Busy green bee

First of all my apologies to everybody for the extended silent period. I wish I could say it was due to some extreme green experiment that left me without access to my computer, but the fact is that I have just been extraordinarily busy these last few weeks and struggled a bit to squeeze everything in.

This rather stressful period has however been an interesting study of how well established our new green habits are, because when under pressure you are more likely to return to old ways. I am happy to announce that I think we can still declare ourselves on the green side.

We are continuing to be conscious of energy use - so much so that our energy supplier have just sent us notice that our monthly payments will be reduced by £20, not bad.

Separating all rubbish is now second nature and we don't really seem to think about it as an effort anymore.

Our car usage is still on a downwards trend and this was one of the areas I feared would suffer during busy times. This might have been slightly helped by the extremely nice weather we have been having, but never the less a good result. I surprised myself yesterday when cycling to a meeting in the rain getting rather wet and then realising I was actually enjoying the ride. There are definitely some hidden benefits to attempting a green lifestyle and cycling (and walking) more is one of them. It is great to get some fresh air and save money at the same time.

I should be honest though and admit that there has been some minor lapses as well.
There has been fewer trips to the local shops for food and imported produce has easily found its way into the shopping trolley. I have previously explained some of my issues with changing to more sustainable eating habits and that certainly doesn't get any easier when time is short.

Watering the garden has also been done with a hose a few times over the last weeks, the whole idea of spending double the time doing it with a watering can was more than my stressed out brain could cope with.

In fact the garden might have been the area suffering the most over this period. Although we have been very successful in some areas, e.g. loads of lettuce, handfuls of homegrown strawberries and peas almost ready to be eaten, the current state of the garden tells me that I simply cannot afford to ignore it for 2 weeks. (which also tells me that any degree of self sufficiency will be completely unobtainable for many years!)

When I finally got round to having a look at the garden I realised that a whole row of the potato plants I had been so proud of looked rather odd with brown patches on the leaves. Not good! I googled the issue and realised that some of my potatoes might suffer from blight. Not good at all! Even worse when I read that me using the hose to water the garden could have caused this- apparently you should always water potaoes at the stems rather than getting the leaves wet.

Then something odd happened - with me. I never considered myself a serious gardener, I was just having a bit of green fun, but realising my potato plants were ill turned me into some kind of Mary Knightingale of the veg world, completely ignoring all the other stuff I needed to do. I checked on several websites what action I should take and then immediately set about trying to save my remaining crop. I dug up the row that looked unwell and then proceeded to check every singly plant for signs of dark spots and then snipped and cut like a surgeon trying to save a life. Honestly if any of my old friends from before this green challenge had seen me, they would have thought I had lost plot. (The good part is that this action has given us our first homegrown potatoes - 15 of them, none of them looking like blight sufferers, so should make a tasty addition to tomorrows dinner...)

I am beginning to think that maybe I am much more committed to this green thing than I realised. Maybe the family has moved a lot further than we thought. Maybe, just maybe we will be able to declare this challenge a success...