Garden setbacks

Our efforts to make our landscape more edible suffered a couple of setbacks today. First, our beautiful, bountiful basil crop, which we were all set to harvest today and turn into puree to keep us supplied throughout the winter, got zapped by a frost last night. By this morning, more than half of the leaves had  turned a sort of bruise-colored brown, either all over or in spots. I pulled the plants and salvaged what I could, but by the time Brian had picked it over and processed it, we only had enough puree to fill about eight compartments in the ice cube tray. So I guess we'll have to ration ourselves to one or two basil cubes per month if we want this to hold us through the winter. Makes me feel like a real dope for not checking the weather report last night and rushing out to get it picked sooner.

Then, today, we finally began the process of turning the remains of our forsythia bushes into mulch—and quickly discovered the practical limitations of our little secondhand chipper. It can't handle anything much bigger than a finger's width in diameter, and it frequently stops in mid-mulch and needs to be cleared. Brian eventually determined that the crack in the housing, which we'd first tried to glue shut and then patched over with duct tape, was catching hold of stick fragments and causing them to jam the mechanism—and the crack itself was growing gradually bigger as more and more sticks got wedged into it. So we had to call a halt to the mulching process until we can figure out a more secure way of repairing the machine. Brian has determined that it needs to be patched on the inside, not just the outside—which lets out duct tape, because it would quickly peel off and gum up the motor. On the other hand, we can't use anything too rigid, either, because it wouldn't adhere well to the curved housing, and if it fell off it would get caught in the blades. I wondered whether some sort of plastic could be molded to the case and then melted into place, but Brian considers that idea unworkable. So it appears we'll have to (a) figure out a way to fix the chipper, so that we can (b) actually fix the chipper, before we can (c) finish processing the hedge into mulch. And even when we've ground up all the small bits, we'll still have to (d) bundle up the larger sticks that the chipper can't handle, and (e) try to persuade our friend with the fireplace to take the stumps.

Oh well, no one ever said this growing food stuff would be easy.

A compost conundrum

This week, moved by some impulse to simplify, I decided to clean out the medicine cabinet. I ended up pulling out about half a dozen packages of medicines and supplements that were past their expiration dates. This wouldn't stop me from continuing to use them, as health experts say that most drugs remain safe and effective long past their expiration dates, but the reason these products expired in the first place is that we no longer use them. Along with various generic medicines, the items included

• A bottle of milk of magnesia (purchased, strange as it may sound, because I read that it could be used as a deodorant. It worked reasonably well, but I discovered that for me at least, its laxative properties are still apparent when it's only applied topically. Don't ask me how it's possible; all I know is that it's a side effect I wasn't willing to live with.)
• A bottle of iron supplements in tablet form, which I had to stop taking because they had the opposite effect from the milk of magnesia (though one helpful friend suggested I should just use both and let them cancel each other out).
• A bottle of biotin supplements in capsule form.

The question now: how to dispose of all this stuff? It's not as simple a question as it sounds. Some people simply flush them down the toilet, but then they just end up in the water supply—and municipal water treatment may or may not be able to remove them. Many sites tell you to return prescription drugs to the pharmacy where they were purchased, but the one time I tried that, the pharmacist told me it was against the law in New Jersey for them to take back any drug once it had been dispensed. Back when Brian was working in a lab, we simply slipped the offending medicines into the biohazard bin for safe disposal, but that's no longer an option. And while I might have considered offering unwanted, still-usable medications on Freecycle to those who could use them, I seriously doubt anyone is going to take bottles that are not only opened but outdated.

I consulted the website of the Food and Drug Administration, which says the recommended ways to dispose of medicines are, in order:

1. Follow the instructions on the label (there aren't any on these packages, so no help there)
2. See if your community has a "drug take-back program" (New Jersey has them for prescription drugs only, so no help there)
3. If all else fails, dispose of them in the trash, after first removing them from their original containers, "mixing them with an undesirable substance, such as used coffee grounds or kitty litter," and then sealing them in a new leak-proof container. The purpose of this is to prevent anyone from swiping them out of your trash and using them inappropriately.

All this struck me as a bit wasteful, and I got to wondering: could any of these items safely go in the compost bin? Not the actual drugs, obviously—who knows what those would do to our garden plants—but the supplements? After all, vitamins and minerals are things you want in your food, and in the soil where it's grown. So intuitively, it seems like adding these things the soil should be good for it. But I also know that garden soil's a very complicated system, so how could I be sure?

Finding a reliable answer to this question proved tricky. I found an article on eHow that says supplements can be ground up and added to compost, but that's hardly a reliable source. Likewise, some folks on the GardenWeb forum thought this was fine, but while they're mostly experienced gardeners, they're not exactly soil scientists. So then I tried looking up the individual supplements, but the results weren't much better. Searching on "can you compost iron supplements" turned up several sources suggesting that this is a reasonable idea, but again, no reliable ones. And "can you compost biotin" and "can you compost milk of magnesia" got no useful hits at all.

So thus far, these three bottles continue to sit out on the bathroom counter while I waffle about what to do with them. I fear that at some point, I may end up just shoving them back into the medicine chest to get them out of the way—which would kind of defeat the purpose of cleaning out the cabinet in the first place.

Edible landscaping follow-up

Last night I finally managed to get in touch with the nursery that sells the bush cherries by calling them up in the evening, when I figured they wouldn't be "out in the fields." (I still got a machine, but they called me back within the hour.) The guy I talked to explained that they ship the bush cherries, and all other shrubs, in the spring only, because that's the best time to plant them. "A lot of people do plant them in the fall," he explained, "and a lot of them die." So he took my address and promised to send me a catalogue, which should arrive around New Year's. At that time, I can get my order in early for the cherries, and the bushes themselves should arrive by the time the ground is thawed enough to plant them. Hooray!

Now we'll have plenty of time to clear away and shred the remainder of the forsythia carcasses in the meantime. No, we still haven't gotten to it yet—first we had a near-solid week of rain, then we both came down with colds, and then we spend last weekend away at the Folk Project Festival. But this weekend we should be able to manage it, surely. If it doesn't rain. And it's not too cold. And we don't have to go to a football game. :-)

Another Halloween dilemma--postscript

Well, apparently I should have checked last week's Tip Hero newsletter before complaining that nobody makes homemade Halloween costumes anymore. One of the tips is about just that topic: "Any Ideas for Cheap or Free Halloween Costumes?" Suggestions that have showed up in the past week include:

• superheroes (colorful jogging suit with cape to match) (though one of the suggested heroes to portray this way was Spider-Man, who doesn't wear a cape, does he?)
• animals (jogging suit or, for a baby, one-piece fleece zipper suit, with appropriate nose/ears/tail)
• wrapped present (made from a large box)
• bunch of grapes (made with balloons pinned to the clothing)
• robot (fairly elaborate prep work needed for this one)
• ghost (the classic white sheet)
• witch (the classic black dress and hat)
• mummy (the classic strips of white fabric)

So there you go...homemade costumes still exist in the frugal subculture.


Postscript to the postscript: just found another article dealing with homemade costumes on the ConsumerSearch blog. It contains nine links to sites with costume ideas (and one site that sells costumes, for those who are truly pressed for time).

And here are still more ideas for making your own costume at Bankrate.com.

And lastly, my Dollar Stretcher newsletter included links to this site, which includes multiple ways to make various traditional costumes (ballerina, devil, skeleton, princess), and this site, which has a variety of costume ideas sorted into categories: "Cardboard box costumes," "Altered sweatshirt costumes," and so on.

Another Halloween dilemma

Around this time of year, Freecycle starts teeming with requests for Halloween costumes. Some are for specific costumes, such as "I am looking for an Ariel Halloween costume and accessories for my 5 year old daughter"; "Hi everyone, am looking for an  Elmo, cars or buzz lightyear costume size 2t/3t"; and "Looking for a Ninja costume for my 5 year old son." Others are just for any costume in an appropriate size: "Looking for a girl's costume in a size 5/6 tOddler. Also a boys in a size 10/12." Costumes for adults get requested too: "Seeking a Minnie Mouse costume with accessories in women's size, large" and (from the same person) "Seeking a men's complete costume in extra large size of Mickey Mouse or Pluto." 

No doubt, these frugal parents see Freecycle as the best way to get their kids the costumes they've requested without having to spend a lot of money. And after all, they might reason, reusing a costume from last year is green, too, since the alternative, presumably, would be to buy a new one. That's most likely the idea behind a recent e-mail I received from Green America promoting National Costume Swap Day on October 13. The website advertises swap events in 37 different US states, plus the District of Columbia, and 3 Canadian provinces. Some of these are informal swaps, where you can just drop off your old costumes and browse for ones you need; at others, you bring in a used costume and receive a "swap ticket" that you can cash in for a new one. Some of them are fundraisers, so you donate your old costumes and can then buy those brought by others—presumably for less than they'd cost to buy new.

Naturally, as an ecofrugalista, I'm all in favor of reusing and recycling costumes. If you have a store-bought costume that you don't plan to wear again, it's obviously sensible to pass it on to someone else who can. But as I read through these lists, the one question that keeps running through my head is, "Haven't these people ever heard of making costumes?"

Back when I was still young enough to go Trick-or-Treating, pretty much all us kids wore homemade costumes. I knew that store-bought ones existed, but as I remember, I always felt sorry for the kids who "had to" wear them; the way I saw it, their parents didn't have time, or didn't care enough, to make them "real" costumes. Neither my sister nor I was ever reduced to Trick-or-Treating in store-bought garb, although I did once wear a costume based around Wonder Woman Underoos—but that was because I already owned a set. At the time, I didn't think much about the fact that homemade costumes were cheaper than store-bought ones; to me, their biggest advantage was that we could ask to be absolutely anything we wanted. Rather than being confined to whatever the store happened to have, our costume selection was limited only by our imagination and our parents' skills. My sister won a prize in the Halloween parade one year dressed as a U.S. mailbox, crafted by my dad out of corrugated cardboard; another year she went as a can of Campbell's tomato soup, à la Andy Warhol. I went one year as Pac-Man, wearing a papier-mâché mask that my dad made using a beach ball as the base. (Mom did buy me a Pac-Man T-shirt to wear with it—but it doubled as my nightshirt for the rest of the year.) I didn't win a prize with that one, but I was part of the Best Group one year when some friends and I went as the four leads from the Wizard of Oz. My Tin Woodman costume was a suit of posterboard armor, with separate pieces for arms, legs, and torso, all spray-painted silver; I carried an axe made of the same material, stapled around a broomstick.

That's why I'm so puzzled by the number of Freecycle requests for costumes. It seems to me that a lot of these parents are missing out on the best part of the holiday by trying to get their kids' costumes—or their own—ready-made, denying themselves the thrill and the challenge of putting something together themselves. Admittedly, a kid's request to go as the Little Mermaid might be hard to accommodate with limited time or sewing skills, but how hard is it to dress a 5-year-old boy as a ninja? Just dress the kid in black, wrap a black scarf around the head and face, and give him a sword—either store-bought or cut out of cardboard and spray-painted silver. What, is a kid that young going to complain that it's not authentic enough?

One blogger, at least, is aware that homemade costumes are an option, and often a desirable option: Emily Birkin of Live Like a Mensch. Her problem is that she's short on time as well as money, making it hard to come up with a costume for her two-year-old son that won't look too slapdash. The problem, as she puts it, is that

As I see it, there are three types of costumes:
1. Store bought.
2. Painstakingly homemade.
3. Homemade and clearly thrown together at the last minute.

I admit that the "painstakingly homemade" costumes are generally better than the "thrown together" ones, but the latter kind can still be perfectly adequate. Although the costumes I remember most fondly from my childhood were the elaborate ones, I remember wearing simpler costumes too, some of which were literally thrown together at the last minute—yet they were nothing I was ashamed to be seen in. The year I was 13, for instance, I decided I was too old to go Trick-or-Treating and didn't plan a costume. At the last minute, though, I just couldn't stand to see my kid sister going out without me, so I hastily got myself up as a mime: black clothes, white face paint, and a cardboard sign reading "Trick or Treat" on one side and "Thank You" on the other. I didn't get nearly as many comments as my sister in her mailbox costume, but I still got candy. :-)

I don't know exactly when, or how, store-bought Halloween costumes became the norm in American culture. I suppose the growth of the costume industry is partly responsible. We've been getting fliers from Spirit Halloween in the mail for weeks now, selling complete costumes for both kids and adults at $30 to $60 a pop (although we've noticed that the adult female versions of most costumes appear to be normal costumes modified by the term "slutty": slutty vampire, slutty nurse, slutty Little Red Riding Hood, etc.). Our local drugstore has likewise had an entire aisle devoted to costumes since mid-September. With these constant hints passing under parents' noses every day, it's easy to see how they might start to get the idea that a ready-made costume is a necessary part of this holiday. But that can't be the whole story, because industries don't grow up in a vacuum; there has to be a demand before businesses start rushing to supply it. So why has the demand for store-bought costumes grown so dramatically since my childhood? Perhaps it's because parents today have less time—but they don't seem to have more money, so why should they jump to shelling out $40 for a store-bought costume as the default solution, rather than scaling back to simpler homemade costumes? Or is this just another example of how our culture is becoming increasingly commercialized, to the point that we automatically assume the solution to any problem is something to be purchased?

Hershey update

This just in: since my last post about the difficulty of finding more sustainable treats for Halloween, I have received word that Hershey has followed M&M/Mars in pledging to get 100 percent of its cocoa from sustainable sources by the year 2020. So as from today, my boycott of Hershey is officially over—although I still went with M&M/Mars products for my own Halloween handouts. Their deadline for sustainably sourcing their chocolate is the same as Hershey's, but they have a two-year head start and are already more than 20 percent of the way toward their goal, so I figure that makes them 20 percent more moral (or, to put it another way, less evil) than Hershey. Plus, as I may have mentioned before, I just happen to like little Snickers bars.

A Halloween dilemma

September is drawing to a close, and that means that stores are beginning to gear up for Halloween, with prominently placed displays of candy and costumes. (Well, actually, they've been doing this pretty much all throughout September; I just do my best to ignore it while it's still technically summertime.) In preparation for the annual candy-fest, I received a bulletin last weekend from Global Exchange, a Fair Trade organization, announcing a month-long program about choosing Fair Trade goodies for Halloween. This is an idea that I like in theory but have some problems with in practice, because the Fair Trade treats this site is promoting are Equal Exchange chocolate minis, which cost $35 for a box of 150 (the smallest size they offer). Now consider that last year, I paid just $4 (on sale) for two bags of mini Snickers bars from M&M Mars. This company is not 100% Fair Trade, but it got more than 20 percent of its cocoa last year from certified sustainable sources, making it the largest buyer of sustainably sourced cocoa in the world and putting the company ahead of schedule to reach its goal of 100 percent sustainability by 2020. I suppose you might argue that, for a product that's 100 percent sustainable instead of 20 percent sustainable, I ought to be willing to pay 5 times as much—but that would still be only $20, not $35 plus shipping. And sustainable treats from other companies, like Endangered Species chocolate, Divine, and Dagoba, are equally expensive or more so.

Now this week, Green America has stepped up to propose other alternatives. The bi-monthly Green American, which arrived in my mailbox on Friday, has an article on ways to "Green Your Halloween," starting with ditching candy in favor or "healthier treats and non-food 'treasures'" that are "recycled, natural, or sustainably sourced." It profiles Corey Colwell-Lipson, the founder of Green Halloween, who says that she founded her group because of concern about how candy harms children's health. The article cites the statistic that "One out of every three children is overweight, and the same number is expected to develop diabetes in their lifetime" as a result of "poor eating habits." The article doesn't attempt to explain exactly how a once-a-year candy splurge on Halloween qualifies as a "habit" that is supposedly responsible for child obesity and rising diabetes rates, but it does claim that when kids attending Green Halloween events see the alternatives to candy the group offers, "from polished stones and seashells to temporary tattoos and friendship bracelets," they invariably plump for these in place of candy. "[T]housands and thousands of kids came by," Colwell-Lipson claims, "and not one single child of any age, toddler to teen, said that they would rather have candy when they saw the alternatives. Not one."

Somehow, I can't help being just a bit skeptical about that claim. I realize it's been about 25 years since I last went trick-or-treating, but casting my memory back, it seems to me that if one of my neighbors had offered me a polished rock in place of a lollipop, I'd be pretty cheesed off. In fact, there were always a few killjoys who gave out things like colorful pencils instead of treats, and while my classmates and I generally refrained from TP'ing their houses, we certainly didn't respond with wild enthusiasm. Sure, I might have gladly forgone the candy in favor of something really cool, like a book or a little toy, but the problem with this is that even really cheap toys, such as you might find at the dollar store, are going to run about a buck apiece, while mini Snickers bars cost as little as eight cents apiece. And the same problems apply to pretty much all the items on the list of alternative treats proposed on the Green Halloween website. Either they're way more expensive than traditional candy (e.g., recycled glass tiles) or they're just, not to put too fine a point on it, lame (e.g, acorns, no matter how much they insist that "kids love items from nature"). A few of their suggestions (like toothpaste and miniature boxes of organic raisins) manage to fall into both categories.

So are there any realistic options for Halloween treats that are healthier and/or more sustainable, yet won't break the bank? In the past, it might have been possible to distribute homemade goodies, like popcorn balls or pumpkin seeds, but nowadays paranoid parents would snatch those away and dump them straight into the trash for fear of poisoning (even though there's no evidence that this has ever actually happened, even once). Even the CDC explicitly warns kids to "eat only factory-wrapped treats." So any homemade edibles are clearly out of the question. And any "factory-wrapped" edibles, such as the ones suggested on this site, are almost certain to cost more than mini candy bars. (Most of them have more calories, too, so it's questionable how much they'll actually help to reduce childhood obesity.)

The list of non-food treats on the same site includes some that are more reasonably priced, but most of them decidedly fail the coolness test. Of all the items on the list, these are the only ones that look both comparable to candy in price and likely to pass muster with kids of trick-or-treating age (which, in our area, can be anywhere from 3 to 16):

• Glow sticks. A flier we recently got in the mail advertised 5-packs of glow necklaces for $1—about twice as costly as a mini Snickers, but not so expensive as to be completely unreasonable.
• Temporary tattoos. (Stickers would also fall within the cost limits but are likely to be rejected as lame by kids over 10.)
• Coins. A quarter is likely to be more enthusiastically received than a Tootsie Pop—but that's because it's worth a lot more. A dime probably won't generate much excitement. So once again, this option means shelling out more per trick-or-treater.
• Used books. This one could be really cool in theory—I would have been a lot more excited as a kid to get a book while out trick-or-treating than a candy bar—but I recognize that not all kids would be equally enthused. Also, to make it work, you'd have to have a wide selection of books so that you could dole out age-appropriate selections to a wide range of kids. And to make it cost-effective, you'd have to be able to pick up a whole lot of books really cheaply—and have a way to get rid of whatever was left over come November 1.

Now, as it happens, I actually do have in my possession a fairly large collection, not of books, but of old Cricket magazines—accumulated during my childhood and only recently cleared out of my parents' house. My original plan was to give them to nieces and nephews for Christmas. But I've started wondering: would it actually be feasible to give these out to trick-or-treaters? Back when I was subscribing to Cricket, before it was split into two separate magazines for the under-9 and over-9 sets, the material was aimed at kids anywhere from age 5 to age 12, which covers most of the range of trick-or-treating age. The question is, would kids actually appreciate getting these? Would they, as Colwell-Lipson suggests, actually prefer them to candy? Or will they, instead, mentally classify me as I did the prissy neighbor who handed out pencils in lieu of goodies?

I'm kind of tempted to put this question to a practical test. I'd greet trick-or-treaters at the door on the 31st with two containers—a bowl filled with my usual mini Snickers treats, and a box of Cricket magazines—and offer them the choice: "Which would you like? Candy, or a magazine full of stories for kids?" Then I'd keep notes on how many kids opted for each choice, and based on the results, I'd have some idea whether to continue seeking out creative ideas for future Halloweens—or just stick with the Snickers bars, which I know won't get any complaints.