Harvest Remembered: Thoughts on Environmental Stewardship

For the past 3 winters, around the end of February, I get this itchy feeling and it's not from the wool sweaters. It's my garden, calling to me. Our very first garden together was at an apartment, on our 6 x 12 patio, in pots and crates (I'll dig up some pictures to show you sometime). I loved the way that our plants vined and twined and shaded our southern patio and cooled off the evenings after work and then, as if those gifts were not enough, the plants gave us yummy fruits.

And so here I am again, at the beginning of March and the ending of winter and I am thinking of harvests past and what I long for from harvests present. Our first patio garden moved with us when we bought our house, and those poor little plants were so stressed by the move, yet they still gave us a harvest. And so as I dream of this year's coming bounty and of building garden beds and of the flowers that will cheer my neighbors and my kitchen table, and as I finger seed packets that will grow into yummy food, I pause before the start and remember. We have been so richly blessed to be able to grow some of our own food. For that I am grateful.

I keep telling myself that I'm going to start a blog that will matter to people, that will have fabulous readership and that will help change the world and I keep not starting because those goals are so lofty, I don't even know where to begin. So I think instead, I will begin in a place that I know, in my own little corner of the world, on my own little corner 1/10 acre lot, in my own little Virginia town.

This post will mark the start of sharing with you what we're doing in our little corner. Through our professional jobs in conservation and in architecture, we've both become more concerned with our resource consumption, so we are starting a business to help people make their homes energy efficient, we are trying our best to green our own house (though I'm still undecided on whether I like using the word green at all, I feel it's way over used, but it's also such a handy little adjective... how about when I use it, I also explain what aspect of green I'm talking about), we are living on a tight budget, we garden (for sanity and for food security), we are involved in promoting green issues in our community, we volunteer with high school kids, and we are trying to figure out how to fit it all in and live intentionally. This blog will serve as an ongoing discussion of how all of those areas of life intersect and how we are trying to be better stewards of what we've been given, starting with the small things, and with the overarching goal of living lightly on the earth and making choices that are sustainable for the environment, our budget, our community, and our family.

Encouraging environmental stewardship (and other fun stuff)