also fashioned a 'tree' from those felled treetops I mentioned I'd spotted down the road. The hubby hacked a few branches off with his axe, tied them together with string and suspended them from the ceiling. Dot seems not to have noticed the difference and we're pretty chuffed with the results:



Don't worry, we're rationing ourselves to two hours a day for the lights (I'll be keeping an eye on that light-happy husband of mine; I've also replaced the most-used bulbs in the house with the eco-friendly variety (nb Damian) which should offset any incremental power and they're in place of the lamp usually in that corner of the room - ah, the debit/credit eco-reckoning we go through...). Am feeling rather smug about the whole thing: no trees cut down especially, no transport required to get the tree to us (all materials collected on foot), no new decorations to add to the plastic in the world and no Canadian person on 6th avenue charging you $60 for a tree that comes up to your kneecaps. Brilliant! Also because I live in the country, I'll be able to easily compost the tree (though if you live in the city you can take trees to lots of the parks and to the Union Square greenmarket for mulching. I know it's a pain but it'll help you feel purified after all the seasonal excesses).

Now, you'll notice the tree has little in the way of decorations (besides some origami cranes my Mum made last year). That's because when I opened up the bag of decorations, I found them all covered in sticky mouse droppings - and an empty bag where a forgotten Christmas cookie from last year had been. How the hell do they find these things? So I guess it's time to come clean on the mouse front (and please don't hate me): the hubby put down posion. Lots of it. In fact he kept putting it down, and it kept going which leads us to believe we were dealing with an army of the little blighters. Well, they've gone now. RIP Mice of Milanville. I just wonder for how long I'm going to continue to stumble upon pleasant reminders of our cohabitation...

As for the decorations, like a good eco-worrier I haven't thrown them out: I have them soaking in warm soapy water with a few drops of tea tree oil to disinfect them.

And just before I move off the topic of festive stuff, I must give a big shout out to Paul, Tara and the gang who made sure we had a totally organic Thanksgiving. The turkeys might have left you bankrupt but they were worth it. A belated thanks kids!

Is there anybody out there?

We do love getting your comments - it makes us feel like we're not just talking to ourselves. So for today's entry, we're going to address a bit of reader feedback. Fun!

Firstly, further to my grievance with the village store customers over idling versus cutting the engine, a couple of readers responded to query and whether it wasn't in fact worse for the planet to stop and start the car. My initial reaction was to thank them for saving me from an awkward conversation with a man who kills bears with his bare hands (well, almost), mind me own business and get back to me cup of tea. But then I thought, no, that would be lazy, I really need to do my homework.

So I googled it. Luckily a blogger in Hiroshima recently dealt with exactly this conundrum. And, Alexena and Anonymous (who are you? reveal yourself!), his extremely thorough research overwhelmingly suggests idling bad, stopping and starting good. In fact, so insidious is idling thought to be that in Japan, they ran a whole public service campaign to stop idling (Canada and Oregon are doing the same). Here's their natty poster:

Do you think I should print it off and stick on the railings outside the shop? I'd be doing them a favour because apparently idling not only wastes fuel and harms the environment, it's actually bad for the engine!

While I was at it, I could also give them my Grandpa's top petrol-saving tip: coast down hills in neutral and only stick the thing in gear when it's about to give up on the upward slope (he nicknamed his Ford Capri Rollscnardly - rolls down hills, cnardly get up the other side). I'm sure I'd make their day.

Next up: eco-friendly Xmas cards for those relatives who don't understand the e-card thing. Alex, I hope this isn't too late to be of any use to you. A lot of eco-friendly cards are a bit naff but with a bit of help from Ideal Bite and Google, I came up with the following:

• Greene Sreet Greetings: cool vintage photo cards, whiter than white credentials (100% post-consumer paper, soy-based inks, carbon-free messenger delivery optional) and
• Girly Whirly: cute, 20-30% post-consumer recylced materials (if you're wondering, post-consumer is better than plain old recycled). Very Alexena, I reckon
• Kid Bean grow-a-note: not so keen on the designs but not only are they all handmade from post-consumer recycled stuff, you can also plant them in the garden when you're done and they grow onto poppies and cornflowers. Lovely!
• Speak Peace cards: recycled paper, PEACE spelled in sign language on the front, proceeds to kids who are hard of hearing.

So there we go. By the way, here's a stat for you: if the Chrissy cards sold in just one year in the UK and US were laid end to end they'd stretch round the world 54 times. Who the hell is sending all these cards? I'm so disorganised I barely get round to sending one to my Gran. Still, at least this year I can plead ideology - think of the trees!

Dreaming of a light Christmas

So we went to the tree lighting and carols in Narrowsburg last night. A smallish group huddled round a smaller tree looking slightly unsure as to who was meant to be leading, and as one contingent launched into 'Frosty the Snowman', another called for 'Jingle Bells', even as a lone soprano warbled the opening bars of 'Hark the Herald'. Dot and I have never been much for American Christmas music anyway, and were more impressed with the mulled wine and grilled cheese sandwiches provided by our friend Michael of the Main Street Cafe and wine shop.

Anyway it was all a bit early for me to really be getting into the Christmas spirit. Not so our neighbours. Overnight, pumpkins and blow-up turkeys have been ousted from front lawns by illuminated inflatable snowmen, nodding fairy-light deer and veritable avalanches of those flashing icicle lights. Restraint is not a much admired virtue and I'm noticing that taste is often in inverse proportion to the size of the front lawn. But I have to admit that, with the long, cold nights and the lonely, dark, wooded roads out here, there's something strangely comforting about coming upon an isolated house ablaze with (even pretty naff) festive cheer.

Which brings me to my own Xmas dilemma. You see, I love Christmas. I'm a real sucker for the carols, the trees and especially the pretty lights. And it being Dot's first Christmas and all, I have this picture in my head of the three of us battoning down the hatches against the bears, coyotes and sub-zero temperatures and snuggling up in front of our wood stove and our twinkly Christmas tree. But on the other hand I know I should be thoroughly diapproving of it all and boycott the lights in a bid to save the planet. I mean, how much bad must all those extra lights being left on all the time do - especially the ridiculously OTT displays described above and summed up by this pic I nicked off it's the environment, stupid (and yes, I know this is Thanksgiving cheer, which somehow makes it even more ridiculous, don't you think?)


But what to do? I have spotted a lovely bit of fir tree abandoned down the road after a neighbour pruned her garden. I think tomorrow I'll pop over with the secateurs and a hacksaw and see what I can contrive from salvaged branches. Hm, a simple fir wreath and a few boughs draped in tinsel recycled from last year could actually be quite stylish in a rustic sort of a way, even without lights. I'll keep you posted, as always.