Thursday, June 05, 2008

World Environmental Day 2008


These last two days I've started in between fifty and sixty plants. Perhaps you're wondering why I presow such large quantities - it isn't exactly cold in Sweden now. No, but it's dry, and by presowing indoors I'll save water. This way I'll only water the seeds and a small amount of soil instead of an entire plot at my allotment. Plus I get a large number of plants to choose from when I'm about to select my indoor crops ;P

The drought concerns me. I do have water enough for the allotment and my containers, but I think over the last years a trend of raising temperatures in general are both clear and fast. Sometimes I look at my son and wonder if there'll be any of Earth left for him when he's grown up. The fact that we avoided destruction from global acid rain (the Big Threat when I was a kid) doesn't calm me much. The technology and the knowledge on how to change our foul habits are there, but will we do it in time?

Concern for our environment was one of the reasons I started this experiment. At that time (2006) I thought that the world needed to expand agricultural areas to produce more food. Now, with the food price crisis, I can lean back and say that I was right (but there's no joy in this 'victory'). And if you are to expand food growing areas, why not opt for a place close to the home (no fuel demanding transports), where lots of people already are growing things, and where most plants can live - namely the window sill?

Concern for our environment is also one of the reasons I go on. If I can inspire some more to grow food in their flat, if only a tomato and some basil, this will lighten the pressure on our world a tiny bit - and I get some friends who share my passion :)

Today is World Environmental Day. I haven't seen much about it in media, and I think the day deserves the same amount of celebrations as Earth Day. My melancholic post is not entirely up to partystandards, so I add a link to a swedish blogger's beautiful pictures from Kensington Roof Gardens - the text is in swedish but combine it with the texts on KRGs website and you'll be fine. This blogger (Trädgårdsperiodaren) has been to London, visited this magnificent place AND Chelsea Flower Show 2008. I do NOT envy her!

Nope!

Not at all!

***



I'm pretty fond of Cafe Press. The feeling of seeing one's pictures printed professionally on everything from teddybears to posters is hard to beat. That's why I started a small shop, Indoor Potager, to put up my pic of the day there. If you like the blog or the photo you can buy some prints. (I'm doing this for the fun of it, but this doesn't keep me from saying "Shop 'till you drop!" ;-) )

Prints of today's pic here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for your visit and comments today. We've had plenty of rain this spring over here. Wish I could send some up to you. Recently I've been reading about our over abundance of food and how so much of it is being thrown out in landfill sites, which ends rotting causing carbon dioxide gas being released in the atmosphere.
(from: wastedfood.com)

Rosengeranium said...

Yes, our global food suply are extremely unevenly spread. Some have so much that good food are thrown away, others can't eat more than once a day. The good thing about growing food at home in this respect is that it lessens the need for importing food from other countries. There are countries with starving populations that are actually still exporting food and crops to (most often) richer countries.

There are a lot of talk in Sweden on how to use the food you already bought better, raising the awarness to the fact that good food thrown away is also environmental damaging since the resources in making/growing/raising it are wasted. The landfills releasing carbon dioxide are not 'featured' in the same way, but I do think it makes sence.

Thanks for the rainwish. The forcast predicts rains for next week, so it really helped :)