Green Gal

On a typical Thursday, I wake up around 9 AM and make my way by bike or leg power to work in the Sustainability Office on campus. But today was no typical Thursday morning. Today is Bike to Work & School Day , which meant that my day began at 6 AM when my phone alarm went a-buzzin'. I hopped out of bed around 6:15 AM, ready to zoom down the hill to the base of campus. UC Santa Cruz is a pretty cool place to be a cyclist. You get a real challenge on the way up to campus and such a fantastically speedy and beautiful ride down after the day is done. Since I live on campus and I was volunteering at the base of campus to serve breakfast to cyclists, my morning began with that awesome ride, the bay in view and the flowery meadows in my peripheral vision. The view from the UC Santa Cruz bike path on a typical afternoon. Glorious!   It was great to connect with fellow students and community members who were also helping out at the breakfast station. At UCSC today, there ...

I've had a year full of learning, experience, memories, stress, growth, and excitement. I can only hope that next year is just as enlightening and full of adventure. I got this idea from Yes and Yes . Here is a brief list of the things I've accomplished this year: - Helped run four clubs at my school--Photography, Environmental, Drama, Human Rights. - Hiked to the top of Half Dome. - Became vegan. - Applied to college and was accepted to three --Prescott College, San Francisco State, Humboldt State (so far!). - Taught a native plant uses class for Halloween. - Hiked through a creek and wrote an article about a nature summer camp. - Experienced the Welcome Home for Sully Sullenberger . - Wrote my first published article for the California PTA on my school district's "green" efforts. - Became a member of a local cycling group and rode my bike a lot. - Directed a one act with my best friend and was a technician for the first time in my life. - Met some new people a...

On Monday, my dad and I continued fixing up the old shed in my mom's backyard; we put in some flooring and painted. The yard used to be green, delightful, and full of life. But in the past few years, it's been taken over by weeds and is now merely dirt and trees. I've been thinking a lot about how we're going to redesign the garden and yard, so I've been looking through garden design books, reading through the first issue of Green Gardening magazine (an offshoot of Fine Gardening magazine ), which is an incredible resource that I came across at Lowe's, and trying to come up with visuals in my mind of what our possibilities are. We don't want too much grass because it sucks up water, but our yard looks nice with grass, especially with the green trimming on the shed. We want a vegetable garden and I am hoping we get a compost bin going sometime soon. We've planted some petunias in the window boxes of the shed, but that's pretty much the extent of the...