Bountiful

What do you do that's good for you? For your family? For the earth? Sometimes it doesn't feel like we do enough, does it? But how often do your really sit down and think about your impact? Probably not very often. So, I took a minute this morning to think about it myself.

We recycle, avidly, at our house. Garbage for garden compost, aluminum cans are crushed and turned in for cash, all recyclable trash is binned and collected by the county. Clothes, books, personal stuff - if we can't use it, reuse it or repurpose it, we donate it or resell it. Eventually. Storage can sometimes be a problem.

We volunteer. All of us have a pet project that we are involved in and I absolutely know that our efforts are important, in some way to someone. I volunteer at the kids school and with the women's shelter and Robert donates many, many hours per week to youth sports. The kids volunteer through their Scouts and also donate and volunteer for various projects that catch their attention.

Our house is also a pretty stable location for some of the neighborhood kids who seem lost in the afternoons, out roaming alone on their bikes while their parents are working. I have a particular group of first grade boys who come by about every day to play with Connor. They know they can come in, get some food, get a drink, do something fun. And I feel good that they have someplace safe to hang out.

We are very energy conscious. We have all Energy Star appliances, have switched out our light bulbs for those funny,twisty ones. We turn off, power down and dress in layers to conserve energy. I hope to go solar for a lot of our power in the near future.

I buy locally produced goods and locally grown food whenever possible.

I keep a garden. This is actually quite a large project. Gardening food on a small plot in Central Florida can be tricky. Between the intense heat, the pests and diseases, the heavy rain in summer and the droughts in winter, it can be a very delicate balancing act. But I manage to grow some things.

This is what I picked this morning.

In winter, I get peas and beans, tomatoes and peppers, lettuces and carrots. In early spring, I can get some broccoli and some squash. Still some toms and peppers. Summer is almost a lost cause and we don't really have fall. But I carry on. I keep my own compost bin for fertilizer and use a natural oil spray for the pests.

We're not perfect here at our house. I'm sure there are lots of other things we could do. Still, most of us probably all do a lot more than we realize. You should sit down and think about it for a minute, too.