Project Support Beauty in Nature: August 08

I have grand illusions about domesticity. In my head, I picture myself baking banana bread on my days off and getting the laundry folded and put away before the boys are sleeping and I have to quietly sneak around toys that are left on the floor.

In reality, that doesn't happen. Ever.

This summer, when posed with Lotus's PSBN challenge, I imagined the compost piles I would somehow find room for in my small yard. I imagined myself actually using the cloth grocery bags that are now, well, if I knew where they were I might actually use them.

But none of those things have happened. YET.

What I did do, however, was start a little garden. I figured it was a good way to A) teach the boys about caring for living things and B) grow some produce that was organic and yummy.

But if you know me AT ALL, you will know that I can kill the easiest to care for plant. I think its a case of over love.

We started off doing well enough. I had the boys water the plants regularly - we had two tomato plants, an acorn squash, a pumpkin and some strawberries. They would scoop water out of their little swimming pool and walk it back and forth to the plants. They loved it (and hey, we were reusing that water that would otherwise just get dumped out onto the grass).

But somehow life intervened. We went on vacations and went to a lot of festivals. In all honesty, I have no idea where this summer went.

Hubs and I went away for the weekend this past weekend without the kids for the first.time.ever. Walking into the house last night, I looked over a realized - some of those plants don't look so healthy. In fact, with the exception of the tomatoes (which we subsequently realized that Will is allergic to, dang it) there are no fruit/veggies growing at all. NONE. God, that's sad. I can't even grow a squash!

So - what's a girl to do? Well, obviously I'm don't have a green thumb (or any other appendage, apparently), so I won't go on feelin' bad about it. Instead, I'll focus on what I can change.

A few PSBN posts back, I talked about switching to more environmentally friendly disposable diapers. And they're great, but the closest store where I could find them was like 20 miles away, in an area of town I rarely get to. I figured that it was stoopid to drive that far to be more friendly to the environment (cuz of, uh, like emissions and stuff) and instead thought that with all this time I have at home now cuz of my four day work week I might be able to manage cloth diapers and not go insane. (Do you see those illusions resurfacing?)

In an attempt to keep my illusions in check, I purchased two Bum Genius one-size-fits-all cloth diapers. They came in the mail Saturday, so we'll give 'em a whirl and see how they work. If nothin' else, they'll be really cute on my baby's chubby hiney. I'll let you know how it goes!