Wednesday 12th October 11 Treemendous York launch

I felt really happy today, although spent more time inside than I really prefer.

I was rung up by James Houston, who organises the Galtres Festival, shortly before I went to the launch of Treemendous York at 3pm.  He had been invited to the launch, but a childcare issue had cropped up and he was unable to go.  So he asked me to represent Galtres Festival if needed.  The reason he'd been invited was that at this year's festival, when people bought their tickets, they'd been invited to give a little extra to be spent on offsetting their carbon emissions travelling to and attending the event.  And therefore James was in a position to give a substantial donation to Treemendous York to be spent planting trees in areas of York with less tree coverage than average.

I got to the central library, 'Explore', in good time to meet the Council officer who was setting up the room, and to tell her that I was here instead of James Houston, and to help her put the Treemendous York leaflets out on chairs.

Kate Lock, who chairs the York Environment Forum, introduced the new project... which had been thought up following the York New City Beautiful report by Professor Alan Simpson, which included the vision of York with an extra 50,000 trees, and Hull Road being a tree-lined boulevard... so that figure had been lifted and the vision of a tree-filled city is hopefully going to be achieved by Treemendous York.  It's a partnership between the Environment Forum and the City of York Council, BTCV and The Woodland Trust, Wheatlands Community Woodland, Edible York and the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and other partners will surely come on board in due course.

The aim is to record and monitor tree planting for 3 seasons, until April 2014, and to facilitate the planting of appropriately placed trees, including ones with fruit and nuts, and in public places, sides of roads, private land and gardens.

Councillor James Alexander then did a short speech after which the group walked through Museum Gardens, crossed Scarborough Bridge and ended up on the far side of the bridge where the grassy banks of the Ouse widen out and a hole had been dug for a ceremonial tree planting.  I cycled down, getting there first, and chatted to the contractors who had dug the hole.  After the ceremony, I took the two B+Q donated spades back to the library, and chatted with Steve who was there with his lovely child-carrying tricycle.

I came home via the health centre where I ordered a repeat prescription, and got in shortly before our eldest son came hurtling home on his bike, followed soon after by Gill and our youngest.

I attended Green Drinks in the evening, and tried to work out how to make it better, with help from Randall. Wrote some notes which will be published on facebook, to hopefully get some feedback from the members of the group.

Saturday 15th March 08

Up at a reasonable time, in time to go to the Credit Union AGM which was at CVS at Priory St, starting at 9.30, with time to have a cuppa and a chat from 9.15, which is when I arrived. I was very pleased to see some of my CU friends whom I haven't seen for some while.

This was the second AGM, following the first full year of trading. The CU is doing well, with plenty of members and savings and loans going out. The Union is well managed and the auditors say they are happy. This meeting made me happy.

Then came home and had a brief lunch before going down to town again... this time to the library where the Carbon Reduction Action Group was holding a public meeting on carbon offsetting, whether it is part of the solution or a just a way to carry on as nomal but pay some money to ease your conscience....

I had done lots of research about carbon offsetting, as I was putting the pro-offsetting point of view. This was initially difficult for me as I was skeptical about it, but the reseach had moved my opinion towards thinking that it is part of the way that someone who has reduced their footprint can reduce it further.

Thursday 13th March 08

A tough start to the morning... because our boys go to Self Defence/Martial Arts class on a Wednesday, one of them hadn't done his maths homework last night and got it out at 8am this morning. However, the photocopied sheet did not make it clear where the answere had to go... they could have been put in the margin or below the lists of figures to get averages/means/spreads for, or on the back of the sheet, or on a seperate sheet... and this uncertainty resulted in a lot of shouting and verbal abuse, resulting in him getting to school late as he initially refused to go to school. However, after a short cooling off period in his room, he went to school. The other child wasn't feeling well (depression?) and he stayed at home.

Things are not easy in this household right now and the large amounts of homework and the frequency of it does not help... where has their fun childhood gone? Then there was a piece on the telly about some teaching union coming to the same conclusion that kids are set too much homework and it is giving them stress, ill health and putting a strain on families. I totally agree.

The day got better as the bedridden one did his homework and went to school at lunchtime.

I went into town and paid a bill, collected compostables from Martin's, put them on the lottie heap, came home and had lunch and had some time with Gill before she went to school to collect one of the kiddies, and I went to school to attend a Green Thumbs meeting, which was just with Julia and was very nice. We had some wide-ranging discussions about various things and decided that the meeting on Monday night would be enough, and as several people couldn't get to the possible Tuesday 'AGM-type' meeting, we would postpone it til after Easter.

I collected my Dramatic son from Drama, he'd been getting ready for a Drama Festival over the weekend.

A relatively peaceful evening until homework was mentioned and then it all broke down AGAIN! I had to go out to a CRAG-public-meeting planning meeting, we had to decide who did what. I drew the short straw and I'm going to be the pro-offsetting person. However I do have two films to support me, one from CO2Balance and the other about a project in India where kerosene lamps are being replaced with solar panels by the Carbon Neutral Company (I think).

Got back shortly before 9 and the boys were in bed and Gill and I watched a programme on Tibet (a low-carbon way to see the World!)

The rest of the evening was on the computer, emailing and researching offsetting....

Friday 17th August 07

Felt like a real holiday day today! Lie-in til 9, kids quiet, all had breakfast together and then they went to play in the loft, with the model railway, so we were able to slip back to bed...

Got up an hour later and very soon there was a huge rumpus upstairs, our eldest had broken the 'Virgin' passenger carriage which his brother had bought with his birthday money. This behaviour and noise completely spoilt the good levels of endorphins we had been experiencing beforehand. DESCRIPTION OF INCIDENT CENSORED. I asked the younger one to wait upstairs and eventually got up there and mended his carriage, which fortunately wasn't broken, just popped apart.

When all was settled, I went to the Co-op to get some groceries, and came back via a ripe skip which yielded a pasting table, a wine rack and an unopened box of polyfiller compound, as well as some burnable wood and reusable wood.

After lunch I did some emailing and booked a cottage in Wales for the first week of October, which is a little holiday I'm having with my friend from America. Makes it more real, she's already got her ticket, and I'm already feeling guilty about contributing to a plane journey. However, the next thing I'll do is to look at offsetting (whether it's worthwhile or not) as it will reduce my off-green conscience. I do have such a low carbon footprint, that the carbon cost of half the plane trip won't make my annual footprint as high as the average in the UK (which is apparently 11 tonnes, mine's part of the household footprint of 1.4 tonnes, ie about 0.7 tonnes). But still feel bad about it, but will enjoy seeing my friend again.

After this, Cycled to town and popped in on Cycle Heaven to check on the progress of my new bike, then to CVS to book the room in September for our CRAG meeting on transport, and the one in November on insulation and home heating. Then to collect recyclables from Out Of This World, and posted some letters before popping in to my building society. There was a problem here, as my two books had been sitting next to each other in my bum-bag, and thir numbers had got mixed up when the computer scanned them. Weird, and it took a long time to get it sorted out.

Home via another 2 boxes of compostables from Martin's Urban Perishables.

Put them on the current heap, picked the first of the Bramley apples for making blackberry jam, and windfall James Grieves apples for drying on the stove. Made mixed veg soup, mostly on the stove... carrots, pumpkin, onion, celery... the only thing which was paid-for was the celery.

A warm evening making jam and drying assorted fruit.