Thursday, March 20, 2008

Green Musings

Jinkies, we have a lot of catching up to do!

It just seems that with the coming of spring the opportunities for getting into the green of things are endless!

April 1st is right around the corner and that means I will be turning over a new leaf (for two months, anyway). I will be joining Mamas on the Compact where I pledge to eliminate the purchase of new items. Gulp. Anyone care to join me?

Have you heard the buzzzzzzzzz about "The Great Sunflower Project" out of San Francisco State University? My good friend Lakshmi alerted me to this site where participants can help researchers achieve their goal of increasing our understanding of where bees are doing poorly and how the pollination of our garden and wild plants are being affected.

Say project leaders: "We're hoping you will join us by planting sunflowers in your garden. Community, demonstration, and school gardens are invited to participate. We'll send you some free native sunflower (Helianthus annuus) seed and twice a month, we'd like you to time how long it takes for 5 bees to visit one flower on that sunflower. This information will give us an index of pollination that we can compare across the United States."

Win some gardening goodies from the National Gardening Association when you enter their When You Garden You Grow giveaway.

I have two great bloggy book give-aways coming up! Stay tuned for a chance to win a copy of the Holistic Moms Network's cookbook "Growing Healthy Families" and, just in time for Spring (or a little late), Leslie Evan's beautifully illustrated Spring acrostic book.

And finally, I am super excited to say that as my good friend Sue toils over my blog button, I am gearing up to give you details on "Gift of Green's Clothesline Challenge 2008"!! The challenge will begin May 1st and I hope you'll sign on for the summer! More details coming up soon!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck with Mamas on the Compact. Living in America it must be extremely difficult to commit to this. Everything is so plentiful and inexpensive I have a hard time resisiting shops when I'm back for visits. Here in Europe we have expensive products and less availability. There's far less going to the mall in spare time as well because there are far fewer malls.
Also, here clotheslines are more the norm than exception. While most people have dryers they're not used regularly. Ours is used once a week and that's just to get school uniforms washed quickly midweek.
Glad to see blogs like yours addressing these issues of excess -if you like I'll donated a peg bag to your clothesline challenge - perhaps those who join could go into a drawing for it.
And BTW Amy, the bunnies are way too fat to kick your buttski!

Cupcake Mama said...

I just got a beautiful wicker bookcase type thing out of the trash....it was exactly what I've been wanting for my new living room design : ) So how long do you plan on not buying new?

I wonder if I could handle another challenge....

Dayna said...

Thanks for this info...my daughter and I have signed up for the sunflower project! And I can't wait to hear all about the clothesline challenge...I was just mentioning to my husband this winter about wanting to put up a laundry line in the yard!! looks like the perfect opportunity :)