Gardening Green, Saving the World, and All That...

So in order to help Canada achieve its Kyoto commitments, I decided to go for zero greenhouse gas emissions in the yard this year.
That means no power mower. I'm selling that this weekend at my fencing club's garage sale. I got my self a reel mower (the push kind). Its got many benefits: its quiet (so I can listen to my MP3 player without going deaf, I can simply stop pushing whenever I discover a gift from the Bean on my lawn (always sucked to have to turn off and restart the power mower every time an obstacle needed removal), and of course, no ozone depleting emissions. It also gives you a bit of a work out (especially if you let the grass get long). Also, not that I'll ever prove this point, but I can mow at 6:00 am on a Sunday without pissing of the neighbours.
Also gone is the gas powered weed whacker (It broke last fall and would cost more to fix than replace). So I've got by self a 12 volt battery powered trimmer. Sure it doesn't have enough juice to do all my yard on one charge, but it spreads out the joy, and again no harmful emissions.
I'm not sure what prompted me to do this. Could be concern for the environment, guilt over the new 6 cylinder 4-wheel drive I bought last fall, but mainly I think I just really hated my lawn mower.
So I challenge all you to go green in the garden...it's not that difficult and provides excellent incentive for just getting rid of the lawn.


For the last two weeks, I've been grass seeding ditches and stream crossings at work. A very manual and simple task. But important work. The humble grass seeder is often ridiculed or over looked, but l;ook what happens when you don't grass seed those ditches!!!