Garbage Day Treasures

My dad used to ride around on his bike the night before Garbage Day, in my little town of Mineola on Long Island in New York, and search for broken lawn chairs. He would then go back with his car to pick up any treasures he discovered. He had rolls of webbing, in multicolors, that he would use to repair these chairs, and the collection of them in our garage grew and grew and grew.

We had many barbecues in our backyard and my father took great pleasure in pulling out all these chairs and setting them up in a big circle before guests would arrive. My bedroom was just above the yard and I would fall asleep on nights like this to the tinkling of ice in glasses and the hushed conversations of grownups punctuated by sudden peals of laughter.

And so, now, on Garbage Day, here, 900 miles away, I scan the curbs in my morning travels, occasionally stopping for a big clay pot or a willow basket, recycled valuables that now blend seamlessly into my garden.

One day while walking to school, my younger daughter and I fell upon a rare and glorious find. These windows. These beautiful windows. We both just stood there.

"This is a good one, Mom," my daughter said

But we were walking. How on earth could I get even one of these windows home? (And there were many.)

While on my way back home, just past the windows, my friend Mark pulled up and said the magic words, "Do you want a ride?" He does this sort of often, and usually I just take a lift up the monster hill and then leap out, a minute and a half of friendship shared. But this day, I said, "Oh, Mark! It's our lucky day! We get to have an adventure!" Mark is used to me, thank goodness, and smiled at this.

Next thing you knew, we loaded up five of these windows in the back of his car. He drove me home and I was on a cloud with my bounty. When my daughter got off the bus that day, the first thing she said was, "Did you get the windows?"

And so, now, what to do with them . . . We were at an art festival the following weekend and saw windows like ours painted with flowers. My daughter likes this idea, and there will surely be a day soon that involves windows and paint. I also called Richard and suggested we do a little "cold frame" project, with a hinged window as the top--we'd do one for him and one for me. "It will be fun!" I said. And we'll be so proud of ourselves come winter when we have a little greenhouse of lettuces.

But more than anything, I just like looking at the windows and imagining their possibilities. And imagining mine.

Considering the Possibilities

Needed a couple gifts yesterday and went to my go-to place for gifts, Ten Thousand Villages, which sells beautiful, unique items from fairly paid artisans from around the world. This pin was made from recycled soda cans and coiled wire by a woman at the Bombolulu Workshop for the Handicapped, located in Mombasa, Kenya.

Recycled soda cans. That was the second time I had seen them recently. The other time was at an office as hand-crafted airplanes suspended from the ceiling. Very clever, and I didn't mind the soda cans this time (as opposed to the Coca Cola wallpaper in that doctor's examining room a couple weeks back).

Recycled soda cans. This got me thinking. You've heard about the whole Grameen Bank micro-credit loan thing, right? Where Mohammed Yunus gave small, collateral-free loans to poor folks needing a little cash to bring their barely-surviving businesses to a sustainable level? He ended up starting a small business revolution and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The Whole Foods Foundation now donates to micro-credit loans, to folks like a woman who makes gorgeous beaded belts but could only afford to make one belt at a time and thereby could not take advantage of quantity discounts for purchasing beads. A few hundred bucks from a micro-credit loan and she has been able to buy her beads cheaper and increase her profits 33%, which enables her to send her kids to school, put money back in to the local economy, change her life. Stuff like that.

Anyway, it appears that these recycled soda can projects I've seen are made using cans from Coke products. So wouldn't that be something if the Coca Cola Foundation would somehow get involved with artisans around the world who are recycling their cans in innovative ways?

The Coca Cola Foundation's big issue is clean water, obviously because the major ingredient in most of their products is water and having a reliable source of it is critical for their future. Water is clearly a major (if not the major) issue of our times, and so I applaud what the Coca Cola Foundation is doing (and intend to find out more, and write about it, soon).

But recycled cans. Cans that become art that change lives. Isn't there a place for that, considering Extender Producer Responsibility? Considering what's happening at Bombolulu? Considering the possibilities?

And speaking of recycling drinking containers, I'll tell you what we're doing with that dead Christmas tree I dragged home from my friend John's house the other day. We're making a traditional Southern folklore bottle tree (catches the evil spirits!) with it. There's one of these in the jungle-like yard of that lady the kids think is a witch, Gloria Dump, in the excellent movie Because of Winn Dixie (from the Newbery Honor book of the same name, written by Kate DiCamillo), if you happened to see it.

Our bottle tree will have recycled plastic water bottles instead of glass bottles on it in an effort to make a 21st-century statement while honoring and preserving a cultural tradition brought from slaves from the Congo to the southern United States hundreds of years ago. Stay tuned for pictures as the project develops!

As for the recycled cans and Coca Cola, I'm not done with that one yet. As for Ten Thousand Villages, if you're here in Atlanta, swing by the Sandy Springs location of this shop (CityWalk by Whole Foods on Hammond Drive by Roswell Road) and tell Melanie (the manager) that Pattie sent you. She'll give you a 15% discount on an item for the next two weeks. I lean toward the jewelry (for gifts), the Fair Trade chocolate (for me!) and that's where I got that amazing cookbook with the perfect oatmeal bread recipe (I make several loaves a week, sometimes with olives and herbs and other things, and they always come out great).

Making Chickens

Scrap paper is the number one American export, by volume. We're shipping it halfway around the world by the boatload to China as well as India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, where there is a shortage of wood pulp and where it is converted into mostly shipping boxes so that these countries can import yet more things back to us. These countries also produce recycled paper far cheaper than the U.S., based on labor costs. Therefore, as demand continues to rise, U.S. paper mills are getting priced out of the recycled paper market.

Lately, however, scrap paper has not even been leaving my house. I have been continuing to recycle pieces of my life into homemade paper. Tissue paper from gifts. My children's homework, once returned from school. The handout I got when I donated blood. Direct mail postcards. Arts brochures. Catalogs. Notes I took for an article I wrote. Everyday stuff that used to stuff the garbage, or the recycling bin. Plus, herbs and straw and seeds from the garden. Things I love.

Here is a sample of the result so far. Sheets of paper, in varying hues, each one more beautiful to me than the next. It is literally impossible to see this paper in person and not touch it.

The chicken? Oh, that's something I've been making for a few years, the exact same chicken, sort of like when I was in a high school photography class and I used the same photo of a horse for every project, simply changing the technique in order to have a different result.

My original chickens were made out of foam and feathers. I then moved on to car tires and water bottles, but I didn't like the results of either of those. The tires were too thick and the water bottles bent too much. This chicken's body is made from a piece of one of the handmade sheets of paper, and I pushed the recycling angle further. The feet are dried calendula flowers, the wing is dried rosemary, and the beak is a rose petal (all from my garden). The shell dangling from the pin was picked up by me or perhaps one of my kids during a sunrise stroll on a beach on the east coast of Florida, looking out at the world across that vast Atlantic Ocean.

My dream? To find just the right materials to recycle for these chickens--or perhaps a variety that works. And then to start a company called Happy Chicken Farm (I already reserved the Blogger address, as part of my "put the intention in the world" philosophy) where a group of employees--perhaps high school kids who have never had a connection to the garden before--could hand-assemble these and we'd sell them, with a percentage of profits to benefit environmental efforts. They make great pins and magnets and I even glued this one on a journal made out of other sheets of the handmade paper and tied with jute twine.

And yes, of course, Happy Chicken Farm would need to have a live flock. A small flock. Just a few chickens. I'll get those chickens yet!

And so a million things need doing in my house and life. A dozen work assignments beckon for more attention. They'll all get their due. In the meantime, you'll find me out in the garden, at least for a little bit each day, making chickens.

Recycling a Series of Moments

I continue to search for ways to recycle materials, both practically and artistically. And so it was that I stood there in my kitchen the other day, the sun yet again streaming in the window, its head cocked to one side, thinking perhaps I was making pudding once more but surprised to find me ripping pieces of newspaper, leftover tissue paper and junk mail into a blender filled with water. I stepped outside and cut a fistful of rosemary and added that to the mixture, too.

And here you can see the pulp this combination made, captured on a screen and about to be blotted and ironed and left to dry overnight under a heavy book (the beautiful Fields of Plenty by Michael Ableman). These simple steps somehow miraculously resulted in a piece of fragrant, vibrant handmade paper.

And so, I find my mind running through fields of plenty as well as I have been turning my home into a health care facility in preparation for my mother's arrival from the hospital today.

"If I add seeds to the pulp, and then cut hearts out of the paper, and make Valentines Day cards, and mail them to friends far away, they can plant them in their gardens," I find my mind saying.

"I wonder how thick the paper can be that I put in the pulp," I find myself pondering as I get yet another postcard or catalog in the mail.

"Hmmmm, do you think fresh herbs will rot in the paper?" I wonder aloud, remembering that year I stuck fresh herbs in bottles of oil as holiday gifts and they all grew enormous amounts of mold.

"What if I make a piece of paper a week, with that week's junk mail and some samples of what's growing in the garden, and then at the end of the year, I make a gardening scrapbook with photos from throughout the year as well?" I finally land on, thinking about the pictures I already have, of the children at Open Garden holding those worms, of David with the pitchfork, of my mom at Team Chicken.

Michael Ableman's book may be "a farmer's journey in search of real food and the people who grow it," but my book may be simply a gardener recycling a series of moments. On paper.

One Square Foot at a Time

I closed out Eat Local Week yesterday at the Farm-to-School Workshop at E. Rivers Elementary in Buckhead, where I was even asked to speak for a few minutes as part of the agenda, as a mom who asked questions about school lunches and found hope. I said I found it heartwarming to see so many dedicated people who are actually making progress, that before I wrote my article I was ready to give up on trying to change anything, but now I knew I couldn't. Because I'm a mom.

As we went around to wonderful lesson plan stations and then watched top chefs prepare quick and healthy snacks (such as really-wow edamame dip, fruit kabobs with a yogurt/honey dip, and lettuce wraps with a Thai sauce), I thought about my garden and what I could do to make it even more of a participatory garden for my kids and their friends in the neighborhood. Maybe I didn't have to do something so big as a school garden. Maybe I could just make my little world as good as I could and let the lessons spread from there. Who knows what ignites the fire of change? Beating my head against a wall doesn't do it for me.

So, here are four ideas I'm all over:

1. Square-foot gardening. Each kid gets a square foot of paper on which they design their garden with the available seeds, transplants, etc. Then, you mark sqares off wherever you can (with stakes and string) in your existing beds and each child makes their plan come to life. They can even add a trellis or teepee to grow crops up and surround that with lettuces and other smaller plants that like a little shade. I am going to do this today. Is there a child in your neighborhood who could use a place of his or her own? Add a square foot garden and give that child a little bit of purpose.

2. Worm composting. You drill holes in a plastic container with a lid, you add a pound of red wrigglers and newspaper and start composting food scraps. You keep this under your sink, so this idea involves cleaning out down there first. May not be a "today" suggestion, but it's coming. A couple teachers talked about their kindergarten worm composting system--it is build out of wood and has five sections, one for each day of the week. The kids compost their snacks. The kids who used to bring Fritos for snack changed to apples and other perishables of their own free will so that they could "feed the worms."

3. Limited mobility gardening. I'd like to build an elevated cedar box that I can turn into a universal-access raised bed for those with limited mobility, such as those in wheelchairs or the elderly. I'd even like to brainstorm with the neighborhood kids about what to include for folks with other disabilities--blindness, hearing impairment, whatever we can think of. I think this could be a real eye-opener about the power of inclusive design.

4. Recycled art. The E. Rivers garden has a great large bug made out of plastic lids. Love it, love it, love it. I also love bottle trees made out of recycled plastic bottles and chimes made out of old spoons. None of these are in my garden yet. This may be a great fall/winter project for those who have tucked their gardens to bed already.

Oh, and I wanted to pass along a simple idea for those of you starting school gardens. The E. Rivers garden team launched their garden by giving every teacher in the school his or her own cloth garden bag (see photo above), with a Georgia Organics newsletter and other reading materials, tools, and a key to the garden shed. I thought this was a great way to give everyone ownership right away.

And so, my drive home yesterday involved a stop at Hastings Garden Center, where I bought yet more seeds so I could put the seeds of ideas from the workshop to work. And today, I change the world (or at least, the little slice of it I steward), one square foot at a time.