Unstuffed: Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Wordless Wednesday

6 comments:

Tony R. said...: I LOVE the old hand tools! It's still crazy to me that they work better then the new stuff most of the time :)

Are the "ladders" in the garden for your beans?; June 16, 2010 at 9:03 AM
Amber said...: Hey Tony! Those are my Opa's tools. He gave them to me on my last visit. Many of them belonged to my great-great grandfather and are over hundred years old. The Moritz men were carpenters by trade. I'm thrilled to have them and definitely plan on putting everything to use!

I found the ladders on the curb biking home from the garden one night. On the 'free' sign they were described as book stands (I'm guessing to display books upright and flat.) Forget the books! I thought. They'll make great cucumber trellises.

I took them right away which meant they got a ride lying across my bike and I walked the rest of the way home. Thankfully I was already nearly there.

The cukes aren't big enough yet to see in the picture but they're up to the first rung.

We're using scavenged wood for our beans. The ADG found a wet and marshy area nearby where a lot of the tree saplings had died. They are about 8-10 feet tall and 2 to 3 inches around. They work perfectly and look great! I hope to get a pic of them once the beans start growing up.; June 16, 2010 at 10:14 AM
Amber said...: Actually, you can make out some of the bean trellises in the top right of the pic.; June 16, 2010 at 10:18 AM
wendyytb said...: WOW! Are you going to have your work cut out! There is much to look forward to!; June 16, 2010 at 11:47 AM
Anonymous said...: Those tools are fantastic - I always keep my eyes open for tools like that at thrift stores and flea markets. They just work so well, and I appreciate anything low-energy.

Also, the garden looks great!; June 16, 2010 at 12:27 PM
Amber said...: Hi Wendy. You know I'm learning that the simple life is a very full life! But one thing's for sure, I am never, ever bored. :)

Thanks Urbanadaptation.

I've got a thing for hand powered tools and kitchen equipment!

The garden is coming along, although some days I'm sure we're only growing weeds and bugs!; June 17, 2010 at 11:25 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali