My new favourite method of transportation

This is my bike. I love this bike. I love it because it has a basket in the back I can put my purse in. I love it because nothing is quick release so I don't have to worry about wheels, the seat etc being stolen. I love it because my best buddy (@resultsjunkie) bought it for me for my birthday from a second hand bike shop.

And now I love it because for the last 2 weeks, this baby has been getting me to work and back. No more 1hr, 2 bus commute. Now I have a 45 min ride. 10km each way (yes, I'm slow but it only has 6 gears and my legs are laz-y!). Half of it along Ottawa's fabulous bike paths. So instead of listening to teenagers on the bus...

"you know, I like, really love the number 33"
"totally, that's like, one of my favourite numbers. Actually, that IS my favourite number!"

Now I get to see a Dad and daughter sitting on a bench reading books. And baby canada geese. And flowers.

I put this off for such a long time because I was scared of riding through downtown traffic. Even after mapping out a really great route, it still took me a year to take that first ride.

I can't believe I let my fear get in the way for as long as I did. Carbon free transportation, that is faster and more fun. Love it.

It's my little brother's b'day today

He's not so little any more. Happy birthday old man. :)

What's eating my raspberries?

I've been closely monitoring my raspberries this year because every year I get fairly major leaf damage. This year I am determined to beat whatever is eating them. I had assumed that the problem was spider mites. So I dutifully mulched and made sure they got lots of water (not hard since we've had a good amount of rain so far this spring).

But that hasn't seemed to have helped. I went out to check on them tonight and this is an example of what I found:

You can't quite tell from the picture but the damage is 'lace like'. For the most part there are no big chomps out of the leaves like caterpillar damage (which I'm used to - I had to squash countless caterpillars on my gooseberry bushes this weekend). I looked under a lot of the leaves and found some strange fly things that looked like baby mosquitoes. I also found one small brown beetle-like bug that the size of a large pin head.

Any suggestions on what it is or what I can do about it? It hasn't seemed to affect the plants much (they are spreading like crazy), but I think it is affecting my yield.

A volunteer!

Was digging over the main vegetable patch last night (was mixing in some compost to give the soil a boost), and almost dug up this little guy!

Never had a pea volunteer before.

I let him be and planted some broad beans next to him. First planting of the season. :-)

Next on the list of things to tackle - thinning the raspberries that are starting to take over.

Foraging in my backyard

If you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend wandering over to Unstuffed to read all about the wild foraging course she is attending.

In her first class this week, she learned about fiddleheads (among other things). Apparently you can tell the edible ones (the Ostrich ferns) from the others by the deep groove they have in the stems.

I have always wondered if the ferns I have in my backyard were edible. So I had a look and, yep, deep groove in the stems. Woot!

Unfortunately most of them were too far gone:

However I found this one hidden under the fence (some of them were too small to pick but some were perfect). And I found a few others that were just right in bundles of ones that were too far gone.

I found enough in fact to make a small snack. Here's the end result after boiling and tossing in butter and some chopped chives (also from the garden).

They were delicious!

Thanks Unstuffed. Looking forward to learning more. :)

New clothes!

I bought some clothes last weekend. This was very exciting because:

1. I hadn't intended to (don't you always find the best clothes when you aren't really looking?) and


2. Because I actually can't remember the last time I bought clothes. I bought those shoes last November but clothes? Dang, I think it's been at least a year and a half.

To be fair, I have recieved some second hand clothes as gifts during that time, but it's been a long time, since I went shopping, tried some stuff on and actually came home with clothes!

Look at the totally cute stuff I got:

I got these dresses:

The black and white one is for the weddings that I get to go to this summer (needs taking in a bit but otherwise looks great). The other one is just for fun.


Then I got these two tops:

Cute huh? The mauve coloured one is cuter on than it is on the hanger.

So I bet you are all wondering if I totally blew my consumer goods allowance right? (If I'm sticking to the Riot for Austerity, I should only be spending $104.16 a month on consumer goods).

Well the answer is not even close! I got all these gorgeous clothes for only $35. That's right. The total cost for all those (plus some super cute fabric and a long tunic) was only $35. Folks, the Salvation Army is where it is at! You can't believe the great stuff they have there!

Since we are talking about consumer goods, I thought it might be a good time to do a bit of a tally of where we are at. So here goes.

As of Feb. 21, we had spent $111.78. Since then we have spent:

1. Soap - $6
2. Toothpaste x2 - $12
3. Mascara - $30 (I lost all my makeup over the Christmas holidays in transit. Was hoping it would turn up but it hasn't. So I treated myself to some Dr. Hauschka mascara)
4. Dish soap and TP - $8 (Nature Clean dish soap in bulk and tp from Cascades wrapped in paper, no plastic. Both from Arbour Environmental Shoppe)
5. Clothes - $35
6. Rona - $71.18 (misc house stuff bought by hubby)

That comes to a grand total of: $162.18. But according to the Riot rules, I don't have to count the salvation army clothes, so that means the total is more like: $127.18

Add this to the total from last time (111.78) and that give a grand total of $238.96! That's for almost 4 months! Woot! So we are still hovering at 6% of the Canadian average. You'll notice we haven't bought our water filter yet. But we are still going to so that will affect the next numbers.

If you are in the Ottawa area, there are so many great thrift shops worth checking out.

Here is a short list:

• Salvation Army (can I say how impressed I am with the SA website - they are on Twitter, have a YouTube Channel, have a blog and are on Flickr)


• Saint Vincent de Paul


• Phase 2


• Value Village

What's your favourite thrift store?

Great Ottawa event tonight

Thomas Homer-Dixon and William Marsden will be talking about climate change, peak oil and how these two are defining our future. It's one of the great talks happening at the Ottawa Writers Fest. Someone please go and tell me about it - I'm sick and hubby is making me stay in bed (had to sneak out to write this!!). :-)



THE BIG IDEA: CARBON SHIFT
with Thomas Homer-Dixon and William Marsden

Tickets: $15 / $10 Student or Senior
Free for Festival Members and Carleton Students

The twin crises of climate change and peaking oil production are converging on us. If they are not to cook the planet and topple our civilization, we will need informed and decisive policies, clear-sighted innovation, and a lucid understanding of what is at stake. We depend on carbon energy to fuel our complex economies and societies, and at the same time this very carbon is fatally contaminating our atmosphere. We still have a chance to tackle two monumental challenges with one innovative solution: clean, low-carbon energy. Join editor Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down, and contributor William Marsden, author of Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care) for a conversation on their new book Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

Reduced consumption=savings

	We got our taxes done over the weekend (big thanks to my fab sister-in-law who gave us a hand). Since we rent out the apartment on the main floor, we get to include half of the shared expenses on our taxes. This includes among other things, water and heat.
Photo by ArtemFinland

Because I'm soooooo organized (ha!), I have a spreadsheet that I update once a year with the monthly and yearly totals for these expenses.

Hubby and I were both surprised and pleased to see that when compared with last year, we saved $728 on the cost of water and heat alone!

Total cost of natural gas in 2007 = $2,395
Total cost of water in 2007 = $748
Grand total for water and natural gas in 2007 = $3,143

Total cost of natural gas in 2008 = $2,022
Total cost of water in 2008 = $393
Grand total for water and natural gas in 2008 = $2,415

We are officially fridge-free

On Saturday the folks at The Great Refrigerator Roundup, took away our (estimated) 20 year old fridge to be recycled.

As it had been a year and a half since we last had that old clunker plugged in we thought it was pretty safe to send it off to be with the great refrigerator in the sky.

Now we are wondering what to do with this space. Especially since as you'll notice, part of the floor under the fridge is duct-taped down particle board. Classy.

We are toying with the idea of bringing the freezer upstairs. Would be slightly less efficient as our kitchen is not as cool as the basement, but man, would it ever be more convenient. We live on the second and third floor of an up and down duplex and so getting anything out of the freezer means: getting shoes on, going out the back door, down the stairs, through the garden, down some more stairs, unlocking the door to the basement, crouching down a bit (our basement is not at full height), and making my way over to the freezer being careful not to bang my head on any pipes/beams etc.. It's a bit of a pain in the butt. If we had the freezer upstairs I'd eat so much better. Now it's like, ooooh, I could make a smoothie with the raspberries, strawberries and blueberries I have in the freezer. Or, I could eat this cookie. Hmmmm, the cookie is right here....fruit is in the basement...cookie it is!

Thoughts? Anyone feel like helping me rationalize this? :)

Garbage check-in. Sortof.

Well it's no surprise but I've been a bit lazy about keeping track of our garbage. It's not that we are producing a lot, its that it's such a pain in the ass to weigh everything each week.

But I decided to do it this week because it's been 9 weeks (!) since we last took out our blue box (plastic and aluminum recycling). And while it is quite full, it isn't even that heavy - only 9lbs.

In order to get to 9 weeks, I started crushing everything that I put in the box - milk cartons, pop cans etc. It's amazing how much space that frees up. Imagine if everyone did that. Even without anyone changing their buying habits, I bet that alone would mean that the blue bin would only need to be collected once a month instead of once every two weeks. Think how much carbon would be saved from the garbage trucks being off the road.