The Greening of Gavin

Archives for August 2011

Alive, Beautiful but Hurt

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I am talking about our home, Planet Earth.

Whilst looking after a sick Kim and Ben (both in bed with bad colds and chest infections), I have been reading a lot of great blogs and watching inspiring videos.

As a follow on from yesterday’s post about the consumer culture, I felt that I needed to follow it up with something powerful, and eye opening.  Well I found it.  This video was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (www.sanctuaryasia.com).

The description on YouTube states;

“This is a non-commercial attempt to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless ‘consumers’ are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today.”

As I watched this, I found myself breathing in time with the planet, then in awe of its beauty, then angry at the mindless consumers, then sad at the loss of such inspiring people.  It ends on a low note, and then I reflected.

If a simple video can make a grown man smile, grin, frown, then sob, then it is worth watching!

The Irony of the Consumer Culture

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I pride myself in lowering consumption every single day.  So to my surprise along comes an email like this;

“Hi Gavin,

Love your work on The Greening of Gavin! And I wanted to personally invite you to be one of the first Advisors on ShopSquad, a free shopping advice website where shoppers and your readers can ask Advisors (i.e. you!) for advice.
If you recommend something that is purchased, from appliances to clothing to electronics to sporting goods, you get a percentage of the sale. You’re already sharing your expertise through your blog, so why not earn more money for it?
We think your readers would love the chance to get one-on-one advice from you, and ShopSquad is a great platform for you to monetize all your hard work. We’ve built several awesome tools for bloggers, including a referral program in which you can earn $5 for each of your readers who signs up.
Read our great press coverage or learn how ShopSquad works. When you’re ready, sign up free at www.shopsquad.com.
Feel free to ask me any questions: joycie.chen@shopsquad.com.
Thanks!”

Thanks Joycie!  Once upon a time, I would have ignored the email, but today it was just too good an opportunity to not pass comment on. 

So here goes.  Please dear readers, don’t be fooled by the simple, alluring, and siren like message above.  It is designed to appeal to your sense of greed and artificial desires and wants.  I will not be your shopping advisor, not now nor never in the future.

Joycie obviously loves my work (not), and having read my blog from start to finish (not) knows that I abhor the consumer culture and affluenza in its entirety.  So why in Gaia’s name did she send me this email?  To upset me?  Probably not, she and whatever marketing company she works for thinks I am a normal ‘consumer’!  ShopSquad sounds like just another marketing ploy to increase sales for some multinational selling tat that nobody needs, with a view to record profits and draining the planets finite resources!  Something that does not make me happy.  Sustainable living makes me happy.  Here is why.

The last five years whilst on our journey towards a more sustainable lifestyle, we have never been happier. By discarding materialistic habits, and living a simpler life, we have found the bountiful happiness that eluded us for many, many years. It was in front of our faces all along. It was within us and all around us. It was in the joy of feeding the chickens every morning. It was in the gift from nature by watching seeds grow in to edible plants. It was in the conversations with family members at the table at dinner time and in the eating of home grown meals. Happiness was in paying down our credit cards, tripling our mortgage payments, and buying needs, not wants, with cash. It was in the beauty of the Sun, the Moon and the air that we breath. It was in the bees that pollinate my fruit and vegetables. It was just amazing. The old me couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Now my family and I can see everything and am truly happy. I give thanks for simple living and the lessons that it has taught me.

Joy and perceived happiness should never be associated with shopping.  ShopSquad be gone!

We Eat Weeds

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Last night we had a ‘weed’ salad with our dinner!

Weed Salad

Now, before I go any further with this tale, let me define a weed (Collins Dictionary)

Weed.
noun:
1.  any plant that grows wild and profusely, esp. among cultivated plants.

So really it is any plant not growing where you want it to be.  After 5 years of gardening and growing heirloom vegetables that naturally propagate by self seeding, we have many friendly weeds around the garden.  I did not plant them, nor did I interfere with their desire to grow where they chose to germinate.

Beetroot and rainbow chard self sown all over the place. I did not plant them in the pot!

I currently have the following ‘gifts from nature’ aka weeds that keep on returning year after year; lambs tongue lettuce, red beetroot, white beetroot, 4 different varieties of rainbow chard, nasturtiums, parsley, cherry tomatoes, and garlic.

Lambs tongue lettuce in my onion/carrot patch

As you can see, all of these veggies are potential salad ingredients, even in mid winter.  So prolific are some of these weeds, that they are beginning to compete with the vegetables that I intentionally planted.  We are picking and pulling lettuce just about every day so that they do now crowd out the brown onions and carrots.  Once the lettuce goes bitter (as it does), I will pull most plants and feed them to the chickens.  However, to keep all of my ‘weeds’ happy, I will let two plants of each type go to seed therefore letting the cycle continue.  Why fight with Mother Nature when I can let her do some of the heavy lifting around the garden!

To cap it all off, I will leave you with the conversation around the dinner table last night.  Ben was helping Kim gather the ingredients for the salad and he asked “Mum, why are you picking weeds?”  Kim replied, “Ben, that is because nature left them here for us to eat”.  Now Ben must have thought long and hard about this statement, because at the table, after cooking Kim and I dinner that consisted of Tortellini and Basil Pesto, with said salad, he piped up and said, “Dad, we are eating weeds for dinner!”  I laughed loudly because I knew exactly what he meant.  Children tell it straight like it is, that’s for sure.

So according to Ben, we eat weeds, and are proud of it!

Do you have any interesting ‘weeds’ growing in your veggie patch?