Waiting, Waiting, & Waiting for Spring

Following the typical Iowa tradition of, “...wait five minutes and the weather will change” a reluctant, timid spring is being overshadowed by a stubborn winter, who is acting like the guest that won’t leave. These two seasons have been in a head-to-head battle with spring heavily favored, but winter ensuring it’s a fight to the finish. Today, for instance, instead of green shoots of grass and bulbs popping their heads from beneath brown patches of lawn, we are given more snow...yes, snow.

The folks around here just shake their heads and comment that we’ve had plenty of unusually warm winters and we were due for a bad one. OK, we had the bad stuff and hunted Easter eggs in the snow; can we have warm air and sunshine already?

This weather has me feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football just when Lucy pulls it away and he lands flat on his back...ARGHHHHHHH!

Inside one kitchen window, newly started Cosmos seedlings offer the only visible evidence of rejuvenation here. Given that indoor blooms are all I may see for a while, I went ahead and started some Zinnia seeds as well. Outside another kitchen window, birds of all types eagerly devour the birdseed I keep stocked for them. The only new flyers I’ve seen lately are young goldfinches who seem to be wondering, like me, what happened to spring.

Yesterday, despite having a miserable head cold, I wandered outside to collect litter around our homestead leftover from the great snow melt. Most of the old snow has melted with just one leftover mass in the front along the driveway that is languishing. The basement in our garden shed out back has been regularly accumulating water, putting our new larger sump pump to good use. Although obsessing about the weather is futile, I still find myself checking various weather sources daily hoping to find a spring-friendly forecast. Tomorrow and the weekend are to be warmer and dry. Next week offers another chance for, you guessed it, snow.

Why is it the older I get, the more I believe birds are the wisest of all creatures? They fly south as the temperatures fall to avoid Iowa’s schizophrenic winter climate. Some day I’d like to be reincarnated as a bird able to wander where and when I please. I could make a temporary home wherever I fancy with a front row seat to the best flower shows in the country – all free. I would tease cats and sing aloud all I wanted even if I'm off key.

The Cheapskate Chronicles for Going Green

If you know a farmer, they are savers and re-users and even though we're hobby farmers, we are frugal folk in kind. Hopefully someday we can live off our land completely even if it takes us until retirement. In today’s world of gigantic supermarkets with food shipped from who knows where, the idea of living off the fruits of your own land is rare indeed. Somehow, this goal feels as organic and natural to us as using indoor plants as air filters in our house: they give off oxygen and clean the air and we give off carbon dioxide for them in perfect collaboration.

The latest Green Movement is everywhere you look nowadays and it is a good thing for the planet. Perhaps we have Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth movie to thank for the widespread adoption of this movement touting the ills of global warming and begging Americans to change their ways. Despite the disappointing fact that he uses a considerable amount of electricity in his own LARGE home, his message to clean up our act to ensure a better future for our kids is an important one.

Farmers and country folk have always seemed more thrifty and prone to recycling than the general population simply because they don’t make a lot of money and reusing and repurposing are essential. Living several miles from town and high gas prices have encouraged me to be even more creative in salvaging everything I can from what I already have. One less trip to town means more time, money, and effort I can spend on more essential things like making dinner for my family (even if that dinner consists of a smorgasbord of whatever we had in the cupboard that day). Paper towels are an extravagance in our home because I always feel guilty buying them despite their very practical ability to prevent hardened goop from forming on the bottom of the microwave. Still, I have high hopes of finally getting my kids to remember to put a plate underneath their food before nuking it.

There are some green trends we’ve adopted for health reasons like using readily available, non-toxic household cleaners and a vacuum cleaner with allergen filters, whereas other minor changes are for cost savings like replacing all our traditional filament light bulbs with compact fluorescent ones. Adding on a front porch last year surprisingly reduced our electricity bills by preventing very cold and hot air from entering our house (meaning less furnace and air conditioning needs). Adjusting our comfort levels by lowering the thermostat in winter (we keep it at 65 degrees during the day and 63 at night) and raising it in the summer (we keep it at 78) have helped us save on gas and electricity consumption even more – and lower bills make me very happy indeed! Keeping blankets around the house in winter and using ceiling fans in summer help keep the chills and sweats at bay. In the winter, I make dinner in the oven a lot and in the summer, I don’t, as we prefer to grill outdoors anyway. Adjusting our habits a little at a time has made a significant difference in our carbon footprint.

Another waste saving trick I use involves giving old leftovers in the refrigerator to our farm dog, Lucky, who happily eats anything you put in his bowl (with the exception of lettuce). I realize people food isn’t necessarily good for all pets, but our dog and cats are always happy to get extra treats and their digestive systems have not suffered, so I figure it’s a good way to keep the leftovers out of the trash. Leaves and pruned plant remnants go in the compost pile(s) I have along the back fence behind our house where the trees and bushes there flourish more each year. I do keep pulled weeds separate, as I don’t want their “seeds” corrupting my gardens any more than necessary.

So if going green seems too complicated, just start with one thing like your thermostat or waiting to run your dishwasher or washer until you have a full load. Those basic things will help you save energy and money. Once you get a taste of the frugal life, you’ll be hooked and opportunities to save money/energy will be everywhere you look. One day soon, you might even be proud to consider yourself a cheapskate (but tell your friends you’ve gone green if that feels better).

Alternate Route

Today my horoscope advised me to Find an Alternate Route to a problem and it was advice I immediately knew I needed. My present ordeal has me anxiously trying to detach myself from my teenage son’s schoolwork issues, which is especially hard for me since he’s my first born. The situation begs me to wonder why, as parents, we have such definite aspirations for our children when they themselves don’t even know what they want.

I can definitely see why raising a teenage is dubbed the most difficult phase of child rearing. They are becoming their own person with adult bodies, emotions, and convictions that are all new and exciting but unfamiliar and quite overwhelming. As teens ourselves, we didn’t feel our parents understood us and now as parents, we find ourselves wishing our teens could recognize that we remember all too well the joys and pains of adolescence. But, recognizing your own parents’ wisdom seems to be a life lesson that takes many decades to fully appreciate.

The protecting nature of a parent can be overwhelming at times despite knowing your children must find some things out for themselves because the lesson is a direct result of the pain they endure in the process. Like touching a stove, you could do everything possible to avoid the burn, but once they feel the pain, it is not forgotten and can really only be learned one way. Parents not only feel the pain along with their children, they have the added “bonus” of experiencing the additional intensity that anticipation brings.