6 posts tagged “resolutions”
Shockingly easily, I have found out. Over the passed week, I have been greeted, almost daily, with new little shoots pushing their way out of my garden plot. I haven't blogged about it yet, as I am superstitious, and didn't want to jinx it, but check these veggies out:
But as I suspected, some of the salad greens were a little too tempting for the local critters to resist, so I am going to have to find a way to protect these little guys....
One of my new year's resolutions was to turn an overgrown flowerbed into a vegetable garden, so this past weekend I tore everything out (as best as I could, there is still a stump I couldn't get rid of) and planted some seeds and seedlings. Here are my before and after shots:
The garden had an old catoneaster bush, and some lemon mint and garlic chives that I replanted along the edge (since both act as pest repellents). The far right-hand side was completely overgrown, and had been for years, since the rock wall had completely disappeared, and I had to dig it out from under the soil, and then rebuild it.
I think the former owners were also dumping their potted annuals in here, as there was a lot of potting mix, and some crysantemums who had rooted themselves, but which I pulled out anyway.
Part of my motivation came from buying my very cool Toronto Gardening Journal, which had a lot of helpful information, and dates when certain things should be done for our Zone 6 conditions. The journal also has plan pages, so I could design my garden plans while it was still too cold to get the garden established:
So, I've planted heirloom varieties of the following: Mammoth Sugar Snap Peas; Baking Pumpkins; Roma Tomatoes, Jaunes Flamees Tomatoes; mixed bush beans; lettuce and mesclun mix. I also planted some scarlet runners. I did buy some english lavender and lettuce (green leaf, red leaf, salad mix) that were already sprouted, since I was going a bit nuts waiting to see something grow. Next year, I'm going to get as many sprouts going early as I can, unless the direct cultivation of the seeds turns out to work just fine. So far, I've fertilized with an organic mix called Carbonitite that I got from Urban Harvest, and organic worm castings. This is my first veggie garden, so I really do not know what the soil is like, and what supplements it needs, but I'm looking at this as a learning year. I'm a little concerned about what sort of damage the wildlife around our place will do (squirrels, rabbits and raccoons) but as yet, I haven't taken any steps to protect the garden. I might as well put a Salad Bar sign up!
So, here is my update on my 3 new year's resolutions:
1. Making my house more environmentally friendly: We had the Greensaver home audit earlier this month, and I just received the Energy Efficiency Evaluation Report. It says that, on the EnerGuide scale, our house rated a 41. So what does that mean? Well, the lower the score, the less efficient your house is. In Ontario, the average rating for houses of the same age as our house is 57! And the highest rating achieved by the most energy-efficient house in this category was 83, so we have a long ways to go to make our house energy efficient.
According to the report, however, there is only so much we can do. Even if we implement all the recommendations, we will likely only decrease our energy consumption by 15%, bringing our rating up to 50 points. This basically answered my question as to whether it is possible to make old houses as energy efficient as new "green-designed" homes. I have a bias against getting rid of the old and replacing it with something new, even if that new thing is considered "greener", because you are still creating waste, but it seems that in the case of our house, it will always remain somewhat energy inefficient.
The good news is that, by bringing our rating up to 50 points, it is estimated that we would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 2.1 tonnes per year, so it is still a very worthwhile endeavour.
The report has recommended that we undertake the following retrofits to decrease energy loss:
- increase the insulation values in our attic, walls, basement and crawlspaces
- air seal everywhere in our house, improving air tightness by 11%. At the moment, it is estimated that our house leaks so much air that it completely re-circulates air from outside to inside seven times an hour! While this means we have really fresh air inside, it also means that we are, well, heating the neighbourhood. We will need to pay special attention to electrical outlets and fixtures, wherever wires and cables pass through the walls, baseboards and trimming, window and door frames, the unused fireplace and chimney, and the attic hatch
I had also discussed with the evaluator the fact that our house is so unevenly heated. The report suggests the following:
- tape (or re-tape) ductwork joints to improve the circulation of forces air heat
- plain up the bottoms of doors to improve air circulation, and leave more doors open in the house (I tend to close doors to limit drafts, but it turns out that I am just created cold pockets that suck the heat out of the warmer spaces)
- cover up the few vents that are pumping out all the hot air, so that some of it gets to other rooms
So now it is just up to my husband and I to decide whether we are going to do these things ourselves, or whether we will have some professionals come in and help us. Knowing us as well as I do, I think it will be the latter. I think I will be comfortable doing things like taping duct joints (I mean that's what duct tape is for, right?) and things like gaskets for outlets and some caulking, but when it comes to air sealing and insulation in the attic, we'll likely hire someone.
2. My second resolution was to cut down on my consumption of media that exists simply to delight in the suffering of others. I am proud to say I made it to today without reading Perez Hilton all month, and I've even been able to skip Pink is the New Blog, which isn't as negative as PH, but it can still be quite mean. Instead, I've been spending most of my internet time wasting on Ravelry, which is a much more friendly and positive space.
edit: A friend of mine told me that, after hearing my resolutions, he decided to also stop ready gossip websites, and he said his brain is less cluttered now, and he feels much less distracted as well......
3. My third resolution is to start a garden in our backyard, and while I can't really get started on that at the moment (given the foot of snow we just received) I will be attending the local Seedy Saturday event in a few weeks, and going to a workshop on how to establish your own organic garden, so that should be a good start.
So far, so good. I hope everyone is surviving the winter weather as well as is possible. Today ReRe's little school was closed, so we've been hanging out drinking too much tea and watching too much Elmo, and staying surprisingly warm in our drafty little house.
In some prophetic twist, the day after I stated my new year's resolutions, I read in the local Mississauga newspaper about an organization who does home energy audits. Greensaver is a Toronto-based, non-profit company who will come to your house and conduct a review or audit (the latter being much more extensive, if you are planning major work) of where your home is losing energy, and give you suggestions on how to deal with the problems through home repairs or renovations. They also provide retrofit services such as insulating and air sealing services. I made an appointment right away, and this morning the energy advisor came with a clip board and a very powerful fan. We walked through the house from bottom to top, feeling where there were definite cold spots and heat loss points, and checking our "Air Leak Monitors" (i.e. cobwebs) to see where we had visibly significant air flow. She pointed out the major areas where she could already see problems: inadequate insulation in the attic; degraded caulking around windows and baseboards; a nice gapping hole in one duct joint very close to the furnace, where a steady breeze of warm air was blowing out. Then she sealed the front door and turned on her fan, to suck the air out of the house, thereby increasing the rate of air flow into the house through every crack and cranny, and demonstrate where the cold air was seeping in. Here is a look at the fan contraption:
Not sure what my neighbours thought, but they are friendly enough that if they were bothered by this, they will ask. So anyway, the energy advisor cranked up the fan, and within a couple minutes, I could already feel a breeze blowing through the house, especially from upstairs.
We went up to check out where the major air flow spots were, and we could feel a breeze as strong as a hairdryer, but freezing cold, blowing out from under the door to the closet where the attic door is. We then ran our hands along the molding around the windows, and it was shocking how strong the airflow was. Even out of electrical sockets and light switches, I could feel a distinct air flow, like those surprised little faces on the outlets were puffing up their cheeks and blowing into my hand. Even around the toilet paper holder in our powder room, which is on the exterior wall and has lost some of its grout, you could feel a shot of cold air blowing in. When we went downstairs, one of the strongest breezes we felt was blowing out of the old fireplace ash duct, which was only being covered up with a metal plate and wire. All in all it was very surprising to be able to feel just how many places in our home cold air was able to get inside.
We will still have to wait a few weeks before we get the written report, but the major suggestions were to improve the insulations in the attics, caulk around every point where air may be getting in, and put gaskets in all the light switches and electrical outlets. The advisor emphasized that it won't be enough to get just the big leaks, as once they are dealt with, the other points will have greater pressure on them, and will leak at higher volumes. One surprising piece of advice she gave me was to leave our interior doors open and increase airflow by increasing the clearance at the bottoms of these doors. I had been keeping the interior doors closed on the coldest rooms (especially the laundry room and downstairs bathroom) as I thought this was conserving heat, but she said that the air flow continues unabated, and this just makes the furnace run inefficiently. I am sure there is a more technical explanation, since I still have my doubts, but I will try leaving doors open, except when it is a safety issue for my son.
Basically, all the things she suggested were things we can do ourselves, save for installing the new door on the attic, since some carpentry will be involved, and we don't have the skill or equipment required, and neither my husband or I are looking to acquire these. The one area where she was not able to give me advice, and she was very upfront about this, was improving heat circulation in our house, as the upstairs is always significantly warmer than the downstairs, and this would need an assessment by a home heating professional. This assessment also confirmed what we have learned so far, that given our home's age (built mid-50's), any renovation will need to be a significant undertaking, including the replacement of air heating/cooling and circulation systems, the water heating system, and possibly the entire electrical system, although the electrical was greatly upgraded by the previous owners. I'm just glad we are so happy with our house the way it is, that we don't feel a need to undertake this at the present time.
So what did this cost? Unfortunately, this service is not provided free-of-charge, unless you have a household income below a certain threshold, so this assessment cost us $340+tax. We are supposed to get $150 back from the government, but the rest is out of pocket. Hopefully this will be off-set by the savings in heating and cooling our home.
Once we get the full written assessment, the next task will be to decide what we are going to do ourselves, and what we will have professionals help us with. Since we don't use the fireplace, we're have some chimney folks in to seal it off. We also may have Greensaver back to seal up the attic and put in the proper insulation, but I think I can handle the gaskets and caulking myself. How hard can it be?
Happy New Year everyone!! I hope you had a nice time last night, whether it was tucked in at home or at a club wearing out your dancing shoes. Now that the revelry has past, it is time for resolutions. Last night, as we counted down to midnight, I felt this rise of emotion and a lump in my throat, and a thankfullness for the happiness I have found with my little family in our little house, with family, friends, and the little joys of life. And two words came to mind: simple abundance. So here are my three major resolutions for 2008 that I hope will result in this being the year of even greater abundance in the simple pleasures and joys of life:
1. I am going to try to reduce our footprint on the earth, and do the following things to make my home more environmentally friendly: get an energy audit, seal up the drafts and heat leaking spots, and see what we can do to get this house more evenly and efficiently heated thru this cold Ontario winter; and convince my husband that switching to green energy is not as expensive as we might thing (nope, no Bullfrogs under my Christmas tree).
2. I am going to greatly decrease the level of schadefreude in my life. Of course there is an entire sector of the media that exists simply for the rest of us to gawk at, but I am going to do my best to turn away. I feel like if we all turned away from this negativity, just a little bit more, the monster that feeds on the suffering of others might start to die, and we can live with more empathy and kindness towards others.
3. Now here comes the one that will take the most work: I am going to try to establish a vegetable garden in my back yard. I have greatly admired Ginbaby's accounts of her garden's bounty, and the joy and pleasure her family takes in planting, growing, harvesting and eating their own food. There is even a Grow Yer Own group on Vox, and I'll see what kind of helpful hints I can pick up there. With all this inspiration, and some planning and prayers, I'm sure I can produce something in our backyard.
Alright, now I just have to hold myself to it!!
Ya, nice title. Sounds like I'm writing a briefing note. Anyway, I've had a habit in the past of writing a letter to myself at the end of each year, summarizing what I've accomplished the year before, and what I'd like to accomplish the next year. I've found this has been better than just writing resolutions, since it has given me some perspective that I don't just have a list of things to work on, but that I may have actually gotten something done in the meantime. And it's not hard to recount this past year - I've got a smiling bouncing baby, who is rapidly turning into a little boy, to show for it. The dice we threw with this move to Toronto has come up sevens - my husband got exactly the job he was looking for, so we can finally settle down. We've finally been able to buy a house, which will get us out of highrises forever (inshallah). On the other hand, my career has really been put on hold, but I'll blog about that another day. As any new (or veteran) mom will tell you, motherhood exposes highs and depths you never knew you could find in yourself - from truly believing that you have indeed lost your mind and will never recover it, to discovering a purity of love that brings tears to your eyes. That is what this year has mostly been about for me. Who needs mental stability when you have that shining little face smiling at you?
So, onto the new year's resolutions. I'm guessing that this will be the QotD tomorrow, but I've got time to write, so here goes:
1. Raise a son who is healthy and happy. I'm going to try to do this by setting a good example. This will start with eating my vegetables. Now that he is eating peas, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots and green beans on a regular basis, I think I better start doing the same. I also need to keep the exercise up, and show him that it is part of every day. And on the happiness side, at the moment he seems happy to just have something to chew on, and this is something we can accomodate.
2. Recognise the kindnesses of my husband. I don't know if there is something deep seated that makes me assume his actions are not going to start with kindness, but there have been far too many times when I've assumed he has acted in his own interest, when in fact he's done something nice for me and he gets sarcasm in return. Remind me to blog about the Christmas potatoes. This has to stop.
3. Do what I can to recoup some of the collateral damage of motherhood. I have a goal of losing the rest of my pregnancy weight by my birthday. I have a hard time spending money on new clothes; losing weight is cheaper. Howevern, I've spent far too much time in stretch-pant-pergatory - the weight has to go. I also resolve to restart my career outside of raising my son, but this is a little daunting to think about at the moment. I'll think about it in the new year.
Alright, that's good for now. I want to wish everyone a happy, peaceful and joyous 2007!
