Starting over a week ago, our next door neighbor, Pat, has been having a six-foot privacy fence installed. This should prove to be a blessing. She has the most obnoxious pack of four little dogs – they bark at everything all day long. They bark at us when we are outside. They bark at our dogs when they’re out during the day. They bark at their own shadows in the evening sometimes it seems.

The fence encompasses a huge amount of land. Her house is situated rather off-center in her plot of land. With a fence all the way around, clearly delineating the property, it looks a bit lop-sided since the fence extends so much further to the east (to the left if you were standing at the street looking at her front door) than it does to the west. Unfortunately, despite the impressive perimeter, it fails to surround the mess in her yard. She used to have two big PODS next to her driveway, but there is now only a pile of debris. The fence does not hide it from our view. So we’ll be planting some leyland cypruses over there to shield us from the unsightly scene.

Pat is the nicest person next to which a home-owner could live. She has a garden and has been very helpful in the past, loaning us her lawn equipment from time to time. But she isn’t quite as chatty as of the last couple of years. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve done something to upset her, but perhaps she’s busy with other things. Despite her beaming generosity, we have still secretly spurned her annoying dogs and her less-than-beautiful yard. So the fence will be a welcome addition.

The Rain Barrel

Last weekend we built a rain barrel for one of the downspouts on the front of our house. We have one that empties by the front porch, behind a large bush. The bush makes the perfect cover for a rain barrel:

We managed to build one for only $20. Unfortunately, we didn’t take pictures when we were building it – otherwise I could show you the step-by-step to saving yourself a bunch of money (apparently rain barrels can sell for upwards of $100).

We started with a 32-gallon RubberMaid trash can – only $15 from your neighborhood Lowe’s or Home Depot. We then bought fittings from the plumbing aisle: one brass faucet threaded to accept a hose on one end. The other end of the faucet was threaded, too. The threads screw into a piece of PVC, which is then connected via PVC cement to another piece of PVC that has a large threaded tail with a large flange. We drilled a hole in the bottom of the barrel, through which the threaded tail fit. A little plumber’s putty around the threads, a rubber gasket, and a very tight nut securely fasten that piece to the barrel.

We had to do some surgery to the downspout to make room for the rain barrel. It involved removing one of the elbow ends, cutting the main line (since the barrel is several feet tall), and then re-attaching the remaining elbow. You can see from the pic that we also cut a hole in the plastic lid so that the downspout reaches right in (look to the left of the blurry face):

The weather refused to produce moisture for an entire week after we had the barrel readied. But Saturday it rained. It didn’t even rain that heavily, but the barrel filled up all the way nevertheless. It was overflowing Sunday. It probably overflowed a lot because it really rained on Sunday. It continues to rain today. Here’s the state of the barrel now – still full and overflowing:

The John Butler Trio

This past weekend we went to a concert with two other couples. One couple, Karen and Cliff Jones, accompanied us on the last concert we saw (you can re-read about those misadventures here). The other couple, Paul and Melanie Manning, are more friends of ours from my workplace. We met them in the evening at the Landmark Diner, down the road from the amphitheater in Chastain Park. From there were caravan’ed to a parking lot in the park and begun the tailgating festivities. The festivities mainly consisted of eating Chinese food (for us anyway – the Mannings brought sushi; the Joneses brought sub sandwiches) and telling tales of mischievous kids, of which we all get our fill.

After a dinner in the parking lot, we meandered to the amphitheater. The John Butler Trio was the act that Malin and I were most excited about seeing, and they did not disappoint. In fact, they were awesome. They played a good set of songs, a long set, and were really fun to watch. John Butler makes his acoustic guitar spit out truly unreal sounds with the occasional aid of a slide and an overdrive pedal. They had one of the members of Arrested Development join them on the stage during one of the songs. They rocked the house. The only regret was that they didn’t play one of my favorite songs, Daniella.

After the trio came G. Love and Special Sauce – the same act as our last musical outing. This time G. Love played a slow and sleepy set. A highlight was when he drifted into a rendition of Jack Johnson’s Rodeo Clowns. We left a little early because Malin got really tired and wanted to go. We had already seen G. Love and knew we’d survive if we missed the last few songs. Karen and Cliff also had to go to relieve their baby-sitter of duty. Karen is a huge G. Love fan, so she was more bummed to have to take off early. After speaking with Paul this morning at work, I learned that we only missed three songs. And, due to the curfews they have at Chastain Park (it is in a very ritzy neighborhood that doesn’t like loud rock’n'roll concerts going on late at night), there were no encores. When G. Love left the stage, the night was all over.

We arrived home at a reasonable hour and went straight to bed… (I’m still recovering from a cold that I’ve been fighting for over a week now)

The Lord of the Rings

Last night, the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy could be seen on network television. We weren’t sure how much of it would be suitable for Will to watch, but he was too excited by it for us not to try. It was quite a choppy evening. Even being “edited” for network television, it has still has more than enough violence in it (including the occasional beheaded orc or impaled villain). Luckily we’ve seen all three films (and even own them on DVD), so we knew what was coming. Our frequent changing of channels right when the action started going seemed to really frustrate Will, but we assured them that they were fighting too roughly for him to watch. The second film, The Two Towers, was the worst. He saw considerably less than half of the film due to the constant battling with Orcs and the long battle of Helm’s Deep.

He did not get to see the end of the film – partially due to the violence and scary sequences but mostly due to the fact that it did not end until 11:45pm.

And to think that today he didn’t want to watch 102 Dalmations (which was playing on some channel earlier today after he got home from school) because – get this – it was too scary. Wonders never cease…

I have attempted making bread in the past – and failed about as miserably as one could possibly fail. This time I prevailed and made the most delicious bread that has ever existed: Brioche. It is more like cake than bread, but it has yeast so bread it is.

I made Monte Cristo sandwiches out of it, and then Marla (the devil dog) stole one of my sandwiches. And now we don’t speak so much (Marla and I).

On to my weekly (or perhaps biweekly) edition of “The Humphries Save the Planet”. This week we have canceled our trash pick-up service. You heard me right. We recycle and compost so much of our waste that we barely produce much trash nowadays. We have also started using cloth training pants for Will at night, so that cuts down even more. And I don’t feel like going straight to eco-hell for throwing superabsorbent polymers full of my son’s pee into the landfill (for it to sit and not rot until long after his grandchildren are in the ground, probably covered in superabsorbent polymers full of their grandfather’s pee…)

On personal hygiene: I am now willing to tell the internet I have not washed my hair with shampoo in over a month. Yes, you heard me right: NO SHAMPOO. In an effort to rid the house and myself of chemicals, I have switched to baking soda for almost all of my personal washing needs. And I have to say I really like it. I don’t smell, and my hair is not greasy or rank (or hippy dippy either). The switch to using it on my hair has taken a bit of trial and error as everyone’s hair is different, and mine is thick and long. So I use a bit more than some, and I leave it on for a full 2 minutes. Then I use a bit of apple cider vinegar as a conditioner (which really makes it soft), and I am done. Baking soda is by far the best deodorant I have ever used. Once I realized that I could mix it in some cocoa butter lotion, it is easy to apply (and I still don’t smell). I don’t mean, “hey, I don’t smell so bad!” No, I mean, “hey, I have been working in the yard all day in July in Georgia and sweating like I have been digging a ditch in the Sahara for five days, and I don’t smell!”

More info:
If you are interested in no ‘poo, go here.
How about home-made deodorant?

Here we go: another installment of “The Humphries Save The Planet.” I started composting, and it is not the first time. I tried this at our old house when I had the veggie garden in the backyard. I never got the swing of it though. I went the Martha way, which is to say I had a big wire bin next to the garden and put all of our food scraps in (instructions on that method).

As you could see from the picture in the link, manual labor is a key part. And time – lots and lots of time before you can use the compost in the garden. I had lusted over these nifty things, but as you can see from the price tag I was not about to do that (even if it did give you compost in six easy, non-manual-labor-filled weeks). So I had been thinking on what to do for a while and, feeling guilty every time I emptied the coffee filter or threw lemon rinds in the garbage pail, I knew I could do something easy and cheap. I finally came up with something on the drive to the lake last week. Upon our return, I decided to look online one last time to see if my plan would work. I ran across this great video (which is what my plan mainly consisted of – except I used a drill, and my hair looks way better than hers).

I purchased my trash can from Lowes for $13.00, and Will helped me drill the holes in a pretty pattern. Then we loaded it up with the brown and green matter that we had saved over the last two days, wet it, and gave it a spin. Soon I will show you my black gold!

Here is a list of things you can compost:

• Animal manure
• Cardboard rolls
• Clean paper
• Coffee grounds and filters
• Cotton rags
• Dryer and vacuum cleaner lint
• Eggshells
• Fireplace ashes
• Fruits and vegetables
• Grass clippings
• Hair and fur
• Hay and straw
• Houseplants
• Leaves
• Nut shells
• Sawdust
• Shredded newspaper
• Tea bags
• Wood chips
• Wool rags
• Yard trimmings

One last note: I am truly amazed at how much smaller our weekly trash that goes to the street is because of recycling and composting. It has gone down by at least two-thirds and is the most obvious change we have made during this process. This week it is my goal to put up recycling bins for the bathrooms – an easily overlooked place that is full of paper products just being thrown in the trash.

A few years ago, Josh and I decided we would change a habit or a product here and there in our daily lives – in an attempt to become more conscious of our affect on the planet and to just be more conscious as humans in general. One of the first things we did was to replace most of the bulbs in the house with compact fluorescent bulbs. Now you may say, “Most? Why not all?” The simple fact is that we wanted to make these changes without compromising too much (mainly due to the fact that very small bulbs and bulbs attached to dimmer switches don’t agree to well with CFL). We are Americans after all, and if we do it this way then we can convince others to follow along. Because if it is not easy and cheap then it is not sustainable for the laziest among us.

Along the way, we have also taken this idea to the food we eat, and we have slowly been changing into more conscious eaters. This means more vegetables, more fruit, no junk food in the house, no soda in the house, eating at home as much as possible, and, finally, cutting out a whole lot of processed food. We still eat out and drink like fish (Josh makes beer after all) – we even drink soda and go to fast food joints, but only once in a while. Even then, we try our best to keep it somewhat healthy. This was probably the hardest for me as Will loves Chik-Fil-A and – I mean – who doesn’t? He still begs, but I resist.

Ok, back on topic! So this year we decided to step it up a little more: first we started recycling, and then I decided to get rid of all the harsh chemicals to clean the house. NO, I did not stop cleaning! I traded them for more earth-friendly ideas. Now I know I could have gone out and bought green-wise stuff, but I really felt that was just not being very conscious. I decided Bleach, Baking soda, and Vinegar are all I need, and I must say it has been a smashing success. I have a spray bottle with water and a few drops of bleach (chlorine free) for cleaning the counters and hard floors. Important note about bleach: you only need a few drops. You don’t even need to be able to smell it for it to disinfect your counters and what not. Baking soda is a miracle powder: it has gotten the toughest dirt out of the bottom of my shower, cleaned the grout in my bathroom, and whitened my laundry. The best part of all: it is way cheap! More info here on the wonderment of the BS. Vinegar: in a word – URINE. If you have a dog or a child then you know what I am talking about. Vinegar breaks down the enzymes in urine instantly, and dogs will not mark again if they can smell it. We could talk about all its other great features, but read this article instead. Oh, and the smell is gone once it dries.

Ok, the point of this post! I have decided to start posting about my newest experiments into going green. I am always trying something new to see if it will fit into my life and save me money (lest I remind you about gas prices). Not everything I do will sound sane or even doable by all, but maybe it will give some of you the info you need to try something new.

Next week: composting on the cheap!