Monthly Archives: June 2010

Make Your Yard a Bee Friendly Space

Bees have been having trouble for a few years now, suffering from Colony Collapse Disorder, a disorder which has a name, but the cause is not yet understood. Possible causes include pesticides, varroa mites and poor nutrition due to a lack of variety in the plants they’re pollinating. You can do your part by making your yard a friendly place for bees.

This can be hard when you have kids and you worry about bee stings. So long as you teach your kids to leave the bees alone, and no one has a life threatening allergy to them, bee stings should not be a huge issue. Bee stings aren’t dangerous to most kids, just painful. If they’re dangerous to someone you love, then clearly you don’t need to encourage them to visit your yard.

Wild bees are a huge benefit to any backyard gardener. They pollinate most plants you’re likely to be growing. If you have other plants for them to enjoy, you should get them in greater numbers.

Plant Local Species

Local plants grow the best and are usually quite attractive to bees. You may want to consider species that produce a lot of flowers for the bees to enjoy. Having only a few blossoms isn’t going to bring out a lot of bees.

Bees love heather, thyme, clover, lavender, marigolds, sunflowers, roses, blackberries and many more. Ask at your local garden center if you need help finding bee friendly plants. They’ll know what’s available in your area.

Bees love to have a variety of flowers to pollinate, so don’t limit yourself to just a few.

Don’t Use Chemical Pesticides

Pesticides are one of the possible causes of Colony Collapse Disorder. At the very least, spraying a pesticide when there are bees around is likely to kill those particular bees. It may also be a problem if the pesticide residue is on the flowers the bees are pollinating.

Provide Water

Just like other creatures, bees need water. It’s the perfect reason to put a small, decorative fountain in your yard. They don’t use much water, and they’re very friendly to bees and other creatures.

If you have standing water such as in a birdfeeder, make sure to change it out regularly. Standing water is an attractant to mosquitos, which lay their eggs in the water.

These things are all very simple to do, and can make a big difference in how many bees come to your yard. Treat them well and you’re helping them to grow strong colonies. Bees are a species that is vital to the cycle of food production, so helping the bees helps us all.

Suggested Reading

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Updated and Expanded

5 Habits of Eco Friendly Families

Raising an eco friendly family takes a lot of work, but much of it becomes habit in fairly short order. It even becomes fun.

1. Be more environmentally aware as a family.

Talk as a family about what’s going on in the world and how it effects the environment. Talk about how your individual habits and habits as a family effect the environment.

Talk about how your individual habits and habits as a family effect the environment.

Keep this simple when the kids are young.  You can explain to young children why they should do things like recycle paper, not litter, and pick up litter that others leave behind. You want to keep it a little on the fun side, and not bring up a lot of worries about what’s happening to the world when the kids are too young for such worries. There’s a balance there.

As everyone gets older, get into more details and encourage everyone to work harder on doing their part for the environment. Try volunteering as the kids get old enough.

Make sure you always pick reliable sources. The usual news media is great for presenting the worst of the big stuff while ignoring the overall impact of other things. They over simplify things like climate change so much that people don’t think it’s likely.

You can find great, age appropriate books by searching online, and don’t forget to check your local libraries. Many websites work hard at providing good information too; just be sure that they’re using good sources, as others are little more than online tabloids or are actively against the environmental movement. Nothing wrong with reading both sides, but make sure you get into how these differences come about.

Suggested Websites

TreeHugger
Environmental News Network
World Resources Institute
The Earth Charter Initiative

Suggested Books

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change

2. Reduce, reuse, recycle

Practice these as a family, and remember that they’re in order.

Reduce is the most important. The less you use, the less of an environmental impact you have on the world.

The less you use, the less of an environmental impact you have on the world.

Next comes reuse. This can include buying from thrift shops, resale shops, garage sales, consignment stores and more. Don’t forget Freecycle and handmedowns from family and friends.

It also includes thinking of ways to reuse things that you’re otherwise done with. Think of ways you can reuse paper for crafts for the kids. Think about how to reuse glass jars when you get them.

Recycling comes last. It’s a big help, but only recycle when you know you’re done with something. Find out what is collected for recycling in your community and make sure you recycle it. This won’t be easy in all areas, but do your best.

If you don’t have curbside recycling, find out if there is any place you can drop off recycling and figure out if you can store items until you have enough to make a trip worthwhile. It won’t always happen that way, so just try.

Suggested Websites

Earth 911
EPA Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

3. Have a sustainable, organic garden

How much you can garden depends on where you live. It’s harder to garden in an apartment than in a house with a big backyard… but not quite impossible.

Gardening combines well with having a compost pile. You get organic fertilizer for your garden while disposing of kitchen waste and yard waste in the best way possible.

Gardening combines well with having a compost pile.

The best part about gardening for families is getting the kids used to fresh fruits and vegetables. It often encourages picky eaters to try new foods. Garden fresh produce tastes much superior to what you can buy at the grocery store.

There are many ways to make the most of the garden space you have.  You can garden in containers if all you have is a patio, balcony or even just a window shelf. You can do square foot gardening and make the most of the yard space you commit to your garden.

Suggested Books

Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, Updated and Expanded
All New Square Foot Gardening – Grow More In Less Space

4. Help your local environment.

Pay attention to what your local environment needs. Some of your living habits should be determined by the particular needs of your area.

Water use, for example. Many areas are either facing water shortages or are likely to do so within the next few years. If your state allows, look into installing water barrels on your property to catch rainfall. Look into alternatives to growing a lawn.

Many areas are facing water shortages

Many communities have groups that help care for the local environment. You may be able to help clean local parks, trails and/or beaches. You may be able to get involved in wildlife rescue – after the proper training, of course. You may be able to help campaign for stricter environmental regulations in your area. You may be able to talk to local businesses about how they can be more eco friendly.

5. Tell Others

Don’t limit your activities to your family. Tell friends about what they can do. Don’t be judgmental; do your best to be helpful. Many people will be surprised that being more eco friendly can be cheap, not expensive.

Eco Friendly Water Play for Kids in the Summer

The weather is heating up, kids all around the country are out of school or soon will be. Now is the time that they’ll start asking about going swimming or otherwise going to play in the water. What’s the best way to let them have their fun without wasting valuable water?

Combine Regular Watering with Play

While the best time to water in terms of limiting evaporation is during the cool parts of the day, the best time for kids to play in the water is when it’s hot. If you’re going to let your kids play in the sprinklers, on a slip n’ slide or otherwise have fun with the water, make sure to combine that with the needs your plants have for water.

This includes moving the kids and their water fun around as a given area gets enough water. Don’t let them play too long in any one area. Move them, and you can get much of your yard watered while the kids have fun getting soaked.

Do note that most waterslides and kiddie pools really are not eco friendly. They’re often made of vinyl and only last a season or two before starting to leak or otherwise break down. I much prefer to set the kids up with plain old sprinklers.

Go to the Local River, Lake, etc.

Not all water play has to be done at home. Local rivers, lakes and so forth are a lot of fun for kids. Just be sure they’ve had swimming lessons for safety.

Don’t use motor powered craft on the water. If you want to get out in a boat, try a kayak or rowboat. They’re not as fast, but they’re good exercise and you can really appreciate the view. In some areas you may even be able to fish from a rowboat.

Visit the Community Swimming Pool

Unfortunately, most community swimming pools have a lot of chlorine and other chemicals in them. That never seems to stop kids from having fun in them!

Using a community pool makes more eco sense than having one of your own. More people use it.

Most importantly, many community pools offer swimming lessons. I strongly suggest finding a way to pay for swimming lessons each summer until your kids are as advanced as possible. It doesn’t completely drownproof them, but anything you can do to make them safer around water is a good thing, particularly if they’re ever at the home of someone else who has a swimming pool.

Is Environmentalism Pushing Women Back Into the Home?

Raising an eco friendly family is a lot of work, and much of what needs to be done when it comes to the children is traditionally “women’s work.” Could it be that environmentalism is just another way to push women into being stay at home moms?

As a green stay at home mom myself, I don’t think of it that way for how I live my life. It’s not true for all green stay at home moms, however.

How Are Chores Divided?

Living an eco friendly lifestyle adds to the chores, certainly. Cloth diapers take a bit more time than disposables, although I don’t find it to be all that significant, even when I line dry them. For that matter, line drying laundry in general doesn’t have to take a ton more time than putting it into the dryer. Most of the clothes have to be hung anyhow, and that can be combined with the line drying process.

It’s also about making sure both parents are taking on the extras.

But it’s also about making sure both parents are taking on the extras. It’s not just the at home mother’s job to do all of the extra work. The father can help out.

My husband handles the gardening. He manages the compost pile when we have one (not possible at our current residence, damn it!) He uses a reel mower on the lawn rather than a powered one.

If you’re dividing the chores fairly, the extra work involved in being green may fall somewhat heavier on the parent at home, but that would be true no matter the lifestyle if one parent stays at home.

Does Green Living Require One Parent at Home?

If you’re going for a simpler lifestyle, you certainly may not need two incomes, and it can make a lot of sense to have one parent stay at home, who is usually the mother.

Not always. Two of my sisters have stay at home husbands who are raising the kids.

Being eco friendly doesn’t really require that one parent stay at home.

But being eco friendly doesn’t really require that one parent stay at home. It’s certainly easier for a mother to stay at home if she wants to breastfeed, but not absolutely required if she can pump breastmilk, as one of my sisters did for each of her two children for about a year per baby. It was hard, but she did it. Her husband stayed home with the kids.

As for me, I always found breastfeeding easier than dealing with formula and bottles. It works well for me. It’s not extra work. It’s less. It’s a pleasure.

There are other ways couples can raise their family and still be eco friendly. One other of my sisters and her husband take mass transit to and from work each day. They garden, recycle, all that stuff. Their daughter is in her teens, so they certainly aren’t dealing with the baby issues that I deal with now.

Living green doesn’t absolutely require one person at home. It helps, but it’s not an absolute requirement, especially once you’re past the baby years. Instead it requires the willingness to pay attention to the lifestyle choices you make and to do the best you can.

More Opportunities for at Home Parents

The part I always love to point out is that there are now more opportunities for at home parents, whether that be a mother or a father, to express themselves and to pursue a career while being there for the kids.

That’s why I run this blog. That’s why so many other moms and dads want to work from home.

Lots of parents want more time with their families. Just ask them. It’s true of mothers and fathers.

While there are certainly more pressures for moms to stay at home, that doesn’t mean she has to stick herself into the 50s ideal and wear that perfect apron and pearls every day unless that’s how she wants to do things.

What About the Kids?

I believe that children thrive when they know they aren’t the center of their parents’ world, that they are one part of it. Kids need to know that both of their parents are people with interests and dreams of their own.

I believe that children thrive when they know they aren’t the center of their parents’ world, that they are one part of it.

Kids also need to learn that they can entertain themselves. They should be having fun with friends once they’re old enough, not just kept at home and lovingly cared for by a parent intent on sheltering them from the dangers of the world. The dangers aren’t as bad as the media wants us to think!

That means that I don’t believe stay at home moms or parents in general should be carting their kids around to activity after activity, even during the summer. I have my kids in swimming lessons right now, and they’re taking a break from karate for the summer. One class at a time is my usual rule.

The swimming lessons aren’t optional, not with grandparents who have a backyard swimming pool. Safety trumps other considerations.

If you entertain your kids by always being available to play with them, and then always having them in organized activities when they get older, when do they learn to handle it themselves?

What Are “Right” Choices?

Moms these days are greatly pressured to raise their kids exactly the right way. That’s why there’s the pressure to be at home, to put the kids in activities, to make sure they get the best possible test scores and have just the right friends. The green side of it is a very small part of the equation.

When it comes to raising kids, few choices are absolutely right. Pretty much the only absolutely right choices are the ones that have to do with not abusing your child.

When it comes to raising kids, few choices are absolutely right.

There are even right and wrong choices about safety. Parents keep their kids isolated in the name of safety, but forget that kids need to learn to deal with the world on their own terms before they’re adults. Yet doing that has risks.

I would rather take those risks, as I believe they’re less than the risks of raising a child who won’t know how to cope as an adult. But not all parents feel the same, and even how you go about either side of this varies tremendously by family. Who is right?

Similarly, pushing for academic perfection or pushing too hard too young in sports is a road to burnout. Parents do these things for what sound like really good reasons but the results they get may not be the ones they were after.

It’s not a competition. Your one goal is to raise happy, healthy, competent adults. Having good environmental sensibilities is a plus. But how you go about that in comparison to everyone else around you doesn’t matter. Most of them won’t even notice, except to criticize.

If you don’t want to be an at home mom or dad, then don’t. Find a way to make it work.

But if you want to be at home, and have an eco friendly family, be unashamed of that goal. Don’t compare your progress so hard with other families. Enjoy your garden, baking bread, washing diapers, line drying laundry or whatever it is you do. There’s nothing wrong with loving to do things yourself, no matter how others tell you it’s a bad thing.

Just be sure you don’t give up everything. I also believe every stay at home parent, whether a mother or a father, should have some way of keeping up her or his work skills. Life’s uncertain. You may someday need to work outside the home again. Being prepared is smart.