Sue Fagalde Lick's Blog, page 36

Wait! Don’t Throw That Away!

I’m in love with my compost bin. I know that’s strange, but it’s true. I’m also mighty fond of the big blue recycle bin. The garbage bin, eh. But you should see me on Thursday nights rolling my full carts to the curb, lining them up like Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear, and the happy dance that follows on Friday when they’re empty again. I get so excited watching those big trucks roll up, stretch out their mechanical arms, raise my bin up high and dump everything in the back of the truck.

It was just a mild affection until the compost bin arrived a couple months ago. I finally had someplace to put my yard waste. I became a lawn-mowing, bush-trimming, food-composting maniac. I can’t wait to get the bins emptied so I can fill them up again, except for the garbage bin, which doesn’t get much in it anymore. Ooh, and last week I picked up this cool black food waste pail to hold things like my grapefruit rinds, tea bags and chicken bones until I can get them out to the Papa Bear bin.

My neighbor across the street does not compost or recycle. He burns his yard waste and throws everything else in the garbage. He sees no point in recycling. Add that to the list of topics we can’t discuss, a list that includes gun control, religion, politics, yoga, taking one’s dog to obedience school, and all the rest of my yuppie ideas. But he’s a good guy and has been helpful to me in my solitary life in the woods. Annie adores him, so we know he’s not all bad.

But I’m sticking to my stand on recycling. Have you ever been to a landfill? I have. As part of my reporter life, I have stood at the edge of these stinking piles of refuse and watched lines of garbage trucks dumping more and more. It’s horrible. The average American throws away four pounds of trash a day. That’s seven tons a year. We can recycle about 75 percent of our waste, but only about 30 percent actually gets recycled. All that stuff that goes into the landfill just stays there. A fact sheet from California State University Sacramento notes that it takes approximately 1 million years for a glass bottle to break down in a landfill. Plastics take at least 100 years, maybe as long as 400 years. Things like microwave ovens, iPads and tennis shoes, God knows how long it will take and what chemicals may be leaching into our air, soil, and water.

Think about how much you and I throw away every day and multiply it by the more than 7 billion people in the world. We are going to suffocate in our own garbage one of these days. We don’t have to. So much can be recycled and reused if we just do our part.

Our parents didn’t recycle, but they also didn’t produce and discard so much crap. We used to think we were doing our part if we tossed our stuff in the wastebasket or garbage can instead of on the ground. I remember our old Shasta camping trailer had a decal in the window that showed a picture of a bee and said, “Don’t bee a litter bug.” We weren’t. But now we know there’s more to it than that. If my 93-year-old dad can learn to recycle, anybody can.

I pray that someday we can find a way to reuse everything so that we no longer have any need for landfills. Meanwhile my neighbor thinks I’m an idiot. Too bad. It occurs to me I could sneak into his garbage can on Thursday night after he goes to bed and take out the recyclables, but then again he has a whole room full of guns and has told me that if a bear shows up, he will shoot it. So, maybe not. He might think I’m a bear.

I don’t usually get so preachy here, but as I said, I’m obsessed with my bins right now. I’d love to know how you feel about recycling and what you do about getting rid of your debris. Please comment.

The following websites offer some great information on recycling.

Recycling facts from MIT dept. of facilities

11 Facts about recycling from dosomething.org

Recycling Facts from Recycle Across America

Sacramento State Environmental Students Organization recycling facts

Look what God grew in my garden

It’s a weed. Yank it out. No, wait!

What is a weed anyway? It’s a plant we didn’t put there, something that grows up on its own, seeded by birds or wind or bulbs hidden underground. Some, like Bermuda grass, are just annoying. And some get out of hand, like our wild berries that take over the garden. But many so-called weeds, especially here in our Oregon coastal forest, are a lot prettier than anything I could plant. Healthier, too, because they’re perfectly adapted to the growing conditions here. I didn’t plant any of the “weeds” pictured here.

The star of the show this year is Foxglove, technically digitalis purpurea. The name gives you a hint that it’s the source of digitalis, used medicinally for heart patients. It turns out to be toxic to animals, so if Annie could reach it or if she showed any interest in eating it, that weed would be gone, but so far, she and I just stare at it.

It started as a clump of leaves next to my deck. Feeling lazy, I decided to let it go a while and see what developed. Then I went away for 11 days. When I returned, wow! It was taller than I am and loaded with pink flowers. Two companion plants had sprouted up nearby. According to Coastal Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest by Elizabeth L. Horn, the Foxglove takes two years to produce flowers. The first year, all you get is leaves while it gears up for its spectacular show.

Botanical.com says the name Fox Glove started as Folk’s Glove and came from the fact that the flowers looked like little finger gloves.

When the flowers fall off, I plan to pull out the Foxgloves near my deck. It’s not a good location, and there are plenty of others growing up along the edges of my property, but for now, I’m enjoying the show.

The Foxglove is not the only flower putting on a show these days. Out front, the poppies are going crazy, the salal is at its peak, and we have honeysuckle, wild roses, daisies and buttercups along the street. The blackberries and thimbleberries have flowers now but will soon bear fruit, and the tops of the salmonberries are already showing some bright yellow berries. Soon my yard will be full of drunken robins.

I love to garden, but God is a lot better at it than I am. This spring, I’m going to go easy on the weeds and see what else develops.

Motel roulette: you never know what lurks behind those doors

Motels are a gamble. I was in Eugene, preparing to attend a series of events at the University of Oregon related to my winning a prize in an essay contest. I had made reservations online from the comfy Best Western in Yreka that I wrote about last week. The new place was a little beyond my budget, but hey, it was the last two nights of my vacation. I figured I’d drive all day, check in, go for a swim, eat a quick microwaved dinner, and go to a reading at The Duck Store.

I check in. Ask for a downstairs room. Ask why the second night costs seventy dollars more than the first night (not mentioned online), get told there’s an Eagles rock concert in the auditorium across the street on Thursday night. Are you here for the concert? What concert? I’m here for an essay contest. My fee is nonrefundable at this point, so I get my card key. I notice the big sign saying the pool is closed. Oh, we’re waiting for a part, don’t know when it will arrive. Swell.

I move all my stuff in. Notice the security lock does not work. Notice there are no shampoos, and there’s no Kleenex. Iron all my wrinkled clothes and hang them in the closet. Notice the clock is not illuminated, and the light next to it does not work. Crawl around plugging things in. Set the clock. Unpack my instant Chinese food and stick it in the microwave. Set it for two minutes and push the button. The microwave goes on, but shuts off after two seconds. What? I reset it, push start, it shuts off after two seconds. After about six tries and one fist punch to the front of the microwave, I throw a big Portagee fit. No pool, no lock, no clock, no micro. I tell the Stepford Wife at the front desk that this room is F-d, and I want a refund. She calmly offers me an “upgrade” to a river view room upstairs.

Now, I travel with a lot of stuff, three or four loads worth, guitar, computer, clothes, food. I had spread my stuff all over my room, and I needed to be at the reading in less than an hour. You know those whirling dervish cartoon characters? That’s how I looked grabbing clothe, books, and papers, stuffing them all into bags and hauling them up the fourteen concrete steps to my new room, where the river was dark and sludgy, the refrigerator didn’t work, the air conditioning was iffy, and the toilet didn’t always flush. But I didn’t have time for another fit. I ate a few bites of my dinner, walked myself a new blister getting across the campus and arrived at the reading sweaty and stressed. Wine? Oh yes.

On the second day, my card key would stop working, a guy would be power-washing the sidewalk outside my room in the morning when I was trying to write, and the entrance would be blocked off so I couldn’t drive to anywhere near my room the night of the concert. But I did have a nicer view, including a few ducks and geese, and I got to inhale some complimentary marijuana smoke from the Eagles fans a few balconies away.

It wasn’t all bad. The pool got repaired, the Wi-Fi rocked, and the continental breakfast included a pancake machine, first one I ever saw. It was nice looking at the river, especially after my experience in Red Bluff where another river room offered a view of rocks and dirt, that section of the river dried out in California’s drought. And Sam’s sports bar next door was fabulous.

But you never know. That’s why I dream of buying a camper someday and taking my room with me. It might not offer a free continental breakfast, but at least I’ll know where I’m sleeping every night and if something doesn’t work, I can fix it.

I arrived in Eugene after a week with my dad in San Jose, a good trip, lots of bonding for both of us. We also made another visit to Kaiser Hospital, this time to replace his pacemaker. It went well. Dad is fine, but it killed me to say goodbye. Always does.

I hit Eugene on the way home to collect my prize for winning third place in Oregon Quarterly’s Northwest Perspectives essay contest for a piece called “When the Lights Go Out.” Click on the link to read it. The prize included not only cash, but a master class with contest judge and fabulous author Lidia Yuknavitch and a chance to read our works to an audience at the university. Then we got taken to dinner at the posh Excelsior restaurant. Crab raviolis!

I felt like a princess by the end of the festivities. Twenty-four hours later, I was home mowing my lawn, but I have my memories. And at the moment, everything in my house works. Plus I have Annie. Home is not a gamble.