Learn an Herb: Lavender

Doing research for my learn-an-herb series has been really eye opening for me. Plants that I am familiar with and that I even grow in my yard have so many more uses than I ever knew. Take lavender. I have used it in the past for relaxation and to relieve anxiety and stress, but had no idea of all the other benefits it provides.
Lavender is an antiseptic, antibacterial, anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsive, and antidepressant. Internally, it can be taken to help with stress, anxiety, exhaustion, irritability, headache, migraines, insomnia, depression, cold, digestive problems, upset stomachs, nervousness and as a breath freshener.  Stress? Exhaustion? Insomnia? Headaches? This is starting to sound like a miracle drug for me!
Externally, lavender can be used to help heal cuts, scrapes, burns, bruises, stings/bites, rashes, muscle aches, arthritis, col and canker sores, blisters, athlete's foot, and can be rubbed on the temples to help relieve migraines.
So, how do you get this magical plant into your system to start its magic? You can take essential oil, but it is fairly harsh and can cause nausea in some folks. A better option is to make a quick tea by boiling leaves and flowers in water and drink with some honey) or try it in lavender lemonade (see recipe below). It can be put into a salve for external use and just smelling lavender essential oil or the fresh flowers can be a quick and easy mood brightener.
This herb is safe to be used in moderation during pregnancy (but beware- high doses can cause uterine contractions). Apparently, its safety while breastfeeding has not been tested, but again, in small doses (like a cup of tea or glass of lemonade) I believe this is a pretty safe herb.

 

Recipe for Lavender Lemonade (from The Vegan Table):

• 5 cups water
• 1.5 cups sugar or sweetener (or more or less to your taste)
• 1/4 cup chopped lavender leaves
• 1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice (about 4 lemons worth)
• Ice cubes

Bring 2.5 cups of water to a boil, add sugar and heat until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and add lavender. Let cool until at room temperature (at least 30 minutes). The longer you let it steep, the more flavorful it will be and the more healing properties it will have. Strain out lavender. Add lavender infusion to remaining 2.5 cups of water and add lemon juice. Stir and add more sugar if needed. Chill and serve over ice. You can add a fresh lavender sprig for presentation if you want to be fancy!

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A Long Overdue Trip

We live only an hour and a half from the coast, but haven't been since the holidays. We have been trying to make a day trip to the ocean for about 5 weeks now, but each time we have it planned, weather or another event gets in our way. Yesterday, we finally made it, and we were long overdue! It was warm, breezy, clear skies, and a perfect day. I think I could have stayed forever....

What did you do for the 4th? Pin It Now!

Reducing My Impact: A Year-Long Adventure. Month 3- Reducing Our Water Use

I can't believe it is already July! This month I will be continuing my year long adventure to reduce my impact on our planet. During July, I am going to be focusing on ways to permanently reduce my family's water use. This doesn't mean that we will never use water for pure, simple enjoyment (see photo above), but we will try to reduce our day to day usage as much as possible, and still enjoy an occasional splurge!
We are already fairly mindful of our water use.. I try to take short showers, turn off the faucet while brushing, let the yellow mellow, etc. However, I used to be really good at collecting water while showering or washing dishing and using it to flush the toilet or water plants, and, honestly, I got lazy and stopped. So this is my month to bring back these conservation measures, as well as to add a few new ones.
So here are my plans:

1. Put a plastic bottle in the toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used for each flush.
2. Put a bucket in the shower to collect water. I will use this water to either flush the toilet or to water non-edible plants outside.
3. Put a bucket in the sink to capture water while doing dishes. Use this water to flush the toilet or water non-edibles in the yard.
4. Convince Finn to take a shower instead of a bath. I am going to allow him 2 bath nights per week (as he loves playing in the tub, which has fondly been dubbed "party time" at our house). The other nights that he gets cleaned will be shower nights. I hope this works, as Finn HATES showers, but I am going to try and do some convincing. And bathing only 2 nights a week during the summer is not an option. We get dirty around here. Seriously dirty.
5. Disconnect our backyard downspout and turn it into a water holding tank for duck water. Having ducks uses quite a bit of water. They have a swimming "pond" (actually a horse trough), which has to get changed weekly. We put the water back on our yard, as it is full of nutrients, but it still uses  a lot to fill it back up with fresh water. The ducks also bathe and drink from their water bowl, which also gets filled daily. We likely won't capture much rain this summer, but if we can use the rain during the other seasons to fill the ducks water bowl, we can cut back on a few gallons each day.

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This Moment...

{this moment} - A Friday ritual.  A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama 

The kids and I made it out to Chicago last week (yes, I flew solo with both kids.... aside from Phoebe having blowouts on both flights, things went surprisingly well...). Anyways, Finn had such a great time with his cousin. They were so cute together, and he asked for us to go back to Chicago for days after we returned. Awwww.... Pin It Now!

The Scoop on Flushable Cat Litter

This month, I have been focused on ways to reduce the amount of trash my family produces. A big contributor to our trash is our cat poop and cat litter. I had heard about flushable cat litter, and figured that if we could flush our cat waste into the toilet, it would definitely reduce our landfill contribution. However, I was a bit skeptical about the safety of cat feces going into our water supply, so I decided to do some research and find out more about flushable cat litter.
So there is litter that is biodegradable and that can be flushed down toilets. The litter itself is not problematic, but the cat feces that are in the litter are. Cats can carry toxoplasmosis in their feces, which can be transmitted to other animals (this is why pregnant women are advised against changing litter boxes while pregnant). Anyways, wastewater treatment facilities can't treat this parasite, so it passes through the treatment plant and back into the water system. There is evidence linking toxoplasmosis (transmitted from cat feces flushed down the toilet) to sea otter deaths in California. Apparently, sea otters are fairly sensitive, and toxoplasmosis is entering the water system and killing them. How sad! So, the short answer here is no, it is not environmentally friendly to flush your cat poop.
But, sending it to the landfill where it will sit and not decompose is not exactly earth-friendly either. Several folks  talked about using biodegradable litter (like pine shavings, newspaper, etc.) and composting the litter and urine, but still bagging the feces and sending them to a landfill. Others felt that composting the biodegradable litter, poop and all, was fine as long as the final product was not used on food grown for human consumption. Others suggested getting a worm bin specifically for cat poop. Who is right? I still have no clue. However, I found a link to a book which supposedly answers these questions, Wake Up and Smell the Planet. I have it on hold at the local library and I will hopefully be an expert in pet wastes before the summer is over.
In the meantime, I think I will make the switch to a biodegradable litter (and hope my cats don't pee all over my house in the interim). I can compost the litter and landfill the poop until I have a better plan on what to do with it.
Additionally, I want to add that while researching this, I found LOTS of people asking and answering questions about how to best dispose of pet wastes, with lots of people discussing composting pet waste. Since we are currently composting our dog poop, I was happy to know that so many other folks are concerned about this, and happy to know that I am not a complete freak when it comes to these matters (although my husband would likely disagree). Pin It Now!

Strawberry Picking...

Portland's summer so far has been less than ideal for gardening, so strawberry season here is just getting going. And, from the looks of things, it won't last long either. We made it out yesterday morning to pick some, but the plants and berries were all pretty tiny. We still managed to pick 2 pounds before Finn and Phoebe had had their fill...

 Oh, and did I mention that it was REALLY muddy?

And this is what we made...

 Strawberry Rhubarb Pie:

I cheated and bought pre-made pie crusts for this, as it was a very last minute addition to our dinner plans. For the filling I just mixed chopped up strawberries and rhubarb with some cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. I poured into a pie shell, put a few pats of butter on top, put another pie shell on top, and baked for about an hour at 350 F. Serve with coconut bliss or ice creamish type treat of your choice! Pin It Now!

Reducing My Trash: An Update

For the month of June, our family has been working on reducing the amount of waste that we produce each week. I feel that we have made some progress, but our trash reduction has not been as dramatic as I had expected. I guess we still have a long way to go....
Here is what we have done so far:

• We have been diligent about only using a disposable diaper while Phoebe is sleeping at night, and not during any other times of the day. I thought about putting Finn back into cloth at night, instead of his pull-up, but the diaper we have don't fit him anymore and I don't think I want to invest in clothe diapers for a kiddo his size (he is 3 but wears 5T). We have also been diligent about using cloth wipes unless we are out and about.
• I made some cloth one-use hankies for us to blow our nose on (see above) instead of grabbing tissue paper. The system is still getting organized, and I realized that I need to make more hankies (I guess we blow our noses a lot), but I have seen a definite reduction in the amount of tissue paper in the bathroom trash can each week.
• We have been composting our dog poop. A little gross, yup, but so far so good. I carry it to the dog compost zone (we made a special compost pile just for this purpose only) each day and cover it with used straw from our duckhouse or yard waste. So far there has been zero smell and no grossness. I still need to do some research about flushable cat litter. Just haven't gotten around to that yet, but in my plans for the near future!
• I have also been mindful about composting as much food as possible. Now that I am eating very little dairy, this has actually been a lot easier because I can compost almost all of my food waste, even food that has been cooked. I have to head out to the compost pile with food waste just about every day, which has been a little annoying, but also makes me realize that we were throwing away a lot of food that could have been composted. Now we still really need to work on wasting less to begin with. It is hard with a three year old to not waste... sometimes he eats 2 servings and sometimes he won't touch a thing on his plate. Oh well. 
• My husband did a little research and found a local place that will take some recyclable plastics that our curbside pickup won't take (like the annoying plastic containers that strawberries and blueberries come in). So we have no set up a bin in the garage for these containers, and we will drop them off as-needed.

On the down side, we have had a few things break (like a full length mirror) that had to go in the trash, and cleaning out our garage produced some trash that had been hidden for awhile (oops). I feel like we are still producing more trash than we should be, but, we are taking steps to try and reduce that, and hopefully we will see it decrease more and more as time goes on.  

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