Here Comes the Sun

My husband and I took a trip to visit my family in Tucson, AZ the first week of April.  The last time I saw them all was Christmas in 2007, and that was also the first time I introduced them to Austin, who at the time was my soon-to-be fiancé.  It was a short visit then of just a few days, and this time around, the trip was only five days long, so there was a lot of catching up, hanging out, and showing Austin the sights of the desert.  

Having grown up in the desert, I've gotten rather jaded about all that dry, dusty brown-ness and the hot, searing sunshine...but several years away and lots of time spent in the damp, gray northwest has helped me to appreciate it and given me a new perspective on it all.        

Here are a few photos I wanted to share from when my dad took us to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum:

  

Bright and Early: Apartment Eye-Spy

Good morning!  Welcome welcome, come on in.  Glad you stopped by!  Oh I see you have your cup of tea [coffee, smoothie, juice, water] in hand.  I think I'll join you...just one moment while I put on the pot...
Ah, that's better.  Sigh.  

So you were curious about my Eye-Spy, eh?  Well, go on, take another quick look-see.

Here's what I saw yesterday in Apartment Eye-Spy:

 

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Here's a tiny hint:  you've actually seen all of these things before.  

Guessed, yet?  Still stumped, perhaps?  Ok, now step back with me, have a better look, and find out...

On the Surface of Things: An Apartment Eye-Spy

Care to guess what it is that my little eye does spy?  

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Come by tomorrow to take a step back, get a better look, and find out what I spied!

Clean Energy, Happy Earth

This weekend I put up a clothes-line in our basement.  And I'm really surprised I haven't done this before.  For some reason, I always had this slight doubt that clothes would actually dry naturally in a damp climate, even though I've seen it happen and have practiced line-drying when on vacation in other wet environments such as southern Ireland.  Overnight is all it takes.  Well, three laundry loads later, I'm a total clothes-line convert.  There's something so enjoyable, so mindful and connected, about hanging up the clothes.  I already have an obsession with clothes-pins:  they're this house-wife's version of duct-tape, a universally useful tool.  Finally, I'm using them for they're intended purpose!  

And on a similar note, today I signed us up with our local power supplier to purchase Clean Wind each month to offset our energy usage.  One unit = 200 kilowatt hours (kWh) of new wind generation in the NW.  200 kWh is actually more than our average monthly usage, so I feel pretty darn good about this.  We already purchase Green Source in addition to our basic service rates - "Under this option, 100 percent of your electricity use is offset with renewable energy. In 2009, the mix for this product came from approximately 82 percent new wind, 11 percent new biomass (wood waste) and 7 percent new geothermal energy."  I'm so stoked to contribute my share (a few dollars, at that)!   

I guess you could call this my "One Small Change" for April, even though I haven't kept up each month since January.  It's the least I can do for my lovely planet, just in time for Earth Day!