Around Imbolc this year - again in the shower doing my morning devotional - I was pointed at a guilt and shame to which I had not previously devoted any attention. "What kind of pagan are you," something in me said, "who doesn't recycle or compost? "
I have composted in the past, keeping a worm bin healthy in my kitchen before I moved to this big city. When I set up a new worm bin here, it went fowl, and I backed away, fearing to try again because I didn't know what went wrong. When I told Robin about this, he said he was pretty sure he had killed it by adding a giant amount of food worms don't really like. Aha! I was thrilled and immediately inspired to begin again.
This past week, it was finally spring, and I wanted to be outside. So, with help from the first-floor tenant and the stepdaughter's godmother who happened to be visiting, I raked all the backyard leaves and all the felled chopped burdock and the long-dead Winter Solstice tree into one pile against the back fence. I planted trashpicked pallets all around this to keep the wind from undoing it. Pretty immediately, kids started chucking leftover fruits and veggies in there (and squirrels started plucking them out, sitting in the pallets, and eating them, adorably but not helpfully).
Seeing that periodically this past weekend folks have chucked vegetable matter over the porches, missing the compost pile, I set out a couple of buckets this morning, too. All we have to do now is seed the pile with worms, leave a little pitchfork out so we can hide the fruit from the squirrels, and plant sunflowers all around it. We are in the compost business.
Recycling was another matter. I wasn't sure why I had never recycled. It is mandatory in our state; I knew enough to never buy clear trash bags. Maybe it had struck me as not exactly the sort of change that really saves the humans. Or maybe it felt impossible to memorize a new fact about every single object - whether it was recyclable. But I came out of that shower determined to change something, even if all I could do, to start, was to think about each item I tossed and why I wasn't recycling it.
The first attempt to do this thinking was fruitful. I was home just before dinner from some educational outing I'd dragged the boys to, and Robin was home early with the stepdaughters in tow, and we needed to get dinner on NOW, actually, kind of earlier than now, if we had any hope of getting the children into bed at a decent hour. I furiously rushed to clear off the countertops that had been left a mess from breakfast and lunches hastily prepared between lessons and before outing. Chucking it all in the trash was so much faster than stopping to find recyclable symbols on the bottom of each container. Robin came up offering to help and found me standing, chagrined, still in the middle of my storm. "I have figured a thing out," I told him. Then, as the stormy winds of evenings at home with the children pulled our ships in different directions, I said, "About recycling... more after bedtime..." and I continued my indiscreet clearing of objects from my kitchen. But now I had the key, and in the next few weeks, these past few weeks, I have been able to make some changes. I removed all the pots and pans we never use, cleared out some pre-gluten-free food items, and had space to put the recycling bin indoors under a produce-and-bread rack, where it gaped just begging to be filled up by a hasty homemaker chucking things out of her way. Robin promised to pull out anything that shouldn't have gone in there, reducing my thinking-time, and bingo, we were in business. Recycling became natural.
I'm happy to say that as of this morning the people of the Yellow Brick House are totally set up to recycle and compost. It took from Imbolc to Beltane, but we got in the groove. I am going to set up a little altar to the nature spirits of our backyard and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt. Recycling and composting by themselves are a slow-going program and won't save the humans, but proper disposal of waste is one of those lynchpins of ecologically-sane routine that makes it possible for a little tribe to keep on working together with their habitat to stay alive. Knowing that my family and I are not too overwhelmed or unobservant to determine and establish a good waste routine makes me feel hopeful for my descendents.
I have composted in the past, keeping a worm bin healthy in my kitchen before I moved to this big city. When I set up a new worm bin here, it went fowl, and I backed away, fearing to try again because I didn't know what went wrong. When I told Robin about this, he said he was pretty sure he had killed it by adding a giant amount of food worms don't really like. Aha! I was thrilled and immediately inspired to begin again.
This past week, it was finally spring, and I wanted to be outside. So, with help from the first-floor tenant and the stepdaughter's godmother who happened to be visiting, I raked all the backyard leaves and all the felled chopped burdock and the long-dead Winter Solstice tree into one pile against the back fence. I planted trashpicked pallets all around this to keep the wind from undoing it. Pretty immediately, kids started chucking leftover fruits and veggies in there (and squirrels started plucking them out, sitting in the pallets, and eating them, adorably but not helpfully).
Seeing that periodically this past weekend folks have chucked vegetable matter over the porches, missing the compost pile, I set out a couple of buckets this morning, too. All we have to do now is seed the pile with worms, leave a little pitchfork out so we can hide the fruit from the squirrels, and plant sunflowers all around it. We are in the compost business.
Recycling was another matter. I wasn't sure why I had never recycled. It is mandatory in our state; I knew enough to never buy clear trash bags. Maybe it had struck me as not exactly the sort of change that really saves the humans. Or maybe it felt impossible to memorize a new fact about every single object - whether it was recyclable. But I came out of that shower determined to change something, even if all I could do, to start, was to think about each item I tossed and why I wasn't recycling it.
The first attempt to do this thinking was fruitful. I was home just before dinner from some educational outing I'd dragged the boys to, and Robin was home early with the stepdaughters in tow, and we needed to get dinner on NOW, actually, kind of earlier than now, if we had any hope of getting the children into bed at a decent hour. I furiously rushed to clear off the countertops that had been left a mess from breakfast and lunches hastily prepared between lessons and before outing. Chucking it all in the trash was so much faster than stopping to find recyclable symbols on the bottom of each container. Robin came up offering to help and found me standing, chagrined, still in the middle of my storm. "I have figured a thing out," I told him. Then, as the stormy winds of evenings at home with the children pulled our ships in different directions, I said, "About recycling... more after bedtime..." and I continued my indiscreet clearing of objects from my kitchen. But now I had the key, and in the next few weeks, these past few weeks, I have been able to make some changes. I removed all the pots and pans we never use, cleared out some pre-gluten-free food items, and had space to put the recycling bin indoors under a produce-and-bread rack, where it gaped just begging to be filled up by a hasty homemaker chucking things out of her way. Robin promised to pull out anything that shouldn't have gone in there, reducing my thinking-time, and bingo, we were in business. Recycling became natural.
I'm happy to say that as of this morning the people of the Yellow Brick House are totally set up to recycle and compost. It took from Imbolc to Beltane, but we got in the groove. I am going to set up a little altar to the nature spirits of our backyard and not feel the slightest twinge of guilt. Recycling and composting by themselves are a slow-going program and won't save the humans, but proper disposal of waste is one of those lynchpins of ecologically-sane routine that makes it possible for a little tribe to keep on working together with their habitat to stay alive. Knowing that my family and I are not too overwhelmed or unobservant to determine and establish a good waste routine makes me feel hopeful for my descendents.