Welcome to the new blog!!
A Brief Blurb About Us
We are Matt and Melinda. In a nutshell, we are on a quest for the most sustainable lifestyle we can find. Generally I (Melinda) am the writer here, though Matt has been known to write a few brilliant words, too. We share our experiences, research, thoughts, and mistakes… about gardening, cooking, eating, cleaning, living locally and simply, reducing our carbon footprint, and being frugal, mindful and happy. And I like to think we have built a supportive community here, full of people from all over the world who are journeying together along this path toward a sustainable lifestyle.
We started out writing about our story over at Elements In Time: Creating Edible Landscape. For a variety of reasons – technical issues with the iWeb blogging program and a change in our overall outlook – we’ve moved the blog here! But the Archive of our old blog will remain for at least a year, so that you can peruse our back story to your heart’s content….
Our Family
We have a dog, Ellis, who we rescued from a horrible previous life in LA – he had two broken legs and weighed twice his current weight when we found him. Now he is a happy, healthy pooch.
And we have a cat, who we rescued in the Sonoma County vineyards during the heat of the summer, like a raisin in the sun (and so she received the name Raisin). She had been abandoned four years earlier and was nearly wild, but with coaxing and calming, she has now become the most purrfect house cat ever.
Other characters on the blog include my grandfather, who has lived nearly a century and is a great inspiration to me, my mom (above, holding our giant beet), with whom I’m creating a backyard vegetable and fruit garden, and my sister, who has a new blog about her own brand-new garden.
Our First Road Toward Sustainable Living
For ten years we lived in LA, where I worked in the film industry and Matt worked as a brain injury researcher. We liked LA – wouldn’t say we loved it. But we tried, we did. We frequented the Santa Monica Farmer’s Market (which we do still miss), we participated in a CSA, and we began to make our lifestyle more sustainable.
But my asthma was getting worse and worse (I was up to 8 meds a day!), we spent a long time every day in traffic, a new freeway off-ramp was being built outside our door, and more fires and droughts were predicted every year…. So we tried something different.
Our Second Road
We moved to the country, and lived as self-sufficiently as we possibly could. Life slowed down, we baked, cooked, preserved, and GARDENED. Boy did we garden! We lived on a vineyard, and it was beautiful, peaceful, serene… most of the time. We experienced the migration of hundreds of thousands of robins, we created a certified wildlife habitat in our backyard, we rescued a cat and took her in… and then rescued another (who went to a good home).
But something happened about 9 months in. We realized that we weren’t self-sufficient, we lived intimately with the hazards of industrial agriculture, we completely relied on our car, we didn’t feel like we belonged in our neighborhood, we were not quite making ends meet because of a slower, low-wage job market… We learned so much during our life in the country, and wouldn’t trade it for… much of anything. But we learned that we hadn’t finished our quest for a sustainable life quite yet.
Our Third Road
So… we researched and thought and paced and tore our hair out and drank some local wine and came up with what we thought was a pretty darn good idea: move to Seattle. I’m originally from Seattle, but haven’t lived here for nearly 15 years (I lived in NY, Austin, LA, and Geyserville in between). The city has grown, and the push toward greenness and sustainability has grown substantially, too. Plus my family and many of our friends are here. So basically all roads led to this beautiful northwestern U.S. city.
As members of the Riot For Austerity, we’ve calculated our carbon emissions for nearly a year now. Through a lot of hard work, we’ve reached the point where we are utilizing 90% fewer resources than the American average… in every area except driving.
So that was a primary factor in our decision about where to live in Seattle: we chose to live in the heart of the city. Here we can walk to the local farmer’s markets (three, actually), food co-op, bookstores (three as well), library, restaurants, and pretty much everything we need. Matt just accepted a job (wahoo!!), and it’s .4 miles away. I’m currently working from home. We’re living very locally here.
So… There You Have It!
I hope you’ll stay and learn and grow with us. We host challenges here, a great way for us to all work toward a goal together. We have an on-going Growing Challenge, where you must grow a new food from seed and then share about your gardening progress.
And we participate in a fair amount of challenges, too! We’re reading eco-books, doing extreme eco-challenges, inspiring others to create Victory Gardens, making yummy local meals, and thinking about reducing our addictions to prepare for leaner times.
Welcome, Old Readers And New!
Please, always feel free to share your thoughts, advice, suggestions, hopes and dreams… that’s what this website is all about!
Hooray! I’m so glad you have the new site up. I was going nuts with the old one and am glad to see you are back to posting.
Looks great! Love how you expressed the idea of “One Green Generation.”
Congratulations on your new site, it looks great!
nice digs! I look forward to more great content
Cool new look, but I’m kinda confused. When I click on the link from my blog, I get the old blog. But then I click on the link from your old blog to this blog, and I get the new blog. But they both have the same url? What url do I have to input so that I get the new blog when I click over from my blog, and not the old blog?
Anyway, technicalities aside, I very much like the new blog! Congrats on making the change Melinda!!
CRUNCHY C, I’m glad you like it! I was going nuts, too, boy. This site is SOOOO much easier to do pretty much everything, from posting to leaving comments to having lots of links and good stuff… I’m giddy.
DEB G, Thanks! I’ve been thinking about it for a while, so it’s good to hear.
THOMAS, I appreciate the comment – glad you like it.
KORY, Thanks! Me too. ; )
ARDUOUS, You rock. I’m so glad you brought that up. Should be fixed now. I think the link you have on your site is http://www.elementsintime.com/Blog.html. It should redirect to the new blog now. But FYI, the new link is http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com. And – gasp – I think you can actually add it to your feeds and it will work now. Let me know!
I’m glad you like it. I feel really relieved, actually, like a weight is off my shoulders. I had no idea how stressful the other site was, just getting it to work!
Welcome to your new home! I’ve edited my links to direct folks here to keep up with you. If they want to peruse your old site, they can get there from here. Your furry friends look very contented! Hope you and Matt are, too.
And now it is listed as updated in those Blogger lists!! Yay!! I’ll know when you’ve updated!!!
CHILE, Thanks! We’re happy in our new home, and I’m happy in the new blog home. We’re definitely liking the urban lifestyle, where we can walk pretty much everywhere we need to go. We’ve had a few run-ins with crazy neighbors (probably not as crazy as yours, but maybe close…) But other than that, it has been exactly what we were hoping for!
ARDUOUS, WAHOOOOOOOO! So good to hear.
Yay! Love the new site! I hope it treats you well. Looking forward to seeing what you and Matt are up to in Seattle.
Welcome to the neighborhood Melinda! Hope you enjoy it here.
Rob from Burien
I stumbled upon you here by accident but I’m glad I found you. Switching to new computers while you were switching to a new city made me lose you.
I like that this blog is on the homepage and I don’t have to click twice to get to it. Also, I LOVE that wedding photo! It reminds me of the “dead dance” that my 3YO godson does – his rendition of the Thriller dance of Michael Jackson.
Glad you’re settling in so nicely.
ROB, Thanks for the welcome! We’re enjoying it already. It’s good to be home.
SHE-RA, I know, I know – that old blog was good for some things but not so good for others. I think I lost a lot of readers because it was SOOO SLOOOW to load. Hopefully, like you, everyone else will come back. ; )
Indeed, very Thriller like, isn’t it? Ha! We had a good time with the photos.
Nice new look! I like it.
Thanks, Katrina – it’s good to hear!
Yay! I can read comments again!
New site is looking pretty spiffy! I’m glad you’re enjoying Seattle.
HATCHET, Wahoo!!! I missed you. : )
Melinda, this is great! Your new site is so rich and easily navigable. I can’t wait to look around some more. You, my friend, have excellent time management skills!
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