My little city farm

  • family,  green,  My little city farm,  plastic,  recycling,  sustainable living,  The Red House

    Trash and the Single Female

    I’m not a single female. Happily married, see? (waggles ring finger.) But I’m the only female in this house. So why am I head-down in the trash can? How did taking out the garbage become a gendered job? Should I feel like I’m doing the gentlemen (Mr Husband and The Boy) a big fat favor when I’m taking out the trash? Should I get annoyed when it’s still sitting here in the kitchen? Who died and made me the Boss of Everything? Uh. No one. Of course, I wouldn’t be alone in thinking that taking out the trash is the man’s job. Check out these marriage experts, and this one,…

  • food,  frugal,  garden,  green,  My little city farm,  plastic,  sustainable living,  work,  writing

    Modern Muse = Green Scene

    We (Modern Muse) went live this week on Alameda Patch, a local online “newspaper” that is part of the much larger AOL-Huffington Post media family. Doesn’t family sound so cozy? It’s a business — what can I say? — to which I contribute mostly voluntarily, and occasionally on a paying basis. Mostly I just wanted to let ya know that I’m cross-posting and you’ll see the same posts on Alameda Patch as Green Scene, although I will also post on non-green stuff here as well. Clear as mud? Yeah! In the meantime, today I’m doing about 6 things at once. Some guys from the rental company came to fix the…

  • gratitude,  green,  House,  My little city farm,  My World and Welcome to It

    no go

    Following up to the other day’s post about the suckhole that we hoped would be ours — poo. We didn’t get the house after all. As these things happen, just as we were getting our offer ready, someone else put in a bid (this was after we’d been assured that no one else on the planet, nay, the very universe was interested…). Their bid was lower than ours was going to be — but it was accepted. So clearly, the Big Kahuna has something else in mind for us. I can’t say I’m amused by the whole roller coaster of the real estate market, with its last-minute nasty surprises. But what…

  • Catching Up,  Challenge Update,  House,  My little city farm,  sustainable living

    what’s new, pussycat?

    Hi. It’s me. Been busy. Just wanted to poke my head in the back door and share what we’ve been doing. In a word, LOTS. We are days away from making the offer on the pot house — the gutted, in-foreclosure dump in the West County (Sonoma) that was once a pot-growing house. We’ve been taking measurements, poking through floors and woodwork, calling the county, pacing off boundary lines, scraping together our cash (since it’s a cash-only deal), talking to neighbors, and thinking, thinking, thinking if we can really do it. We think we can. We’ve been talking with family and friends who have the know-how. My dad has a barn…

  • chickens,  food,  frugal,  garden,  green,  My little city farm,  preservationista,  sustainable living

    keeping track

    This is a year of keeping records on what we’re growing, how much we’ve produced, where we’re saving and how we’re getting out of debt. I’ve been doing all these things for a while but now I’m actually tracking them. And you, Dear Reader, will get to follow along as I pinch pennies, pick up grains of rice and glean fallen apples. Doesn’t that sound enticing? Well — trust me. I’m excited about it.    I hate to call them resolutions, although I’ve resolved to live this way. These are more like over-all goals and ways of being. Being rather than doing. A context rather than a rule. So here are…