Change the World Wednesday – 4th Jun

This year is really rattling along; June already!

Two CTWWs ago we talked about junk mail. I found this comparison a couple of days ago, it tells a story.

In the interests of conservation and saving paper, why can’t the government pass the same laws for your street or post office mailbox?

Last week’s CTWW, it turns out my milkweed isn’t, but I will keep looking. The story doesn’t end there.

We have a saying here in Brazil. “O Brasileiro não desiste, nunca!” The Brazilian doesn’t give up, ever!

Very applicable, especially with the FIFA World Cup only eight days from kick off.

While I am not Brazilian, I have embraced many Brazilian ideas. My friends say that I am quase (nearly) Brazilian.

So, I’ll keep looking for milkweed.

I just love butterflies, especially the regal looking Monarchs.

Some butterflies I encountered in Bolivia

I saw many more, and I have just realised that most of my travel photos are locked in my old hard drive. I couldn’t find the butterfly that I was looking for.

Click the banner for the full post

On with this week’s CTWW.

Yes, here in Brazil we are at the end of autumn and the weather is definitely cooler than our 40ºC+ days of summer.

This week, plant something edible. Plant in a garden, raised bed, a container, etc. If you don’t have space outside, consider herbs or lettuce in a small pot placed in a kitchen window. Try placing some seed potatoes in the ground (dig a small hole and drop them in) … then sit back and watch them grow. If you’re moving into autumn, consider planting a fruit tree or perhaps a nut tree. The idea this week is to plant food.

 

OR …

If growing food just isn’t going to work for you, please offer other ideas for enjoying local, organic produce.

I am always planting something edible. Not specifically this week, but for me it is an ongoing process.

Usually the plants that find their way into my paint tins are self grown from scraps in the compost heap.

Orange seedlings sharing the tin with a tomato plant

Like the orange seedling above. I just noticed a second seedling has sprouted on the left, this week I will transplant it (my CTWW for the week) into its own tin.

My passion fruit vines have stalled for the winter, but they are well established and in the summer will spread all over, hopeful with a bumper crop of passion fruit.

It appears too late for my tomatoes to come to anything

But plenty more seedlings will sprout between now and then.

The parsley I planted last year, is now well established. I have two pots outside the kitchen door and it features in many dishes.

Curley Parsley

The parsley are the only seeds that I have bought.

Sadly, the attempts to grow pineapples from cut crowns has faltered. They got to the size of golf balls and ripened then rotted.

The goiabeiras (guava trees) have fruit, one for the second time; but they too have gone to sleep for the autumn. I have great hopes for them in the spring and summer months. The same for my acerola (West Indian Cherry), it hasn’t begun to flower yet, but I feel it will in the coming season. Acerola are great mixed with orange juice, but you do need sugar, they are mouth-puckering sour. While they are the size and shape of a cherry, they are not at all cherry-like in taste, but have an incredibly high Vitamin C content.

This week I will turn over the compost heap, who knows what treasures I will find sprouting within?

That about does my garden update.

Change the World Wednesday – 26th Sep

Yes, I know it’s Thursday, I’m a day late; and that doesn’t worry me one bit. I took the day off yesterday as a recovery measure; a combination of exhaustion and a very cold day. I didn’t even go to work.

The south of Brazil has been hit with snow and many have had the house roofs destroyed by wind and hail; they showed hailstones the size of golf balls on TV last night, house roofs looked as though they had been peppered by a huge shotgun. Many crops were decimated as well, as this is the primary zone for cool-temperate farming, so we can expect higher prices.

Tuesday night we were hit by a cold front. After an extremely mild – hot winter (hottest and driest in 40 years) here in Rio de Janeiro, in fact most of Brazil has suffered with very low humidity extremes. Last week/weekend (I’m not sure of the day now) in my part of the city we had 14% humidity, some of the world’s deserts are more humid. Officially now we are in Spring, and the weather has decided to be winter. We went from a hot summer’s weekend (39/40°C) to winter temperatures (15/19°C) in the space of  24 hours.

Weird weather, unseasonable changes, extremes… Now tell me there is no such thing as global warming. I’m not apportioning the blame here, just saying it’s here.

Botijão de gás

My kitchen gas just ran out. Luckily, the water had boiled to make coffee, so it wasn’t quite the disaster it could have been. I was rather pleased, I had anticipated the gas would quit sometime in August, and here we are at the end of September; that’s five months from one gas bottle for all my oven heat. A bottle of gas costs about R$39 (currently that’s about USD2o).

I always buy a spare the month after I change the botijão. Most Brazilians don’t do that. Their gas runs out and they have to ring and wait for a delivery, usually about a half hour. Then there is the problem that most Brazilians don’t have money for that eventuality and have to wait for the next pay day.

On with the challenge. Actually this isn’t much of a challenge for me, because most things I don’t even have.

Life is so much less complicated here in Brazil, which is one of the reasons I love it here.

This week, if you are moving into Autumn, choose one task from this LIST and accomplish it. Of course, we’d like to hear all about it.

 

Or …

If you are moving into Spring, choose a task from this POST. Again, we’d like to know what you chose to do and how you did it.

 

Or …

If none of those activities appeal to you, choose a previous challenge from the list HERE. And yep … tell us about it!

Well, I have to look at the second option, because we’re heading into spring.

• I don’t spring clean – check
• I don’t even have a closet to clean out, and I don’t have things to throw out – check
• No smoke detectors, so no batteries – check
• No air filters – check
• Spring garden and compost – check
• No landscaping – check
• Walk, I don’t walk, I hobble where possible – check
• No drier, so clothes are always dried outside – check
• No air blower, Brazilians use water, I use a yard broom – check
• No grass, no mower – check
• No ceiling fan, I use two portable ones, need cleaning – check
• No fireplace, no damper to close – check

So after all that, my total contribution will be to clean both fans. Like I said, life is so much simpler here.

Have a great week everyone.

 

Change the World Wednesday – 9th Nov

Yes, my last CTWW was a fail! Not only did I fail in the challenge, but I failed in getting the date right, I listed it as 2nd Oct…

I was so geared up to give it a try, but the idea was thrown into the ‘too-hard’ basket. But I did make some interesting discoveries. Mainly that anyone subscribing to vegan philosophies, and who drives a car is in all probability not vegan at all until they make paints, plastics and glues that are guaranteed ‘animal by-product free.’

Small Footprints did challenge me to have another shot and produce something exotically vegan, but I failed there too; work interfered.

This week’s challenge:

This week, prepare your home for winter. Do at least one thing which will ensure that your winter is Eco-friendly. Need some ideas? Click HERE.

Or …
If you’ve already prepared your home for the cold months ahead, we’d like to know what you’ve done. Please include tips, ideas and any do-it-yourself advice.

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Small Footprints seems to have forgotten that half the planet is heading for summer. But I realise that Australia, New Zealand, most of South America and Africa as well as a good part of Asia are not really that important… *tongue-in-cheek*

So, being an intelligent person, I will merely invert the challenge and prepare for summer.

1. I have already cleaned the fan, a clean fan is more efficient therefore that must save energy.

2. I have taken the blanket off the bed, just use a sheet.

3. I have turned the shower down to its lowest heat setting, later I will turn the power off all together as we get hotter days.

4. Now that my papaya tree is growing tall enough, I have moved it to shade the kitchen window to lower the temperature in the kitchen. And when the other grows a little more, it is ready to shade the living room window.

That’s about it. There’s not really a lot one can do to prepare for summer here in Brazil, because there is little difference between summer and winter temperatures, certainly not the same difference you get in the US where you can get extremes in temperatures. Winter for us means average temps of 24℃ (75℉) with lows of 16℃ (61℉), while summer averages 36℃ (97℉) it can get into the swelteringly low 40s℃ (104+℉). So our main problem is not keeping warm in the winter, rather keeping cool in the summer.

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