I had a late start... after all, I got in last night at nearly midnight and then Gill and I stayed up chatting til after 2am and then we didn't get to sleep until after 3. So I woke and dozed and slept til about 11.
I did a big wash-up after breakfast.
And a late lunch, listening to Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4, but got outside after this. My main job today was to get up into the James Grieve apple tree and remove all the unwanted honeysuckle. I found a honeysuckle 'volunteer' a few years ago and thought it would be a good idea to replant it next to the apple tree. Little did I know how well it would do, and it had climbed right to the top and started to get too much for the tree, and was shading it so much that last year, the amount of apples was quite reduced. So a couple of weeks ago I cut the main stem of the honeysuckle and today I put my ladders up and cut out all the now dead winding vine, pulling it out and feeding it through the shredder. This was a messy job... I got completely covered in bits of lichen and dead honeysuckle leaves.
I also sorted out the cans and bottles from last night and flattened the cans... with a little bit of help from the energetic feet of a pre-teen. Gill took our younger one for a jolly in the park with a couple of his friends.
Tea was a burger thing made from the tea Gill made last night, a rice and bean creation... I think she mixed it with breadcrumbs, and used a hommous pot as a mould, and fried it. Had it in a bread roll, with salad. Had this watching Countryfile.
Later I had an intense discussion on facebook about flying... all triggered off by the Icelandic volcano's ash cloud stopping flights in the UK and most of Europe. Lots of people are delighted about this... comments about airline companies going bust and the like, and lots of comments about the peace and quiet and the clear skies, but some other people don't understand this point of view and I've challenged their view that they have a 'right to fly'. My opinion is that as flying is the single biggest contributor to climate change that any individual can decide to do, and that climate change is already killing people and will certainly kill vast numbers in the future, that flying is directly connected with their deaths. This view doesn't go down too well with some of the frequent fliers who have been inconvenienced by the volcano.
And then I found this NewScientist article by my favourite York author. It maybe that we have to get used to more disruption. Not that I mind that much....
Showing posts with label flying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flying. Show all posts
Our wedding anniversary... 9 years married, 15 years since our first kiss... aaahhhhh xxx
I took out little 'un to school and came back and spent some time with Gill, but then went into the garden to put some mature compost into sacks for our friend Alison who's making raised beds. Whilst doing this, I was thinking of something which I did yesterday which led me to feel quite upset and angry.
I had recieved an email from The Carbon Account reminding me to input my gas and electricity meter readings, so my graph of carbon emissions could be updated. I do this at the beginning of every month, and the website software calculates/estimates my annual carbon footprint. I really like this way of presenting the information, as I can see the different levels of carbon emissions from different activities over time. For instance, in August, as we were away for a week, our household emissions visibly dipped very slightly. So, yesterday, I read the meters and put in the new figures, and I decided to do something I had vowed to do back in September when I was expecting a visitor from America. I do not fly, for reasons of high carbon emissions being incompatible with my low carbon lifestyle. When my friend flew over last year to see me and other friends in the UK, I was a bit upset about it as I was contributing to the problem by agreeing to see this friend, and if I hadn't of agreed to spend some time with her, she might not have travelled. So when she indicated she'd like to come and see me again this autumn, I was not that happy and tried to put her off. However, she was intent on visiting and quite pushy and forceful, and I'm not the sort of person who tries to prevent people doing what they want to do. So she flew over and I agreed to spend some time with her. I also said that I would take moral responsibility for one of her flights, carbon-wise. So yesterday, I inputted a single journey from Manchester to Atlanta into my Carbon Account figures and was ASTONISHED to see how much carbon was emitted! My annual electricity emissions are about 250kg and annual gas emissions are just over 60kg... but the one way flight emitted a whopping 1947kg, making 86% of my yearly emissions. I was angry and upset. Not only has this wrecked my lovely graph (which you can see by going onto the site, clicking on 'people' and forwarding to the 'J' section and clicking on the pic of me and Caroline Lucas... you can see how much the spike of aircraft emissions dwarfs my household footprint by clicking on the small-print which says, 'Your emissions (including flights- click here to exclude them)'.
Interestingly, perhaps fortuitously, the visit dd not go well and I won't be seeing the American lady again. This is not due primarily to the fact that to see each other she has to fly, it's because we didn't get on. But the flights thing is an issue and I look forward to next November when that emissions spike disappears from my graph..... It will take longer for those carbon dioxide molecules to go from the atmosphere though, and I apologise to anyone who cares about this planet for re-igniting that friendship (we met as teenagers) and being part cause of those emissions (actually 1947 kg times four, nearly 8 tonnes). Dreadful! I won't even begin to think about my parents who have decided to visit New Zealand. Flying completely wrecks any good we do by recycling or using the bus rather than the car. If you fly, you cannot call yourself 'green', as if you do you are a complete hypocrite, and this is how I feel about myself for agreeing to see this friend. I'll try to put the whole sorry episode behind me.
Barry came to deliver the press and crusher, looked down the garden and drove away with the compost for Alison.
I continued to work in the garden in the drizzle... lovely!
Gill went to town on the bus to get shoes and came back with boots.
I went to school at 3 to help with Green Thumbs. I took a small group and we prepared a mushroom kit in a box.. a layer of straw with mycelium running through it, and a casing layer on top. We then had a good chat about decomposition, and all the types of organism which help... fungi, bacteria, slugs, worms, woodlice... my fave subject!
Home to a happy household, children voluntarily doing homework (a first for everything!) and all peaceful! Totally wow!
I made tea on the woodstove... slices of crook-neck squash, grown in the conservatory, and sweet potato from Country Fresh, and chestnuts from Poppleton Road.. all this along with my son's salad created at school today, yum!
A happy evening too, spent quite a bit of time on the phone with a helpful caller from Tiscali, trying to help me sort out a problem I'm having with emails bouncing back from certain email addresses, many thanks to Anup from Maharashtra who was very good to talk to, professional, and he got the problem more or less sorted (ie the problem is not with Tiscali, it's with, probably, The Phone Co-op... so will contact them next!)
But also had a good game of Scrabble with Gill. I won, just.
I took out little 'un to school and came back and spent some time with Gill, but then went into the garden to put some mature compost into sacks for our friend Alison who's making raised beds. Whilst doing this, I was thinking of something which I did yesterday which led me to feel quite upset and angry.
I had recieved an email from The Carbon Account reminding me to input my gas and electricity meter readings, so my graph of carbon emissions could be updated. I do this at the beginning of every month, and the website software calculates/estimates my annual carbon footprint. I really like this way of presenting the information, as I can see the different levels of carbon emissions from different activities over time. For instance, in August, as we were away for a week, our household emissions visibly dipped very slightly. So, yesterday, I read the meters and put in the new figures, and I decided to do something I had vowed to do back in September when I was expecting a visitor from America. I do not fly, for reasons of high carbon emissions being incompatible with my low carbon lifestyle. When my friend flew over last year to see me and other friends in the UK, I was a bit upset about it as I was contributing to the problem by agreeing to see this friend, and if I hadn't of agreed to spend some time with her, she might not have travelled. So when she indicated she'd like to come and see me again this autumn, I was not that happy and tried to put her off. However, she was intent on visiting and quite pushy and forceful, and I'm not the sort of person who tries to prevent people doing what they want to do. So she flew over and I agreed to spend some time with her. I also said that I would take moral responsibility for one of her flights, carbon-wise. So yesterday, I inputted a single journey from Manchester to Atlanta into my Carbon Account figures and was ASTONISHED to see how much carbon was emitted! My annual electricity emissions are about 250kg and annual gas emissions are just over 60kg... but the one way flight emitted a whopping 1947kg, making 86% of my yearly emissions. I was angry and upset. Not only has this wrecked my lovely graph (which you can see by going onto the site, clicking on 'people' and forwarding to the 'J' section and clicking on the pic of me and Caroline Lucas... you can see how much the spike of aircraft emissions dwarfs my household footprint by clicking on the small-print which says, 'Your emissions (including flights- click here to exclude them)'.
Interestingly, perhaps fortuitously, the visit dd not go well and I won't be seeing the American lady again. This is not due primarily to the fact that to see each other she has to fly, it's because we didn't get on. But the flights thing is an issue and I look forward to next November when that emissions spike disappears from my graph..... It will take longer for those carbon dioxide molecules to go from the atmosphere though, and I apologise to anyone who cares about this planet for re-igniting that friendship (we met as teenagers) and being part cause of those emissions (actually 1947 kg times four, nearly 8 tonnes). Dreadful! I won't even begin to think about my parents who have decided to visit New Zealand. Flying completely wrecks any good we do by recycling or using the bus rather than the car. If you fly, you cannot call yourself 'green', as if you do you are a complete hypocrite, and this is how I feel about myself for agreeing to see this friend. I'll try to put the whole sorry episode behind me.
Barry came to deliver the press and crusher, looked down the garden and drove away with the compost for Alison.
I continued to work in the garden in the drizzle... lovely!
Gill went to town on the bus to get shoes and came back with boots.
I went to school at 3 to help with Green Thumbs. I took a small group and we prepared a mushroom kit in a box.. a layer of straw with mycelium running through it, and a casing layer on top. We then had a good chat about decomposition, and all the types of organism which help... fungi, bacteria, slugs, worms, woodlice... my fave subject!
Home to a happy household, children voluntarily doing homework (a first for everything!) and all peaceful! Totally wow!
I made tea on the woodstove... slices of crook-neck squash, grown in the conservatory, and sweet potato from Country Fresh, and chestnuts from Poppleton Road.. all this along with my son's salad created at school today, yum!
A happy evening too, spent quite a bit of time on the phone with a helpful caller from Tiscali, trying to help me sort out a problem I'm having with emails bouncing back from certain email addresses, many thanks to Anup from Maharashtra who was very good to talk to, professional, and he got the problem more or less sorted (ie the problem is not with Tiscali, it's with, probably, The Phone Co-op... so will contact them next!)
But also had a good game of Scrabble with Gill. I won, just.
