Being eco-friendly

One thing I will cheerfully admit to is being thrilled every time I get a comment on my blog. This is no doubt sustained by the relative paucity of comments I get, of course, so every little bit of encouragement/ feedback/ criticism flung my way is appreciated.

Yesterday, blogger Kenneth Moore, of Indoor Gardener, left a comment, inviting me to participate in a thing called a meme. As far as I can gather, a meme is a bit like a chain letter, but classier and much more internetty. Kenneth's meme is about Earth Month, and the topic is "five things I can do to help the environment". The rules of the meme involve doing a post on this topic, then inviting five other bloggers to do so. And so the meme grows. Apparently the people responsible for starting all this meme-ing are here.

This long introduction is merely an excuse to buy time, trying to decide whether I'll participate or not! I used to cheerfully tear up and throw away all chain letters I received as a child, thinking of my letterbox as the Aussie Black Hole of chain letters. And I didn't end up with a single spot of plague, pestilence or even mere bad luck as payback for my churlishness. However, as this meme is in a good cause I have decided to compromise and cooperate partially. I'll post something on the topic, and in so doing, publicise the meme, but I'm afraid I have no intention of inflicting a chain letter/meme on anyone else. Just cannot bring myself to do that, after a lifetime of cheerful, churlish chain letter burning!

And so begins my uncooperative contribution: "Five things I actually do to help the environment".

1. Make compost and garden as organically as I possibly can.
Pictured above is the last batch of compost I made, and another of the same size is about to make its way onto a friend's garden. I blogged on at length about my love of composting here. All I can say is that if you tried composting and found it all a bit tiresome and/or difficult, persist and try again. As for gardening organically, it's simple: use manures and compost as your fertilisers, and cut out the toxic sprays. There are organic sprays available, and they work if you acknowledge that they require more effort and persistence to make them work, compared with the toxic stuff, which is more like garden napalm.

2. Grow at least some of your own food.
Not only does home-grown food taste good, it feels good to grow it and eat it. I don't have enough space to grow all that much food, but I like to have a go at growing almost anything I feasibly can. Here's some of last year's crop of King Edward potatoes, and very yummy they were, too! In my small space I concentrate on growing herbs (which I use all the time in cooking), salad greens and leafy green vegies, none of which take up much space, but I'm always trying something more adventurous, too. Growing your own food has its share of successes and failures, and sometimes it's the little crop failures which remind this city boy about the farmer's precarious lot in life. I think the more people learn to empathise with farmers, the more they'll understand the environmental problems and difficulties that surround farming.

3. Share your garden with insects, and try to practise 'live and let live' as much as possible.
Sure, it's easy to share your potato crop with a pretty little ladybird like this one, but it's harder to share the space with a hungry caterpillar which is just trying to become a butterfly while it eats your crops, or a scary, hairy black spider which is just trying to feed its family while it's giving you a fright. Put away the insect sprays and let them have their little munch on your crops, I say. (However, I do admit that snails probably regard me as no better than Godzilla.)

4. Not only share your garden with local wildlife but also provide them with food and shelter where you can. Add your backyard to the growing chain of wildlife-friendly oases!

This wattlebird is a member of a family which has been resident in our front and back gardens for many years. They love the grevillea flowers which are available year round, but their favourite place is our winter-flowering gum tree (our street tree) which provides them, and an assortment of other honeyeaters, with nectar for five to six months every year. We also have set up two birdbaths in the backyard, and change the water frequently. By allowing insects to thrive in the backyard little insect-eaters such as Blue Wrens and Silvereyes are regular visitors here. Bulbuls have been building nests in our murrayas and olive trees for years now. Even though we're in the inner city we're visited by a remarkable range of native birds – spotted pardalotes, cockatoos, lorikeets, cuckoo shrikes and many more (including a lost egret one day) – and the reason for this I am sure is that more and more backyards are springing up just like ours, with wildlife-friendly people like Pam and me doing our little bit to add to the chain of wildlife-friendly oases within the urban desert.

5. Learn to cook, then do it often.
This is easy enough for me to say, as I've been cooking since I was 10 years old. I love it. But I do think learning to cook puts you in contact with the simple ingredients of food – real ingredients such as vegetables, fruits, grains, pulses and meats, not processed gloop or manufactured 'products' full of additives. Why is this good for the environment? Simple, it will change the way you think about food, and as food production is such a huge environmental issue, it will help you focus on this issue in a new way.
(However, I should add that 45 years ago I didn't start cooking because of environmental awareness! I was just a greedy little boy who loved eating, and I wanted to learn how to cook all the delicious things that mum made, so I could become independent and cook them for myself, when I wanted them. I think it was apple crumble that got me started.)

And so endeth my contribution to this Earth Hour meme. I must add that of the people I know who are keen greenies, very few have a decent garden or even a passable knowledge of their local wildlife. And so, my sixth – and free bonus amazing offer! – Earth Hour memo is to actually get out there and practise what you preach, rather than just preaching it.