I know I described learning to hang dry my clothes as the “classic Grandma Challenge,” but I think I may have been mistaken.  In my post about laundry I wrote that my Grandma Pickies’ clothesline stood as strong as ever and ready to use.  I was wrong.  

While visiting my Grandpa last week, I decided to take a walk to the side of the house where I expected to find my Grandma’s clothesline.  Imagine my shock when I discovered it was no longer there.  My Grandpa said he had taken it down when it became clear my Grandma no longer had the strength to hang dry her clothes.  I felt sad that I had become so disconnected from my Grandpa over the past few years that I did not even realize he had taken it down.

Thankfully, I am finding ways to reconnect.  I know for certain that my Grandpa Pickies’ garden is not a figment of my childhood memories.  I have kicked off my shoes and rolled up my pant legs numerous times this summer as I followed my Grandpa’s instructions to get to work picking mounds of corn, cucumbers and most recently bags and bags of vine ripened tomatoes.  He has maintained a garden on the very same plot since he bought his property as a young man.  Perhaps it would be more appropriate to label gardening as the “classic Grandma Challenge” or rather the “classic GrandPA Challenge.”

I have one big problem with this challenge.  I do not have a green thumb.  Let me say that again in more dramatic fashion.  I DO NOT HAVE A GREEN THUMB!  I have tried really hard to not exaggerate for the sake of a good story when writing my blog.  Unfortunately, it is no exaggeration to say that my thumb is the Grim Reaper of the plant world.  It has been the kiss of death for every plant which has had the unfortunate luck of coming my way.

Despite my history of foliage doom, I planted my first, small garden this year.

One sunny day in May I found myself filling in a large hole my oldest had dug and filled with water to create a muddy pond.  I should have made him fill it in but I did not think about that before I sent him inside to wash up.  It seems it was providential because while working to fill the hole, I discovered it was a naturally sunny spot in the yard.  As I watched the sun dance across the freshly tilled dirt, it dawned on me that it may be the perfect spot for a garden. 

In a moment of earthly delirium, I forgot all about my Grim Reaper thumb.

The next morning I found myself at a local nursery buying starter plants of tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, strawberries, watermelons, red cabbages, cilantro, basil and one organic zucchini plant to round it all out.  By mid July, I was hip deep in a long row of tomato plants along with the other vegetables I had planted.

While weeding my garden one afternoon, I gasped when I discovered a plethora of baby cucumbers stretching to life.  It took my breath away to know I had managed to coax a vegetable from the ground.  I was ecstatic on the day a couple of the cucumbers matured.  I ate one and saved the other for my husband.  When he came home from work, I excitedly waved it in his face and said, “Eat this!  You can taste our dirt!  It is delicious!”

I managed to grow a dozen or more cucumbers before they succumbed to a white mold.  I picked four zucchini squash along the way.  I have quite a few onions waiting to be picked and the pepper plants produced a pepper or two.  The squirrels ate all of the strawberries and a hungry woodchuck gobbled up the red cabbages along with my neighbors’ broccoli and carrots.  The watermelon plants produced six or more lovely striped fruit but then died and rotted.  I enjoyed making a couple of homemade pizzas with the basil before I killed it and adding the cilantro to fresh guacamole.

Despite my marginal success, my Grim Reaper thumb still had its way with the garden.  I did not know that tomatoes and other plants do not like Walnut trees.  Shortly after my tomato plants matured and were bearing loads of green fruit, they began to wilt one by one.  My neighbor suggested I call the local extension program offered through Michigan State University.  After conferring with a Master Gardener on staff, we concluded that my plants were experiencing ”walnut rot.”  Walnut trees carry a toxin in their roots called juglone and it killed all ten of my tomato plants.

How am I going to redeem my Grim Reaper thumb?  Over the course of the next few weekends I am going to move my garden and begin preparing for next year.  I am going to try and try again until my Grim Reaper thumb becomes a hard earned green thumb because there is something that just seems so logically sustainable about learning to grow my own food.

My Grandpa Pickies told me to till up the ground and to plant some clover.  The clover will grow in the spring and when I till it under it will act as a green fertilizer.  My Grandpa is also going to get me some manure from one of his neighbors to add to the mix.

Gardening is my next official Grandma Challenge.

Did your grandparents grow a garden in their younger years?  Do they now?  How about you?  Is there a sunny spot in your yard that you can till up to make room for a small vegetable garden in the Spring?  Do you have any gardening tips?  Your tips and stories have proven to be invaluable each time I take on a new challenge!

I was listening to a local radio show a few weeks ago and a couple of hosts from a local television show called Take Five and Company were on.  They were promoting their program because it was changing from an afternoon show to a morning show.  At the end of the segment, the hosts from Take Five said something to the effect of “We are always looking for great local stories!  Let us know if you hear about one!”  And the little voice in my head replied, “Hey!  I am a great local story!”  Before I could talk some sense into that little voice, I drove home and emailed Take Five and Company about my blog.

Sometimes you get what you ask for.

I was interviewed for Take Five and Company on Monday and it aired on Wednesday.  I was a nervous wreck the night before the interview.  The little voice inside my head seemed to have come to its senses as it shouted, “What in the world have you gotten yourself into?!”  After I calmed myself down, I realized I was not crazy for doing a little shameless self-promotion.

Each and every Grandma Challenge is a new experience for me.  If I choose to take my blog into a second year, it will not feel the same as my first year.  I will never again experience the excitment of successfully canning my first batch of strawberry jam.  I will never experience those triumphant feelings of cloth diapering my daughter for the first time.  I will never experience the thrill of eating my first homegrown cucumber.  I will never experience my feelings of frustration over learning to line dry my clothes for the first time (I hope).

I want to share my first year experiences and all of the ups, downs and in betweens of learning to live a more sustainable and simple life as honestly as possible.  I hope my story will encourage you wherever you are in your own journey.  So come along for the ride!  The more the merrier!  However, I must admit that living sustainably is not always easy.  My story may convince you to run the other way!

Either way, here is your chance to see my “grandma hair” live.

By the way, I only have 40 or so tortilla chip bags saved.  They will be the subject of a future Grandma Challenge, along with changing my water usage habits!  Yikes! Oh, and the pages of writing you see in the video represent each Grandma Challenge I have done so far.  I have them taped to my dining room wall so I can take notes on how each one impacts my day to day living.

Tuesday is laundry day at my house. 

I have not always devoted a whole day to the task of laundry.  I used to do a load here and and a load there.  Consequently, it seemed there was always laundry to do.  After years of doing laundry this way, I found myself wondering if there was a better way.  One day it dawned on me that perhaps I was not giving this chore the “respect” it deserves. 

I do an average of 5 large loads of laundry in a given week.  Each load takes a couple of hours to wash, dry and fold.  Five loads multiplied by 2 hours each means laundry should take approximately 10 hours to complete.  I decided if laundry is a 10 hour job then I would give it a full 10 hours thereby giving it the “respect” it deserves.

I now devote Tuesdays to laundry so that I can try to get it done all at once.  It is a really good day when I can get all five loads washed and folded before I go to bed.  It is cause for celebration if I can manage to get each pile into each person’s designated spot and everyone takes a moment to put their pile away before bedtime. 

If the laundry is washed, dried, folded and put away in one day then I do not have to think about it for the next six days.  Six days without laundry feels like bliss (although I now do a load or two of cloth diapers in between).

Laundry is a great metaphor for a lot of areas of my life.  If a chore takes 10 hours to complete but I only give it 6 hours, I am going to repeatedly come up 4 hours short.  If I constantly short myself by 4 hours then I am going to feel frustrated every time I try to do a 10-hour chore in a 6 hour time frame.  I treat many areas of my life this way.  I often try to cram more into a given moment than that moment allows for and then wonder why I feel so frustrated.

I am afraid I might be about to add some frustration to my life with my latest Grandma Challenge.  But if ever there was a classic Grandma Challenge this one would be it.  If I wanted to, I could drive to my Grandpa Pickies house right now, string up some line and hang dry my clothes.  The metal bars my Grandma used for line drying clothes for her family of eight are a little rusty, but they are still there and they still work. 

An important part of this year is challenging myself to see if I can lessen my dependence on some of the modern appliances I have come to see as a necessity.  Although I have read the argument that appliances such as the microwave actually save on energy, most appliances are designed to break and not be repaired, thereby landing in the local dump.  A couple of years ago our brand new refridgerator short circuited three times in a row.  We lost a ton of food and spent a lot of money trying to repair it.  The appliance company finally replaced it with a new one.  Guess where the “old” one went.

Aside from the garbage dump argument, I would also like to see if I can burn some of the good kind of energy which is to say the energy my own body generates when I put myself to work.

My husband strung a makeshift clothesline a couple of weekends ago.  I gave it a try last Tuesday thinking it would not be a big deal.  Afterall, I already spend all day doing laundry, right?  How hard could it be to take a few extra minutes to hang it on the line?  I (smugly) intended to write about this Grandma Challenge last week but felt so discouraged after attempting to hang dry one load of laundry that I gave up and wrote about handkerchiefs instead.

I have been humbled and will readily admit I do not think I will be able to see this challenge through until my year of living like Grandma ends on June 23, 2009.  In an effort to be realistic, I am going to commit to trying to hang dry my clothes for four weeks starting next Tuesday, September 16.  Perhaps you are asking, “Why do it all if you know you can’t keep it up for a full year?”  I am going to try because I think I can learn some valuable lessons from hang drying my clothes like my Grandma did.

Do you have any ideas about what lessons I can learn from hang drying my clothes?  Do you hang dry your clothes?  If so, do you have any tips?  Do you have any stories about how your grandparents dried their clothes?