Grapes in a rental garden

Grapevines are wonderful. They provide good shade in summer, drop their leaves to allow sun in winter, don't need much water or loving care, and best of all: they grow grapes!

But in a rental garden, are they possible?

We started with a cutting in a pot. As it turns out we have been in the same rental house nearly seven years, but while our lovely vine was getting established in his pot, we could have relocated with him if we needed to. In the photo below he's been settling in for about six months.

By Mr Vine's second summer he needed something to grow up, and we helped him with bits of makeshift trellis in the raised garden bed - mostly recycled items heading for bulk waste, like a rusted clothes drying rack. 

 

But what I really wanted was for the vine to provide shade for the front of the house.

Our lounge heats up not just from direct summer sun, but from reflected heat off sunny bricks. So the challenge was to build a trellis so the grapevine could grow over the garden entrance as far as the roof, without putting up any permanent fixtures.

The main support was a branch salvaged when trimming the gum tree. The trellis comprises two lengths of thick wire, each with loops twisted into them, one lying along the gutter and one connecting the gutter to the gum tree support. Loops between the two wires are connected with pieces of clothesline.

Our vine has now spent two summers growing up the trellis and I am thrilled with this addition to our garden, and to our passive cooling measures for the living area. Grapevines need firm pruning but its not an excessive task. Thus far, only pruning a couple of times a year, the vine has been easy to keep away from the tiles and causes no problems along the roof line.

We know the vine has been through the bottom of the pot for years now. If we need to we can dig it out to remove it when we leave (but why would any landlord want it gone?). Hopefully it can be left to bless future residents.

The grapes are delicious, although they come ripe each year exactly when we are away on our summer holiday. Eva spent the weeks before we left this year telling all our friends to come and eat our grapes while we were away and we were delighted that one good friend did just that, so the harvest was not wasted.

Initial Time: well now... Putting a grape cutting in a pot took about five minutes. Building the trellis took me about five minutes (erecting the gum tree support post) and Tyson about an hour (twisting wires). Growing a grapevine has taken five years so far. We got edible grapes from the fourth summer.

Initial Cost: Zero. We were given our cutting by friends.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Zero cost. We water with recycled bath, shower or washing machine water through summer, top up the soil with home-grown compost and mulch with leaves off other plants around the garden. Pruning takes about half an hour two or three times a year. As its in a well-mulched pot, there are hardly any weeds.

Impact: Our bricks are shaded a little more of the day and reflect less heat in our lounge window and front door. I don't know if the temperature is actually much cooler but I feel cooler to have a green space rather than the glare of a brick driveway when I look out the window. As it takes so long to be cold enough for leaves to fall here, I have actually cut most of the leaves off to let autumn sun through. And we get to eat home-grown grapes! Which is cool, and also saves a bit on  food miles/ pesticides/ packaging/ etc.

This picture was taken last July - not much sign of leaves dropping off despite it being the middle of winter! Last year we had only one week between the last leaf falling and the first spring shoots emerging. Ah Perth. Not really a climate of four seasons. 

Kindy car-pooling

Driving to kindergarten five days a fortnight is not something I had hoped to be doing.

However, when we found the wonderful play-based McDougall Park Community Kindergarten two suburbs away we decided it was worth the short drive. We were thrilled for many reasons that Eva's best friend from a couple of blocks away also enrolled at McDougall Park, but one was that it allows us to share the driving. We split drop-offs and pick-ups between the two families and are effectively taking one car off the road each kindy day.

Initial Time: a few minutes of conversation to make arrangements (unless you count four+ years of cultivating friendship between two families in the same neighbourhood). About five minutes is added to each of our kindy runs to pick-up/ drop-off - but as we are only doing half the kindy runs it is a time saving over all.

Initial Cost: zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: occasional check-in conversations to keep arrangements rolling smoothly, but its both a time and money saver. To be honest, it was probably the time-saving benefits that first motivated us to car pool.

Impact: The return trip to kindy is around 15km, twice a day. Both families drive reasonably fuel-efficient European diesel cars. Allowing that there will be occasions when we both drive - like the first week when the children were settling in - I estimate there will be about 90 days in the year that we car pool. This means we are reducing our travel distance by around 2700km for the year. At an average of 7.5L/100km, this means about 202.5L of fuel saved, a reduction of 547kg of carbon.

 

Photos by Tyson (except the one by Ben, at the gate) - the dads actually do most of the kindy runs. Thanks J&B for letting me use photos of A!

PS: For those who get this by email - I've totally redesigned the blog in the last month, so just this once click across and have a look. There is also now a Facebook page for the blog - https://www.facebook.com/smallstepsforsustainability - but I won't be putting a 'like us' button up, as those buttons allow Facebook to track the internet use of anyone who visits Small Steps, whether they are on FB or not.

Rubbish-free lunches

Eva started kindergarten three weeks back, so we are into the world of school lunches.

We are committing to packing no rubbish into our lunch boxes.

If food needs some kind of wrapping, we use our washable sandwich wrap (such a thoughtful gift from my cousin! Thanks K&N)  Ours is from http://www.4myearth.com.au and they sell a range of other food storage type products, such as food covers (to use instead of gladwrap) and insulated lunchbox bags.

 

Reusable plastic boxes are good for things like yoghurt or just to separate out foods (so the carrot sticks don't end up in the sandwiches...)

However, food generally keeps perfectly well until lunchtime without any sort of wrapping.

This commitment also extends to our work lunches, when we are not working from home. When we are off to work in an office with a microwave, we generally take frozen food leftovers to reheat for lunch. As a standard practice we cook more than we need for dinner and freeze leftovers in single-serve boxes ready for easy lunches. (Cooking leftovers at dinner also means we can always include extras at our dinner table at short notice, and take a sandwich instead the next day. I love knowing we can offer this sort of hospitality)

We use and re-use takeaway 'tupperware' containers. They do eventually perish - after about twenty uses - and then they get washed and go into the recycling.

Initial Time: It takes no longer to pack a rubbish-free lunch of fresh unprocessed food. It does take a few minutes to cut up food and make sandwiches/ wraps that grabbing pre-packaged processed food would I suppose not need. There are whole sections of the supermarket I know nothing about because it doesn't really occur to me to buy packaged processed 'special' items for lunches.

Initial Cost: No packaging rubbish = no cost for things like gladwrap or little plastic bags. Reusable sandwich wraps from 4myearth cost between $10 and $15.

Ongoing time or cost commitment:  making lunches takes about 5-10 minutes a day, but the time is not particularly connected to the no-rubbish commitment.

Impact: This photo shows the rubbish from fifteen four-year-olds at Eva's kindy at one lunch time. The teachers noted to me that this was a pretty small rubbish haul compared to most days.

So, acknowledging that this was less than the average lunch rubbish, and a couple of kids were away, Eva's kindy class alone will generate at least this much lunch rubbish this year:

Only fifteen people need to read this blog and choose rubbish-free lunches for us to together save that much waste in a year. Actually in about half a year, as these kindy kids are not full-time students.

We might be only a drop in the ocean, but at least we're not another plastic wrapper in the ocean.

Links:

Four posts ( 1 2 3 4 ) from Little Eco Footprints about waste-free lunches - with helpful ideas of what food to pack

Special thanks to the teachers at McDougall Park Community Kindergarten for humoring my slightly strange photo request!

Try fixing it first

We have made a commitment that whenever something at our house breaks, wears out or otherwise stops working, we will try to fix it before considering throwing it away and/or replacing it.

It's a commitment I suspect most parts of the world - and most previous generations in our part of the world - would be astounded to know even needed articulating.

To aid in our endeavours, we have established the 'fixing box'. It lives in a high place in our living area (it's got enough brokenness in it already without putting it where Small Boy can reach!). Mostly when toys get broken I am too busy with other things to be able to immediately repair them, so they go into the fixing box to wait for a fixing session.

Results of two Fixing Box sessions (above and below)

 

(As a parenting tip: the fixing box also works a treat for things broken beyond repair that threaten floods of tears if they head towards the bin: into the fixing box with 'we'll have a look later to see if we can fix it' followed by a good few weeks hidden in the box usually means they get completely forgotten and can be disposed of without fuss at a later date).

Tyson's (tiny) shed is also something of a 'fixing box'. Although some may interpret that as 'unruly pile of rubbish' I am confident that fixed things do eventually emerge from there.

 

Eva at Sydney Airport, aged two

And if it really can't be fixed (like this much loved bag) we salvage what we can for future projects.

I'm particularly proud of this ugg-boot re-soling using fabric from old jeans

Fixing most things does not require fancy tools or equipment. I have a sewing machine. Tyson has no workshop and his tool kit is pretty basic. For a work bench he clamps a hunk of recycled timber beam to the ladder, and works in the back courtyard.

When special tools are required (very occasionally) he borrows from his dad, who has a much more extensive collection. If this is not an option for you (because you don't know his dad... or don't have a handy friend or family member with lots of tools) there may be a tool library near you. Or just put the word out to your networks that you need something - its amazing what people have lying around.

Fixing also rarely requires special knowledge or skills, although it sometimes requires a bit of confidence to give something a try. For example, yesterday Tyson transformed three derelict kitchen chairs from this:

to this:

 

The only 'special tool' was a staple gun - very easy to use. These chairs were verge pick-ups originally and were about to head that way again.

Eva helped with sanding back so the paintwork could be resprayed. I said encouraging things and took photographs. Small Boy supervised.

Fixing furniture may seem daunting but it is often not that difficult - and so rewarding! I once re-strapped an armchair with only a hammer, tacks and strips of old jeans, and it lived for many more years.

Initial Time: This varies from a couple of minutes to glue a piece of toy back on or sew a quick button to projects requiring research, part-shopping and considerable work. Tyson is more likely to do those ones than me. But to be fair, he gets a great deal more pleasure out of figuring out & implementing cunning make-do fixes than I do. There's a lot of the Ken John in him (his grandfather). The chairs above took about 1.5 hours each - a little longer for the two that he re-glued (loose joints).

The fixing box method takes about two hours every three months to have a blitz on accumulated broken things.

Initial Cost: Again, this varies enormously. Most things can be fixed with a bit of thread, tape or glue, which I estimate costs us about $25 a year. 

Some fixes are a huge cost saving - like the car door latch pictured above. Tyson did that for me last Christmas for about $45 (cost to join online Picasso-owners forum, and buy a manual and a just-right tool) and half a day fiddling around, after the Citroen mechanics quoted us $1000+ for the same work.

Others cost more in dollars and/or time than it would take to just buy a new one.

Pedestal fans are a good example of this. You can pick them up for $10-$20, and every year there must be hundreds of them put out on hard-rubbish days because of minor faults. We have three and Tyson is getting quite good at stopping their odd rattles, making them turn (or not, depending on the problem) or getting them started again when they have apparently died. Pedestal fans should be kept out of land fill! They use about 50W of electricity compared with our reverse cycle air-conditioner which uses 2.5kW. That is, our aircon is equivalent to running fifty pedestal fans together.

Ongoing time or cost commitment: As above, ongoing.

Impact: Australian households produce an estimated seven million tonnes of waste per year. Our average rubbish per person is higher than Canada, Germany or the UK (although less than the USA). LivingSmart illustrates this quantity graphically as each Australian family producing the amount of waste it would take to fill a three-bedroom house from floor to ceiling. Compressed. Every year.

It is crucial that we don't put anything into the waste that doesn't need to be there. Fixing everything we can is a big step towards that.

It also gives much joy. Here that pesky pram handle finally comes good.

And as a household norm, it helps to set our children's default to 'fix' rather than 'bin'.

PS: I just want to clarify that the reason I am not in any of the photos is not because I don't do any fixing; its because I take all the photos. Except when Eva takes them, when focus can be a bit optional. Here's one of Eva's to prove I do fix some things myself:

Links:

Tool libraries in Brunswick VIC and Angle Park SA

Wikipedia article on tool libraries including links to tool libraries all over the world

Or find your local men's shed and take your project there to use their tools. (If you're a bloke, presumably. I understand that men's sheds are an important men's mental health initiative, but... I would like to have somewhere I could take my project too! I guess I could try the Australian Sewing Guild but I would prefer to wrestle the staple-gun away from Tyson and have a go at upholstery)

Australian Bureau of Statistics data on waste

LivingSmart data on waste

Living Smart Queensland offers a free online course to help you reduce your household footprint - tips, calculators, information, suggestions... its good stuff.

Get ready for Christmas - give something away

I have decided it is time to initiate a new family custom around times of receiving gifts - birthdays and Christmas: give something away in preparation.

 

Tyson and I had a go at giving away some of our books. We are book-lovers and book-hoarders, so this was quite a challenge! They are destined for charity - most likely Save the Children. (Their annual book sale at UWA raises upward of $250,000 for their work, and they now have a permanent second-hand book shop at Belmont Forum, which is near to us)

I packaged up a box of baby clothes for a friend who is expecting a third child... having given away all their baby things after the second child got beyond baby.

And I asked Eva and Edan to give away one toy each. (OK, I did this on Edan's behalf, as he is too little to understand). We have one-year-old and four-year-old birthday parties to attend this week, so rather than buy gifts our children have selected something of their own. In good condition, of course, and it had to be something they had enjoyed and played with, not a 'reject'.

Not for giveaway! But he does love climbing into boxes... and everything else...

I am hoping that this can become a family practice - the new normal - and that both we and our children might learn to let go of stuff and live with less. And to appreciate the new things all the more.

We are also preparing with this lovely Advent calendar from my sister in PNG

Initial Time: About an hour going through the bookshelves and baby clothes

 Initial Cost: Zero

Ongoing time or cost commitment: Five times a year we do it again - four birthdays and Christmas. I anticipate the time commitment will vary depending on what sort of stuff we turn our eyes to. At birthdays only the birthday person will be looking for something to give away.

Impact: None of the items leaving the house this way would have gone to landfill. Never. Not on my watch. But I understand that in other homes baby clothes, books and outgrown toys DO join the mountains of landfill our culture produces.

I am aiming for more intangible impacts of generosity, lightness of ownership, reducing my propensity to hoard, and gratitude for what we keep.

For other Christmas ideas, see my two posts from last year.

Post Script update: I thought we were pretty bold getting the kids to give away one thing each - until I had a cuppa with my friend who had got her kids to give away one toy each... EACH DAY through December, as their lead-up to Christmas. Her kids are five and nearly eight and they managed it just fine. 

Back to Basics: Boiling the Kettle

How much energy does it take to boil the kettle? Is it more than I need to use?

Some time ago I realised that I almost always overfill the kettle, and I have been working at reducing how much water I put in. It took a while to get the hang of it, but I can now say we are committed to putting in only as much water as we intend to use. As my mum and dad are visiting from Victoria for a couple of weeks, our kettle is working extra hard and it seemed timely to publish this commitment.

This is a simple post about a simple action in tune with our original intention to take up one additional act towards sustainable living per month. 

Initial Time: zero - but it did take many months to change old habits. 

Like my habit of filling and boiling the kettle half an hour before guests arrived, so they wouldn't have to wait so long for their cuppas. This then required reboiling the kettle when they arrived and often I had more hot water than I needed because I didn't know in advance how many cuppas I would be making. I can't think of a guest to our house who would mind waiting a few extra minutes for their hot drinks.

Or the practice of someone in this house (who shall remain un-named) of boiling the kettle then an hour later remembering the cuppas have not been made so reboiling the kettle... and perhaps  remembering this or the next time to actually do something with the water...

Initial Cost: zero - a cost saving (see below)

Ongoing time or cost commitment: zero

Impact: When I fill our kettle I am generally boiling around 1.25L more water than I need. It takes 430.5kJ to heat 1.25kg of water from 18°C (ambient temperature) to 100°C (boiling). This is equivalent of approximately 120Wh. 

To put that in perspective, every time I boil a full kettle to make one or two cuppas, the excess energy I am using is equivalent to leaving two sixty Watt light globes on for an hour, or to having our energy-saver 20 Watt kitchen light on for six hours.

If I boil the kettle full four times a day, in a year I would have used 174.5 kWh of electricity doing nothing at all - boiling water I don't need. Our Perth electricity company currently charges 26 cents per kWh (unit) and we have opted for a natural power premium of an extra 5 cents per unit. This means our commitment to only boil the water we need is saving us $54 per year (plus GST - total close to $60).

[for those interested in formulas: 

change in temperature (ΔT) x mass (M) x heat capacity of water (C), 

where ΔT=82°C M=1.25kg C=4.2kJ/kg°C = 430.5kJ

1 kWh = 3.6MJ

0.4305 / 3.6 = 0.1195kWh = 120Wh

0.1195kWh x 4 boils per day x 365 days = 174.47 kWh]

Thanks Tyson for knowing the formulas... I'll have a cuppa next time you're boiling...