Floral Arrangements

Last night, Jared and I went to meet with the florist for our wedding. Obviously, we were there to discuss what kind of floral arrangements we want for our "big day." We talked and talked and looked at picture after picture of different arrangements and individual flowers. It's a little bit crazy how many options there are. It also takes a lot of imagination to decide what you will like - especially if you haven't ever really seen half of the flowers you're considering.

What has struck me this morning, though, is the reasoning behind it. We use flowers all the time for decoration. But why? There are surely hundreds, if not thousands, of nurseries around the world that grow flowers simply for the purpose of being tossed in a bouquet. I'm thinking it's not a good use of natural resources. It is wasteful. It is a misuse of the land. Is this practice Biblical, I wonder?

I don't know. I still want flowers in my wedding. They're beautiful, and despite the fact that they've been cut down and are slowly dying, I feel like they will bring more life (and color) to the ceremony. I've discovered that flowers all have "meanings," so I now want to check on the ones we picked out. If any of them have negative meanings, I'll suggest something different.

I said that using flowers in a wedding is wasteful. But, really, something I'm struggling with throughout all this wedding planning is that the whole thing is wasteful. My parents will probably put out around $5000 for a single day. Granted, it is an important day in our lives. We do want it to be special. But is it possible to do something special without it being wasteful...?

Farmer's Market

I finally got to go to a Farmer's Market! I wound up buying a couple pounds of grass-fed beef and some tomatoes and cucumbers. It turns out, I don't like cucumbers at all. I almost made it through the sandwich I put them on, but after trying to like them for so many bites, I finally quit. So I won't be buying any more cucumbers. The tomatoes were great, even though they looked pretty rough. After you see naturally grown produce, you realize what a superficial world we live in. It's no wonder so many people worry about their appearance; even our produce has to look perfect!

And then there's the beef. It looked funny to me. It was much darker than the beef I'm used to buying (although I admittedly have not bought beef for a long time - I switched to turkey because it's more lean and less expensive). I blame it on the grass. So this must be what beef is meant to look like. It was a strange surprise. I cooked with it. I should have made burgers or something so I could tell if it really tasted different like people claim, but I made spaghetti. So I'm not sure what the difference in taste was, but I definitely noticed how much leaner the meat was. It was crazy. I didn't have to drain it at all.

I would like to buy it again and cook different ways with it. It's just that is does cost a bit more and requires a special trip to a farmer's market. Right now, I'm really trying to use up what I have at my apartment before I move out, so I don't have to move food home or throw it away. But hopefully I'll remember to buy more grass-fed beef whenever I have my own place again and spend money on groceries.

Getting Creative

In partial fulfillment of my desire to do things naturally and sustainably, I've decided to sew my wedding dress and (two) bridesmaids skirts. Yes, skirts. I don't want to out-do myself! I haven't sewn anything for a couple of years since I bought my machine. And all I made back then were two pillow cases. Of course, I'm not only hoping to be natural and sustainable by doing all of this work. I also want everything to be unique to me and I want to contribute what I have to our upcoming marriage. Right now, I have time, creativity, and (apparently) a bunch of fabric. In a way, all of this work is my offering. It's my way of showing how much I care.

I realize this post isn't very much about nature or being outside, but our whole wedding is! Making the clothes allows everything to be customizable. I'll be using a lightweight cotton, for all of them, which will make the weather a good deal more bearable than if I (and my bridesmaids) were wearing something heavy, dense, and floor-length. I'm going to do my best!

Native Plants

Walking to school today, I thought again about how strange it is that there is bamboo lining the road. I think it about it most days as I walk by, but I'm only now writing about it for some reason.

Jared and I have talked about getting some land someday when we can afford it. We both dislike fences a good deal, so we've talked about some possible plant barriers. Maybe somebody thought that bamboo would be a good idea as a "natural" fence in San Marcos. But bamboo is next to impossible to get rid of, and it's not native to the area. So knowing this, I'm hoping that we'll find a native plant that might be an effective barrier. Really, we'd prefer not to build or add anything as a barrier. Let the world be free.

It's really unfortunate that trespassing is a problem, though. If it wasn't, fences wouldn't be necessary. Property lines might be blurred. But we have such a need for possession and definition of mine versus yours. In a way, I wish that could be different, but I don't quite know what that looks like...

Pond Lining

This weekend, the guys in my family are working on my grandpa's yard. They're re-doing the ponds that PawPaw put in several years ago. Their main goal for the day was to put in a pond liner. He had drained the pond because it was growing too much algae and such. Why was there overgrowth? Because there weren't any fish in it. I don't know that he thought about that. He just thought, we need to get rid of that algae. But the algae really is part of a natural system. If he had thought to really create an ecosystem out of his ponds, it might practically take care of itself.

But instead, they put down a liner and spent the whole getting sore and sunburnt. If I understand correctly, the liner is intended to not allow the soil beneath it to produce anything that would interfere with the pond. I'm trying to figure out if that's an "ethical" thing. He is intentionally smothering the soil for aesthetic purposes. I'm not sure how the pond will stay clean, even with a liner...

The whole ordeal doesn't make much sense to me. It seems like a whole lot of work for little reason.