I have to start this off by admitting that I’ve never been much for fancy jewelry; I’m just as happy with cheap costume stuff, in general, as I am with something expensive. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend, but this girl has an easier time wearing something I don’t have to freak out about losing or whatever.

But there’s a lot of talk in eco-circles about the environmental (and humanitarian) impact of things like diamonds. The “green” thing to do is buy lab-grown diamonds, or recycle existing ones. Reading about this makes me feel somewhat smug, because my wedding band belonged to my great-grandmother. Here I thought I was being cheap sentimental in wearing her band, but it turns out, actually I was recycling the diamonds!

This trend is, of course, opening up the market for companies like Green ORO to step in with jewelry made from conflict-free diamonds and recycled metals, which is very cool.

And then there’s also things like designer Linda Loudermilk’s “Water is a Human Right” line, wherein you can pick up this quirky water necklace and know that a portion of your proceeds goes to the YEW Foundation to support clean water initiatives. If that’s not jewelry with a greener purpose, I don’t know what is.

This stuff certainly makes me think about greening my (occasional) jewelry purchases, that’s for sure.

Here in the U.S., it is traditional to celebrate Memorial Day with foodstuffs in the grill. (Yes, it’s most traditional to make those foodstuffs large hunks of meat, but in deference to the vegetarian in my house, we also often celebrate with zucchini.)

Today’s cooking reminded me that I’d been meaning to write something about solar cookers ever since I read about this video last month:

The Kyoto Box and other solar ovens are intended for use in remote areas where the only other alternative is cooking over an open wood fire, but many ecoists are jumping on the solar cooking bandwagon. You can go grab the plans for building the solar cooker of your choice online, even.

Would you ever do something like this, all in the name of going greener? It seems a little redundant given that I live in a house with electricity, and have a propane grill sitting right outside. On the other hand, it might be kind of a fun project with the kids, just to see how it works.

I came across this story on CNN this morning and just had to share it; what a testament to the powerfulness of going green!

From the story:

[A] program in Washington state helps military veterans learn marketable job skills and make sense of their experiences in combat. Program managers say the Veterans Conservation Corps initiative helps hundreds of vets study and train to enter the growing “green” jobs field.

In return, the veterans work on projects that help restore the environment in state parks.

The VCC, though, is much more than job training for Grisham and many of the other vets. It’s a form of therapy.

“Sometimes it feels really good. When we take invasive weeds off a tree that’s being suffocated and we free something. I feel a bit lighter inside,” Grisham says.

I just absolutely love this. What a wonderful way to help those who have served our country, and a great way to maintain some of our precious natural lands. I’ve always suspected that gardening (on a much smaller scale, of course) is therapeutic for me… it just brings a smile to my face to know that getting back to nature is being used as a tool in this way.

I work from home, so I like to think of myself as being fairly eco-friendly when it comes to the amount of driving I do. In fact, my husband sees the every-3,000-mile oil change as something of a religion, and just this weekend he told me that in checking my car, he’d discovered that I’ve only driven 2,400 miles in the last eight months.

(For what it’s worth, I then told him I was pretty sure I’d driven 1,400 of those taking the kids to and from the orthodontist. My son is the king of the broken wire. Ahem.)

So I’m off the hook when it comes to reducing dependence on automobiles, right? Well… maybe not. I was just reading the car-free blog challenge issued over at BlogHer, and it’s gotten me thinking. Even with as little driving as I do, it’s not as though I utilize alternate transportation methods. I never take the bus. We don’t live close enough to anything useful (like the grocery store) for me to bike easily. Or maybe I’m just being a wimp.

Could you go without a car for a week? Reading through the links on the post above, I’m sort of wondering if it only “works” for folks in big cities. But maybe I just need to think a little more creatively. Or bike a little further.

Have you heard this term before, localvore? It’s about committing to eating food grown in one’s local food shed. There are plenty of health and evolutionary reasons to do it, of course, but environmentally speaking, it has huge advantages. Smaller carbon footprint, obviously, as the food needn’t travel so far to get to you. Support for smaller, natural and organic farms, for another.

I love this time, as spring segues into summer, when it comes to food. There’s all sorts of wonderful, local produce that’s readily available, not to mention the food we’re growing in our own backyard! But typically as the season winds down and we get back into fall and winter, I’ll go back to buying imported produce at the supermarket, because “otherwise we couldn’t eat anything but apples.” (Yes, that’s an exaggeration.) This year, I’m extending my commitment to being a localvore by freezing many of our favorites.

For the next few months, I’ll be loading up at our local farmer’s market, and in our garden, and freezing the excess to use this winter. I always thought I’d have to learn how to can to preserve many of my favorites (like tomatoes), but berries freeze beautifully just as they are, and many veggies freeze well after a quick blanch (including tomatoes). Come fall, my freezer will be full, and I can continue eating locally, even after our favorites have gone out of season.

I can’t wait. Local strawberries in December? Bring it on.

I was feeling proud of myself about all of the food my family has planted this year, which usually signals that it’s time for something to go wrong. (No, this isn’t being pessimistic. It’s realistic.) So, first I found myself dealing with various critters eating our plants, and then this weekend something else happened.

Our strawberries are ripening. And as much as my children wanted to pluck them immediately at the first sign of red, I cautioned them to wait a bit longer. I told them they wouldn’t taste good, and needed more time to ripen. So we waited. And waited.

And then this weekend several were undeniably ripe, so we picked them with great anticipation.

And they tasted… sour.

I’m perplexed. They were beautiful, but they weren’t sweet. Is it the variety? Something about the way we grew them? Did they need some time to sit and further ripen after picking? (That seems impossible, given how red they were.) I just have no idea.

So much for the joys and sustainability of growing our own berries. Blech.

Next weekend we’ll head to a local farm, where we can pick our own berries. It’s a little more green than buying at the supermarket, and they’ll taste a heck of a lot better than the ones we’re growing here at home. And this way the squirrels can eat ours, I guess, and we can call it kindness to the local wildlife. Or something.

I came across this video online the other day, and it made me laugh so hard, my kids came running. So then I let them watch it, and they laughed so hard they then begged me to play it again. And again.

But seriously, it’s a valuable lesson about water conservation! Honest! See for yourself:

See? I’m sure the Navy Shower is Waverly-approved for conserving water, and if this video gets your kids into the idea, well, that can’t be a bad thing.

… just ask the bugs!

I promised myself two things this year, when it came to our gardening efforts. First, that I would planet enough that we could eat fresh veggies for the bulk of the summer and even have surplus to freeze and/or can; and second, that I would keep the garden organic.

That means no commercial growth solutions (and I have used that thing that rhymes with, um, Piracle-Mow, in the past), no chemical pesticides. While I’ve not had a problem with the first item (owing, in part, to having found some nice organic fertilizer options), my garden is currently bursting forth and Houston, we have a problem. Specifically: We have bugs. Lots of them.

I’m already planting basil alongside the tomatoes (to help keep tomato-loving bugs repelled) and scattering eggshells around the base of the plants the slugs love (they’re too sharp for the slugs to cross), but we also have beetles and flies and who knows what else.

So I’m spending a little bit of quality time doing some research. I’m digging this Natural Pest Control overview from Green Living Ideas, and because I love a good chart, I’m also liking this Organic Pest Control Guide from Extremely Green. And I’m feeling confident that I can rescue our plants and still keep our garden green. That’s a nice way to start off the week!