Being a Sustainability Wannabe Nut who is making at least one effort every day for the rest of her life to live more sustainably, I got up an hour earlier this morning. Brrrrr! I dragged some clothes up off the floor and dressed in the bed under the doonah to keep warm.
Walk Short Distances to Save Fuel
I wondered to myself “will the fact that I have to wash more clothes because I’m layering them on to keep warm outweigh the environmental impact of using a heater?” I struggled with the thought for about 2 seconds while the icicles formed on my eyelashes.
I gazed with horror at the 2 metres of cold floor that I would have to shuffle over to get to my drawer for my favourite woolly socks.
Then my gaze fell on my LTSH’s (Long Term Suffering Husband) slippers nearby and considered taking the risk of possibly catching tinea (I think he had tinea about ten years ago when he was running half marathons) to avoid frozen foot syndrome. But my tinea-phobia brought me to my senses, and erring on the side of caution – one can never be too sure – I struggled out in the cold to don those heaven-sent wooly socks.
The reason for me getting up earlier on this cold morning?
I had planned to walk the five or six blocks to the little, what I call ‘farm’ on the corner. Basically, it’s a house where a husband and wife have planted tomatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and some other vegies in the plot beside their home. They sell their organic produce out of their garage for a damn good price. I like getting it – not only is it cheaper than anything you can get in the shops, and we’re supporting locals, but they also grow the best tasting tomatoes I’ve ever had. They’re a ‘heritage’ variety, organic, and deeeeeeeeeelicious! Not like the boring dry ones that taste like rotting cardboard that a feral cat has chewed up and spat out that you generally find at the shops. In fact, these organic tomatoes from the ‘farm’ are so good I discovered LTSH one day gobbling them up like apples.
So I bundled up, slathered on a layer of lip balm and braved the cold.
There I was looking like the Michelen Man with forty thousand layers of clothing on and a beanie that made me look like a Gum Nut Baby… waddling down the street… but guess what? I wasn’t alone. There were other Gum Nut Babies out there too, all walking, waving and greeting me with smiles and wishes of a ‘good morning’.
By the time I reached the little ‘farm’ I was beaming with pleasure. I bought my couple of bags of tomatoes and headed home.
What a lovely experience! Usually, I would have taken the car for the 3 minute drive, listened to LTSH complain because I woke up our dog and pet birds with the motor starting, wasted petrol – and contributed to the peak oil dilemma, never got the benefit of fresh air and comfortable exercise, or met all of those really lovely Gum Nut Babies.