The ultimate ground cover?

One of the most popular posts I've ever done on this blog is this old one from 2011 on the topic of ground covers. It talked about the difficulty of finding a suitable ground cover for our front yard, which would need to have the following features:

• Able to grow in our climate (UDSA Zone 7)
• Able to grow in our heavy clay soil
• Tolerant of full afternoon sun, but not requiring full sun all day
• Low-maintenance
• Able to tolerate some light foot traffic
• Low-growing, so we would never have to mow it (this was crucial)
• Non-invasive

As it turned out, there weren't a lot of plants that ticked all those boxes. In fact, I'd been able to find only three: smooth rupturewort (Herniaria glabra), barren strawberry (Waldensteinia fragarioides), and Dutch white clover (Trifolium repens). Weighing the pros and cons of all three of these, I decided the clover was probably the most ecofrugal, and I had a go at planting some in the back yard, but sadly, it didn't thrive as we'd hoped it would. I went on to experiment with other ground covers, such as creeping thyme, but none of them really turned into the easy-care green carpet that I'd hoped for.

But now, eight years later, it looks like we may actually have found the ideal ground cover completely by accident. Or to be more accurate, it found us.

You see, we actually happened to have a little bit of barren strawberry growing in our back yard when we bought the place. And since it was nice and green and grew well with no effort on our part, we were happy to let it grow wherever it wanted. In fact, over the years, we've helped it along by pulling out the weeds (chiefly mugwort) that happened to be its primary competition. And by this spring, I discovered that the barren strawberry plants had more or less completely colonized one full corner of our back yard.

Just take a look at that lush blanket of green, growing thickly and evenly across the entire spread from the patio to the border of the honeyberry bed (and even climbing slightly up the wall). Left to its own devices, the barren strawberry did all this without any planting, feeding, or even watering on our part. It doesn't need mowing, but doesn't object to having the mower pushed over it in the parts of the yard that still have grass. It doesn't mind being walked across on a regular basis as we go to and from the clothesline. It has even managed to choke out most of the mugwort in that part of the yard, something I wasn't sure was possible.

Now, I know some folks consider this plant a weed. Even my gardening books describe it as aggressive (though since it's a native plant, it can't technically be considered invasive). But frankly, I think that aggressiveness (or shall we call it "assertiveness"?) is actually a benefit in our yard, allowing it to compete with all the other, much less agreeable weeds. As far as I'm concerned, with the exception of the garden and mulched beds, this stuff is welcome to grow anywhere on our property it likes. We'll even help it along, if we can figure out how.

One comment at Dave's Garden says it's "easily propagated by soft tip cuttings in water," so maybe I'll try clipping a piece or two and seeing if I can sprout some of these to spread to the front yard. If I can get it to spread there as exuberantly as it did in the back, in another nine years we might finally have the mower-free landscape we've always wanted out there.

Money Crashers: What Does Gentrification Mean for Neighborhoods?

My latest article on Money Crashers was inspired by one of my favorite podcasts, Science Vs. In a typical episode of this show, the hosts tackle a contentious topic, usually one that's been getting a bit of news coverage recently, and explore the science behind it. It was this show that convinced me non-dairy "schmilks" were better for the planet than milk, and that first clued me in that organic food might not actually be better for the environment. And even when an episode only tells me what I already knew (such as, "Yes, climate change is definitely real and dangerous"), it's fun to listen to.

This particular episode dealt with the topic of gentrification. The questions it sought to address were:

• Does gentrification really force long-time residents out of their homes?
• Are newcomers in gentrifying areas more likely to call the cops on their neighbors?
• Does gentrification provide benefits like more jobs and better schools? And if so, for whom?

This topic interested me because, a year or two earlier, I'd gotten into a heated debate on Medium on this topic. I'd just recently seen an article about a study that found the answer to this first question, contrary to popular belief, is no, and I brought it up in the comments section of the article "Optimization is Gentrification." The author of the original article merely raised a few reasonable quibbles about my comment, but another reader violently attacked it, arguing that I clearly "wasn't from around here" and "didn't know what I was talking about," and that if I believed any study that appeared to show gentrification was anything but an unmitigated evil, I was either "deluded" or "so privileged that nothing could touch me." I kept trying to steer the discussion away from the personal and toward the practical by seeking out and referring to other studies, but she merely slammed me for "citing statistics" at her about a topic that, to her, was deeply personal.

I eventually gave up, realizing that this person had no interest in talking about what I wanted to talk about: the ways in which gentrification could be both positive and negative, and how it might be possible to maximize the positive effects while mitigating the negative ones. But the thing is, even if she wasn't interested in talking about it, I still was. And after listening to the podcast, it occurred to me that I actually had a way of bringing it up that might reach more readers, possibly including some whose minds weren't already made up.

So, in my Money Crashers piece on gentrification, I've done my best to explore the issue from every possible angle. I've considered all the claims made about gentrification, both by supporters and by opponents, and examined every study I could find to see which ones were borne out by the evidence. I've delved into gentrification's complicated impact on displacement, culture, property values, local business, schools, and crime, as well as and the problems that non-gentrifying neighborhoods face compared to gentrifying ones. And I've tried to present all this data in a way in as clear and compelling a way as possible.

Here's what I came up with. Like my detractor on Medium, you may not like my conclusions, but you can't accuse me of not doing my homework.

What Does Gentrification Mean for Neighborhoods? – Benefits vs. Negative Effects

Gardeners' Holidays 2019: Raspberry Fest

This year, once again, the star player in our June garden is the raspberries. They are ripening so fast we have to go out and pick them pretty much every day, rain or shine, to keep them from rotting on the canes. Here's today's take: about a cup and a half, bringing our total for the season so far to around 13 cups. And the bushes aren't even halfway done yet.

All this bounty of raspberries inspired us to try another raspberry fool, the fabulous dessert recipe we discovered last year. However, since we've been trying to reduce the amount of dairy we consume, we decided to attempt it with this vegan whipped cream alternative that I found on "The Kitchenthusiast," a blog run by KitchenAid. Most vegan whip recipes call for either coconut cream—which we'd tried before, and we simply couldn't get it to whip—or aquafaba (bean water), which whips up nice and light, but won't hold its shape. This recipe uses a combination of the two, so my hope was that it would produce a whip that was reasonably fluffy, but also stable enough to fold into a fool.

Well, this was not so much a fail as a complete fiasco. Maybe the problem was that we weren't able to follow the instructions exactly to the letter, since we already had some homemade aquafaba in the freezer and elected to use that, rather than draining off the liquid from a can of chickpeas, cooking it down, mixing it with regular-strength aquafaba, and then whipping it. But that didn't seem to be such a big problem; our homemade stuff whipped up just like it usually does, especially with the addition of a bit of cream of tartar, as the recipe suggested. Maybe it wasn't quite as stiff as the stuff shown on the blog, but it looked like it would be workable.

But when he got to the next step—adding in the chilled, drained coconut cream—it was a complete mess. Fresh out of the fridge, the coconut cream was almost completely solid, impossible to whip. Moreover, when he added it to the bowl, it somehow seemed to completely break the surface tension of the whipped aquafaba, turning it back into liquid. So what we ended up with was just a bowl of viscous liquid with globs of solid floating in it. When he attempted to introduce the beaters to it, all they did was spray aquafaba all over the place, while the globs of coconut cream clung to the beaters and didn't whip up at all.

So, we ended up buying a carton of regular old cow-based whipping cream and making our fool from that. (And since it was a one-pint container, we still have half of it left, so we'll have to do it at least once more.)

Brian did later some further experiments with both the aquafaba and the coconut cream to see if either of them could produce a reasonable whip on its own. This time, he couldn't get the aquafaba to whip up at all; it just stayed stubbornly liquid. As for the coconut cream, when he tried bringing it back to room temperature before whipping it (so it was thick, but not completely solid), he was able to whip it up to a kind of mayonnaise consistency, but it was nowhere near as light and fluffy as whipped cream ought to be.

So, for the time being, we're going to have to stick with real cream for our fool. The only other homemade alternative I've been able to find online is this recipe, made with almond milk, cooking oil (because it needs extra fat to hold its shape), and xanthan gum as a thickener. We do have some xanthan gum on hand, having bought some once to use in a homemade Frappuccino recipe, so maybe it's worth giving this one a try at some point, but I'll admit my hopes aren't high. Based on the picture, it appears to have more of a sort of custardy texture than the cloud-like texture I expect from real whipped cream.

Fortunately, we've got plenty of raspberries, so if we blow some on this experiment, it's not a disaster. And if we attempt the whipped cream and it seems like it's just not going to work at all, the raspberries are also quite good eaten plain.

Money Crashers: 6 Money Lessons You Can Learn From the Millennial Generation

A year ago, I found myself wondering whether Millennials were the ecofrugal generation. Although some of their habits—like preferring pump soap to bar soap, or using paper towels at meals—seem wasteful, others are clearly more frugal than those of previous generations. For instance, they're more careful with money, more wary of debt (especially credit cards), and less concerned with brand names.

All this, however, is entirely contrary to the way Millennials are usually pictured in the media. It tends to portray them as, in the words of a cover story in Time, "The Me Me Me Generation": lazy, self-absorbed, and addicted to luxury goods. The New York Times sneers that Millennials think it's "too much work" to wash a cereal bowl. Buzzfeed documents how they've been accused of killing everything from paper napkins to the American Dream.

So I decided it was time to set the record straight. My latest piece for Money Crashers outlines the ways in which this generation is actually very responsible, particularly about money. I outline several useful lessons that my generation, and those before us, could learn from Millennials about shopping, saving, investing, earning, and avoiding debt.

This is not to say that Millennials don't have money problems. They do—although many of them, like low wages and high student debt, aren't precisely of their own making. And certainly there are a few things this generation could stand to do better, like being a little bolder about investing. But on the whole, Generation Y is getting a bad rap from those who are hardly in a position to act superior, and I think it's time for it to stop. 

6 Money Lessons You Can Learn From the Millennial Generation

Recipe of the Month (maybe): Coconut Rice with Greens

There was some question in my mind as to whether the dish we had last night really qualified for Recipe of the Month status. Way back when I first introduced my Veggie of the Month posts back in 2013, the idea was that trying lots of new veggies and fruits would encourage me to make fruits and veggies a bigger portion of my diet overall. And that goal has stayed consistent, even as I've modified my actual plan to achieve it—first deciding to switch from new fruits and veggies to new fruit and vegetable recipes, then limiting myself to only soup and salad recipes, and finally expanding my requirements to include any recipe that centers on fruit or vegetables. In short, the point of the whole exercise is to eat a more veggie-centric diet.

Now, this recipe certainly contains vegetables, but I'm still not sure it really meets that standard. The dish as originally presented in the New York Times, "One-Pot Turmeric Coconut Rice With Greens," certainly looks like it contains a reasonable amount of veggies, but the amount of green stuff it actually calls for—"1 medium bunch kale, spinach or Swiss chard"—is kind of vague. When Brian discovered the recipe, he decided to pick whatever amount of arugula we had left in our garden that hadn't bolted yet and call that "1 medium bunch," but based on the result, it was probably a considerably smaller medium bunch than the creators of the recipe had in mind. As you can see from the picture, by the time he got all the greens cooked and stirred into the rice, they looked more like a seasoning than a main ingredient.

Mind you, this shortage of veggies wasn't a major shortcoming for the dish. It was still quite tasty, with a faintly Caribbean flavor from the coconut milk, lime juice, and lime zest, and a touch of crunchy texture from the toasted coconut and sesame seeds. (Speaking of crunchy, the bits of rice that stuck to the pan and browned slightly turned out to be even tastier than the rest of the dish.) But as we discovered, it really wasn't substantial enough to make a whole meal by itself. Brian had a notion that maybe if we cooked the rice in the pressure cooker with some chicken, the way we make the "Chicken-Rice Roger" out of Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cook Book, that could serve as a complete meal—but that wouldn't really be consistent with our goal of reducing the amount of meat and dairy in our diet.

Our conclusion: As is, this dish isn't really worth making again. It's not hearty enough for a main course, and it's a bit too much trouble to go to just for a side dish. If we ever make it again, we'll try modifying it, as I notice many of the commenters on the New York Times article did. One "added chopped snap peas, beet greens and prawns [shrimp] that steamed in the last 5 minutes"; another "added firm tofu with the greens." Either of these changes—along with beefing up the volume of greens—might make this substantial enough for a complete meal. But for the time being, we'll probably shelve it.

Since this dish is a little bit of a stretch as a Recipe of the Month, I'll keep my eye out for new veggie and fruit dishes that we can try in June, and I'll add a new Recipe of the Month post if we manage to find something more appropriate. If not, I'll let this stand as the Recipe of the Month for June and promise to make it up to you with a proper vegetable or fruit dish in July.

Why do I do this?

Yet another paper was published this week—this one by the National Centre for Climate Restoration in Australia—warning that our species could have far less time than we thought to save our civilization from climate change apocalypse. The paper outlines a worst-case scenario in which greenhouse gas emissions peak in 2030, resulting in warming of 3°C by 2050. Sea levels rise by half a meter, with another meter or more expected by 2100; over a billion people are displaced from the tropics, where it's now too hot to survive; water becomes scarce across much of the globe; food production drops and food prices skyrocket; and all in all, there's a "high likelihood of human civilization coming to an end."

The authors concede that this isn't the most likely outcome of global warming, but it's a possible outcome. The only sure way to avert it, they argue, is (with Australian spellings) "a near-term, society-wide, emergency mobilisation of labour and resources, of a scale unprecedented in peacetime, to build a zero-emissions industrial system and draw down carbon to protect human civilisation." In other words, my decision to switch from dairy to almond milk just isn't going to cut it.

So why do I bother? Why, in the face of planet-wide disaster, do I persist in sweating the small stuff—patching pants, carrying my own takeout containers, trying to minimize the water used for dishwashing? Why don't I stop wasting my time whipping up homemade conditioner, and instead focus my energies on lobbying my legislators, who are actually in a position to do something about it—as this article in Quartz recommends?

Well, for one thing, I do lobby my legislators. I've been doing it for decades, in fact; signing petitions, sending letters and e-mails, attending protests, and of course, voting for the candidates who promise to do something about this problem. And so far, at least as far as I can tell, it hasn't made a hell of a lot of difference. Sure, I can urge my particular House and Senate members to vote for a carbon tax or a ban on harmful chemicals, but what good will that do when the White House is occupied by a man who insists climate change is no big deal and the Senate is controlled by a party that bows to that leader's every whim? Even if one of these bills passed the Democrat-controlled House, it would never so much as come up for a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate, and even if somehow it managed to get through both houses, it would surely be vetoed.

In short, I can't control my government's actions, but I can control my own. And when every week brings another news story about how this administration is going to extreme lengths to boost fossil fuel consumption by any means necessary, even if it means hurting our own auto industry, small efforts like growing my own vegetables and hanging my clothes on a line—even if they're essentially meaningless in the grand scheme of things—help me keep myself sane. I may not be able to make a real difference to my country, but I can at least make a difference in my own little corner of it.

But more than that, I don't truly believe my actions as a consumer are meaningless. Indeed, classical economics teaches that the choices of individual consumers, like myself, are the main driving force behind big changes in how "business as usual" works.

Let's take that almond milk as an example. My individual decision to switch from dairy milk to almond milk makes very little difference to the amount of dairy milk or almond milk that gets produced in our country. But add it to all the individual decisions made by other consumers all over the country, and you start to see a significant change—to be exact, a 61% growth in non-dairy milk consumption. And over time, this shift in demand leads farmers to raise fewer methane-belching cows and plant more carbon-absorbing almond trees. (Of course, they also absorb a lot of water, but overall, all the plant-based "schmilks" are much, much better for the earth than cow's milk.)

So, basically, the reason I bother with all the piddling little ecofrugal steps I write about here on the blog is that I really feel like they're my best chance to make a difference, however small. Even if each individual action I take, from using cloth rags to recycling whipped cream cans, is only a drop in the bucket, with enough drops, you can fill up a whole bucket eventually. And by sharing these strategies with you here, I can hope to spread these ideas to a community of like-minded people, and start adding their drops to the bucket as well.

Freecycle find

I wasn't able to post last week, because we were away all weekend at a Morris dance event in Massachusetts. So to make up for it, I'm doing a quickie midweek post to share my latest frugal triumph: some organic baking supplies I scored yesterday on Freecycle.

When I checked my e-mail first thing on Monday morning, I found a "daily digest" e-mail from Freecycle containing this listing:

OFFER: Organic baking ingredients (Highland Park)

Organic coconut flour, coconut oil and almond flour. Coconut flour and
oil have been opened and used. Nothing wrong with either- just not our
preference. Almond flour still sealed!

Now, normally, I check with Brian before requesting any item on Freecycle, since I like to get his input on whether we're actually likely to use an item before bringing it into the house. But in this case, I felt so confident we could use these goodies that I just immediately sent a reply saying I could pick them up that afternoon. I wasn't too confident I'd get them, since I've jumped on Freecycle offers before only to find them already taken, but I figured I had nothing to lose by trying.

To my surprise, I got a message back within half an hour saying the baking ingredients were still available and offering to leave them out for porch pickup. So I popped over there during my afternoon walk and came home with this lovely assortment. As advertised, the coconut flour and coconut oil had both been sampled, but they were still mostly full, and the almond flour was untouched.

In case you don't quite comprehend what a deal this is, take a look at the retail prices of these items:

• Bob's Red Mill almond meal: $9.50 at Target
• Bob's Red Mill coconut flour: $4.20 at Target
• Organic coconut oil: I couldn't find a price for the 365 Everyday brand, but we pay $4 a jar for it at Aldi.

So even if you figure 10 percent of those last two items has already been used up, this is still around $17 worth of high-value baking ingredients—particularly handy for baking goodies that are vegan-friendly or gluten-free, as we sometimes need to do. And all I had to do to get them was take a slightly different route on an afternoon walk that I was planning to take anyway.

If we do anything particularly exciting and ecofrugal with any of these ingredients, I'll be sure to let you know about it in these digital pages. But for now, I'm just basking in the glory of my freebie find.