Welcome!

For quite a while, I’ve been wanting to write about gardening, preserving, cooking, reducing energy use, frugality, and general sustainable living. That’s a lot of topics, I know, and I didn’t want to crowd out or overwhelm the sustainable business focus of my Sundrop Jewelry blog.

A recent train of small events lead me to read “Save Three Lives” by Robert Rodale, founder of the Rodale Institute and Organic Gardening Magazine. Although the book is nearly 20 years old and I’m sure some of it is out of date, a large amount, sadly, is not. I’ll write a separate post about the book, but it was the final straw, with a call to action that caused me to actually write to all three branches of government (the Dept of Justice is starting an series of public workshops looking into antitrust and monopoly issues concerning our agriculture conglomerates this spring).

The book also tipped me over the edge and convinced me that I really did want to blog about all these things – I sat down and in a half hour had a list of post ideas more than a page long. Since then, more keep popping into my head or being sparked by other bloggers’ posts coming across my google reader list. Some posts you can look forward to seeing here:

• a series of at least one good recipe for each food coming out of the garden
• how to build self-watering containers
• donating to food pantries (I’ve always wondered whether it’s better to donate money or loss leader items from the grocery store)
• an update on the 90% reduction posts I did 3 years ago

I also hope that having a blog will help/force me to actually keep records of my gardening so I have a better idea what to do/not do again in the future.