HomeCrazzyHome

For a while now, Alan has kept telling me that I/we are the pesky neighbours (note British spelling for a reason) from an old television show called The Good Life. He has been threatening to make me watch it. After finishing up planting my garden yesterday, I thought ‘why not?’. So, this morning I YouTubed it and watched the first episode:

I think it might be one of the sweetest things he ever said about our #HomeCrazzyHome. The respect and communication that couple (the Goods, I think) have for one another are heart-warming.

Yes, I most definitely irritate the snot out of our posh-a$$ neighbours. With my upcycled plastic garden pots and pallets, the sheer amount of them, and let’s not forget, returning our back garden to meadow for the sake of biodiversity, how could I not exasperate them? I do not even try that polite British way of showing disdain. I am my American straightforward in that too.

I have been watching a series on Sustainable Living at Great Courses lately. So, the neighbours can prepare for even more vexation. One thing that I have learned is about sustainable footprints. I had known of carbon footprints for some time but this measure looks at how many acres/hectares of land it takes to sustain your lifestyle. I was appalled at our footprint. Ours is 3.6 hectares on one quiz and 4.3 on another. What that means is given our lifestyle, if everyone on the planet lived like us, then we would need between 1.9 and 2.4 Earths to support the population.

Side note: cities, green ones at least, are surprisingly sustainable. But that requires people living in areas where everything they need is within walking/biking distance. So, we did well on that measure.

We did really well on areas like recycling, transport, and consumer purchases. The two areas that killed us were food and housing. I love our #HomeCrazzyHome so downsizing for some off-grid build-it-yourself ain’t happening, the other two need high-speed internet too much anyway.

But food is definitely an area that we can address. We have been reducetarian for some time. Even then our meat consumption was a significant factor. Locally sourced and homegrown was another one. I do my best to locally source things and buy unpackaged. But it is our garden…the one that is driving those neighbours batty…that is our greatest hope.

I shall retake that quiz once the garden starts coming in. Our first bit of lettuce is almost ready. In fact, I think I will be able to make a fresh green salad from it for this Sunday’s F4 (Friends, Food, Fun & Filosophy). I just bought a book about gardening all year round.(Yes, sorry, I know that ebooks are better for the environment, but my neurodivergent brain still requires paper ones. Good news is I keep them, so, no worries about recycling.)

Of course, none of this new. Even before #HomeCrazzyHome, I have been driving neighbours batty with vegetable gardens. Even in our dingy London flat, PanKwake and I did our best.

Think I should really irritate the neighbours by taking them surplus from the garden. The bible does say:

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. For in so doing, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you. – Proverbs 25: 21-22

Hmm…guess I need to watch a few more episodes of The Good Life to see how they handle it.