Wow, has it been a long, strange several months! Things happened, like moving again. This time across the state, and into a much smaller townhouse. My big backyard has been replaced by a tiny patch of dirt that doesn’t seem fit to grow anything.

So as I waved my garden goodbye, I made plans to grow a new one. A greener, smaller one. OK, so I won’t be feeding my entire family on everything I’m growing (sorry Backyard Homestead), but I can at least make a mean salsa from the tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.

Since my actual plant pots are limited, and I’m trying not to buy any more, I went with what I had. Soda bottles. Yes, I know how bad soda is in so many ways. But at least I’m only polluting my body, since I can reuse the bottles for my herb garden.

This is just the beginning of it. As more bottles become available I’ll plant more. For these I cut them in half, poked holes in the bottom for drainage, and glued small screens to the top opening to keep the dirt in and allow drainage. I nailed them to my fence, and viola! Of course, you can make a cool rack for the bottles instead.

My next plan is to figure out carrots and onions. I can’t plant them in the ground, and I don’t want to stunt them with short containers. I could do one onion and maybe two carrots per bottle, but I’ll need a lot more bottles!

photo credit: Samuel Mann

What if everyone vowed to do just ten green things this year. Big or small, simple or hard, once or repeated. Just made a list of ten things and began checking them off. Even if it took all year, even if the list didn’t get finished, there would still be a lot of good done.

I keep thinking about the things that I’m doing, and the things that I want to do. I’ve given up store bought shampoo for the no-poo method, but I still buy soap from the store. What if I switched to buying handmade soap from someone locally? What if I learned to make it myself? I’m making my own bread, but there are still a lot of boxes of food in my shelves that I could be making at home. Sure I recycle, but what if I didn’t buy the stuff to begin with? It feels as if there’s always something more to do. And honestly, it’s that feeling that sometimes stops me in my tracks.

So ten. That’s a nice, round number. Give myself a year to finish the list, and an A for effort if I don’t get it all done. Would that prevent the paralyzing fear that there is too much that needs to be changed?

1. Stop buying soap in plastic packaging
2. Can and store homemade foods
3. Garden
4. Stop drinking soda in plastic bottles
5. Reduce our trash down to 1 bag per week
6. Have TV-free days each week
7. Cook from scratch more often
8. Hug a tree. Openly.
9. Use less paper/print off less things
10. Walk more often.

Honestly, the list doesn’t seem so hard. Sometimes, though, even the smallest change seems so hard in the face of how much more there is to do. I know, it sounds ridiculous. How could a person who gave up toilet paper find it hard to give up boxes of cake mix? I can’t explain it either.

So there is my list to work on for the year. It’s simple, and alone won’t mean much to the environment. But with others it becomes something larger than I’ll ever know. And I like that thought.

What are your ten green things for this year? Waht are you going to try to work on, no matter how small, to make a change?