Weekend Hippie: Sustainable and Simple Living

Food Not Lawns: Join the Movement

You don’t have to live in Santa Barbara to participate in this grassroots effort. Food Not Lawns works to reduce lawns and increase food. It doesn't matter where you live, replacing your space-taking, water draining, pesticide-using lawn promotes sustainability. If you replace your lawn with food, you can then share what you grow, trade what you grow for something you don’t grow…..and meet your neighbors. It’s that easy!

A recent issue of Sunset magazine featured a special report on how to reduce your family's water usage further highlighting the need to streamline water consumption throughout the Western states. I’ve long been a proponent of reduced water usage in the home (especially the use of water to grown your lawn). Sunset's article outlined a 12-step approach—simplified for quick application. It was a relief to see that kind of sustainably-focused content instead of another preview of a kitchen makeover.

One item Sunset didn’t directly mention is the growing movement to replace lawns with edible landscapes. Food Not Lawns, widespread throughout the United States, helps you achieve these goals by promoting urban sustainability and encourages growing food, implementing ecological design, sharing resources, and interacting with your community.  Started and by Heather C. Flores,  author of Food not Lawns, How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, the movement is widespread throughout the world.

The scary truth about lawns
Today, about 80% of U.S. households spend approximately $40 billion every year to maintain over 21 million acres of lawn. That’s about a third of an acre for the average American lawn.

Santa Barbara Mornings: A Lesson in Breathing.

Butterfly Beach

 When was the last time you took a breath? A deep, satisfying, the weight-of-the-world-is-not-on-me-breath? You wake up to start your daily routine. Feed the dog, the cat. Take the kids to school. Take yourself to work. Work. Work. Work. Eight hours later, you fill the tank with gas, pick up the kids, feed the dog, feed the cat, feed the kids, yourself. Tuck everyone in for a good night's rest. Pay the bills, and on and on....and on.

But when do you breathe? When do you sit down, pull in all the air around you, push it deep, deep into your inner being, and then, and only when totally satisfied, and in a slow, methodical fashion, push it all out; clear your lungs, your mind? Aah, feel the satisfaction, that sense of relief, of pleasure.

That's what I did this morning. At Butterfly Beach. A pristine, sun-soaked stretch of sand in Santa Barbara. At 6:30 am, during a great minus tide where the water pulls back into the sea leaving the sand and all its remnants; exposing all sorts of flotsam and jetsam: broken shells, flattened stones, and, my favorite, colorful sea glass.

C'est Cheese: Best Santa Barbara Sandwichini

C'est Cheese is your best bet for a quick, gourmet bite to eat when you are in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara.

The speciality, locally-owned cheese shop offers a quick bite—try ONE Sandwichini—or, for the ravenous, get two for $8. Fresh baquettes or ciabatta layered with imported salami and, of course, cheese, and you are set. Yummiest "take-away" lunch downtown Santa Barbara.

C'est Cheese

825 Santa Barbara Street
(between de la Guerra and Canon Perdido streets)

Santa Barbara
805.965.0318

Backyard Gardens: A Short Video

My Backyard Garden

I LOVE my garden. It is a place I go to chill, to sip on big tumblers of red wine, and to chat with friends. It's full of all sorts of indigenous plants and bird-attracting perennials. It's hard to say what I like most about it, but this time of year I can safely say it's the section dedicated to my backyard vegetable garden! I almost rush to the beds on a daily basis to see what new sprouts have sprung, how big the cucumbers have become in less than 24 hours, and what lettuce I can pull for dinner. Oh, there is no greater satisfaction to growing your own food!!!

Backyard vegetable gardens are not only fun but provide a way to supplement your family’s food needs by season, depending on where you live. It also offers an opportunity to teach your kids--and neighbors--about the seed to table formula as opposed to grocery store to table.

Spring in most climates—including in Santa Barbara where I live—offers warm weather enough to have a successful spring-summer-fall vegetable garden.