Zeroscaping the Back Yard

When we moved into our new house, we knew we were going to have to deal with the inhospitable concrete ocean out back. There was a beautiful deck, and beyond that, a swath of poorly laid concrete. Low water, yes, high style, no. Our goal is to retain the low-water asset that the backyard currently is, but increase the attractiveness of the area beyond the deck. 

The deck was a blank canvas for us, but perfectly serviceable. Here is what we have done with it:

Now we have defined spaces for play, relaxing, and art. We love it! The only thing that needs water on the deck is the little hanging herb garden. Yum!

After we set up the deck, we turned our attention to the concrete. At first, we wanted to remove it. But alas, after a sweaty afternoon of sledgehammering AND jackhammering, Sergio was only able to remove this piece:

Time for plan b!

Plan b is still underway and involves three different pieces. The first is a rockscaped side yard, covered in potted plants. The second is a dining area on the odd, raised concrete bed in the middle. The third (and possibly most exciting) is a raised vegetable bed on the side that needs the most love. 

This project is a work in progress and it will be for a long time. Here's some of the  success we've had so far:

 

The arrival of the rocks was an exciting day for the kids. 

Ruby wore a backpack full of stuffed unicorns throughout this process. 

Around this point, the girls ran out of steam and Sergio trudged on alone. 

This is about as far as we have gotten.  Even a journey of a thousand miles

begins with the first step! Zero waste yard, here we come. 

Holiday Pledge

The holiday tidal wave is approaching.  This year, Sergio and I have pledged to make sure that a minimum of 75% of our holiday gift giving is either homemade, secondhand, or upcycled.  Of course we can't go into too many details, because that would spoil things for family and friends!  But, even gifts that Santa will leave under the zero-waste, fabric printed tree (you remember it from last year!) must fulfill this expectation. I'm excited to unwrap the presents and share more about them when the time comes.

The Recycling Crutch

After a year and a half of editing down our waste, we are faced with a pretty good looking trash situation.  We get the tiniest can possible from our waste hauler, Recology, which is the 20-gallon cart (although, in an interesting side note, we are forced to pay for the price for the 32-gallon cart because we live in an unincorporated county area with little funding and governance, so illegal dumping is a problem and our waste service is embedded in our property tax statement and cannot be downsized.  But, we can have the small bin as long as we are willing to overpay for it!). Here is what we have generated for the landfill in the last month:

As you can see, there's a few pieces of styrofoam in there (the horror!) which came as packaging for a bike rack.  Kind of a good example of how you win some, you lose some.  Now that the bikes are nicely organized, we ride them more! There's also a small, rotten piece of plywood, a full vaccuum bag and a few miscellaneous things I can't identify. And the best part is that they are all way down at the bottom of the tiny cart.

But, there's a huge elephant in the zero waste room: the recycling.

Here is what we generated in recycling in just this past week alone:

Yep, that's a full bin.  I'm going to be honest: recycling is making us lazy. I am totally guilty of thinking things like, "I can buy this!  Sure, it's overpackaged, but the packing is recyclable." I'm afraid recycling has become the final frontier.  And what's worse, I'm still kind of fatigued from having a baby who doesn't sleep through the night yet and I really really really like the convenience of recycling things and so, to quote Homer Simpson (what an awkward thing to do!) "I can't promise I'll try, but I'll try to try" to cut down on bringing so much recycling into the home.  And I need to try in earnest starting in the spring time, at the latest.