On our bike trip we made a trip to the sitting tree, which is a sustainable community that reuses water, uses solar water heaters, has compost, and the six houses that live their share a clothes washer, and garden. In the center of the community is a huge tree that spans out over a table, the table is surrounded by lots of chairs and an outside shower is about 10 feet away surrounded by a thick vine. What really impacted me was that instead of one house using a washer, dryer, grey water system, and solar water heater, they all used one. Plus grey water, solar water heaters, and compost is really earth friendly. This community houses 6 different families and uses only one one amount of household appliances.

When we went to the food bank Emily Piper the head of the garden their told us a lot of valuable things about gardens. I learned that gardens help people get healthy cheap food, and they have a kids program where kids learn to garden for free, plus they get a free plant and seeds. If kids learn to garden, parents also will, said Emily, right now they are growing Hopi Corn, Eggplant, Basil, Sunflowers, and lots of other veggies and plants. They also have chickens for the eggs, and compost so that they can get rid of the vegetables and fruit that the food bank get rid of. At the food bank I realized that gardening was one of the best options for the earth and yourself.       

On Friday the 25th we went to the 9th ST neighborhood and talked to James McAdams from Watershed Management. What was really interesting about his program was that they had installed this rain water harvesting thing called a chicane. It stuck out into the road and had plants and gravel inside, it slowed cars down, filtered the water, watered the plants in the chicane, and restored the deserts aquifer. Watershed management also installed gutters, cisterns, and made harvesting rain water efficient.    

When I get out of earth camp I want to put up gutters and get a water cistern.