Lally Pollen

It being near the end of term, and life just doing its thing at the moment, I wanted to bring some meditative practice into my life, while also feeling like there is far too much to do at any one moment to let myself stop for a second. When I have tried the sit-down-and-breath method of meditation, unless I’m in the woods and then I’m usually walking with my dog, I find I am not so able to quieten down my thoughts of the ever lengthening list of things to do or figure out or what-have-you. So, unable to actually get to the woods every day, I figured this week I would try decluttering instead, so I focused on two areas.
One being the “incredibly useful” draws - those spaces at home where you toss just about every knick-knack, do-dad and thing-a-me-bob because you don’t know where else to put it and while it will not be useful today it will one day, surely; but eventually when you look back at this space (usually because it has become too full to actually close), you find the draw is full of outdated, broken or pair-less items that really aren’t any use any more, plus maybe one candle and a charger box. Well, I sorted out those draws and honestly it felt pretty great. One tiny little area in my life that is slightly less chaotic than it was before.
The other things I ‘decluttered’ were a few of my house plants. While I do the usual watering and feeding often, some get very long over time and eventually need either a little (or a lot of) pruning, removing of the old growth, detangling or flushing out. There is something remarkably relaxing about this process and after attending to a rather lengthy Inch plant I have, and being able to propagate a lot of its trimmings in a new pot, I felt as though I’d been on a meditation retreat.

For this week's theme of nature and consumerism my approach was two fold. Firstly, I usually spend a fair amount of time in nature everyday as I walk with my dog at least three times a day. This week in addition to these outings I decided to take my self on walks, when I could spare a moment, just on my own. I spent the time on each of these walks trying to identify as many plants and trees as I could, both those in peoples gardens along my route and those in the parks I visited. I didn't bring my phone on these walks, so those plants that I didn't know I tried to either remember enough to try and look up later, or remember which street it was so that I could revisit and take a picture at a later date. While these were fairly short walk as its been a pretty buy week, I found that my attention on my surrounding was quite a bit greater than when I'm walking with Zip or another person, and I noticed 'new' things in areas that I thought I was very familiar with already. I've also now learnt how to identify the Kentucky coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus).
Secondly, I'm already fairly minimal on purchases I make, in part as I honestly don't like shopping at all, also life is expensive, so I couldn't think of what to reduce or change in that respect. I do however tend to keep everything I have, even once its broken or torn, with the "just in case", or "maybe one day this will be exactly what I need most", or "someday I'll get round to /learn how to repair this" mentalities. As a result I have a lot of odds and ends and bits and bobs and scraps of things that pile up and take up space. So I went through some of the draws/cupboards of such stuff sorting them out and recycling or donating what I could. A bunch of books that I've already read, for example, went to two different free book shelves in my neighborhood. It was also a good exercise in reminding myself of what's there, which I figure will help reduce even further potential future purchases (especially once I have a bit more free time to do some repairs and making of things). Sorting out stuff like this may not have a huge impact beyond my little home, but it got me thinking a lot about how consumerism plays a role in my life and felt pretty good to do.

I don’t drive at all. I never really needed or wanted to when I was living in London or New York. So I rely heavily on the buses, which I’m honestly pretty fond of. While most journeys I take tend to average about an hour, it's a good chunk of time to get some reading in. The main thing I do want to change in respect to transport is to get back into bike riding. While I used to commute to and from work by bike everyday in Brooklyn, I got out of the habit once I moved here. So, I took a couple little rides this week just in my neighborhood, and I hope to do more from now on.

My focus on community took two forms this week. I made connections with two of my neighbors with whom I've never yet spoken, both over matters relating to our gardens. One neighbor and I got to talking about starts and ended up exchanging some seedlings - I had a slight excess of tomatoes and she of peppers. we plan on making more exchanges as and when. The second neighbor had a large fallen branch in their garden they were going to take to the dump. Figuring I could use the wood as part of my garden boxes, I took it off his hands; he saved me a search for materials, and I saved his a trip to the dump.
I also worked with a crew who have been planting up a nature corridor near by. the area has been used as a dump for years and they have been working to replace trash with native trees. I joined them for a three hour session this week, clearing spaces and mulching trees they had planted at the start of winter. Over the summer they will be meeting every week for about an hour. I plan on joining them again as much as I can.

To address the water theme this week I decided to don a plumbers hat and take on some of the piping in our bathroom. We had a leaky faucet and a loose bolt (it may be called something else in professional plumber circles) in the loo tank, which it turns out was causing it to flush more water than was necessary. Luckily, my father-in-law is a plumber and over the years has instilled in my husband enough know-how that he could instruct me in tackling the issue. So our tap no longer drips, the loo does just what it should an nothing more and I learnt a new skill in repairs (sort of).
Also, the free-cycle gods were on my side this week as I managed to get a full sized barrel that a neighbor was getting rid of, which I plan to use for collecting rain and ultimately watering my plants/ the veg garden. There hasn't been any rain where I live for around a week now and it doesn't look like there will be for a little while now, but that gives me time to get a good set up going.

For this week's focus on food I made pesto out of the dandelions I harvested from the garden. Initially I cleared them to make room for my Eco Change project, but in the spirit of permaculture philosophies and to avoid waste, I tried to put to good use all I could. While the flowers I deep fried in batter, very tasty, the leaves became seriously delicious pesto. The roots meanwhile can be used to make tea. First you dehydrate the cleaned and chopped roots, then once dried, grind them in to a power. This gets a second roasting, after which you can mix with hot water and drink. Typically it seems people refer to this as Dandelion 'coffee' but honestly it tastes a lot more like hot chocolate, surprisingly.
I also made a point this week to eat less meat, only two meals contained any, a fair step down from my usual habits. I actually really liked this change, it made me think far more imaginatively about meals, and put more effort into and enjoying the cooking process.

While I already tend to turn of lights and appliances when they are not being used, this week I went back through the house making sure there were not things I was missing. Sure enough, I realized my computer hardly ever gets turned off but is rather just left on stand by. So I have for a few days now been making sure to turn it off completely each night and I intend to make this a daily habit. I don't have AC and don't plan on changing that, but I do tend to use the heating even in mid-spring, and especially this weekend as I have come down with a nasty cold. I did however, turn the temperature down on it, and have avoided turning it on all together when doubling up on blankets and slippers has done the trick.
I also watched a documentary called Harnessing the Sun and Wind: Inside Our Renewable Energy Future, which focused on two renewable energy projects, a floating Solar farm in Singapore and wind farms by The Blue Circle in Cambodia. It was particularly interesting to hear of the various challenges that each project faced specific to their particular regions. Singapore, for example, being relatively limited in available land and wind is best suited to solar technologies. Given the land deficit, rooftops are heavily used for panels, but the featured project seeks to utilize the surface of the sea and specifically “dead sea space” to expand solar potential in the country. Monitor lizards, various birds and otters present somewhat unexpected challenges to these new water based solar farms. Cambodia, with relatively robust wind channels, has multiple stretches of Government held land which have become host to the country’s first wind farms from The Blue Circle, who also built Vietnam's first. One farm, consisting of around 10 wind turbines can power 50,000 households per day. Until the first Covid years, when this film was released, Cambodia was seeing the world’s highest growth in energy consumption per year. While finding available solar panel space is a notable difficulty in creating a sustainable energy grid in Singapore, the biggest difficulty for both projects is finding green financing. There was far more to the documentary, these were some interesting highlights.

I've been keeping an eye on the plastic my house generates recently, and while this 'audit' will continue, so far some of the most common sources of plastic for us are bread bags, laundry detergent bottles, dog poo bags and pet treat bags. So far I have changed the laundry detergent bottles we usually get to the "eco sheets" which come in cardboard envelopes, thus avoiding the plastic bottles that I find are not great to reuse for much else. I've also sourced a bakery in my local area where I will be able to get loaves and skip plastic packaging, and have started practicing a flatbread recipe that even a non-culinary individual like me can pull off. I am currently receiving the waste bags to use for my dog, so far those made of corn or plant starch bases materials seem like a possible alternative to what I currently use. Finally, this weekend I plan to try a number of different recipes of dog and cat treats, in the hop that I can reduce plastic in this area too. my dog i a very picky very stubborn eater, so we'll see how that goes