Category: Leisure

One Simple Thing: Pick One Thing You Trash, and Try to Find a Place to Recycle It
Mr. GH and I have a lot of little fun rituals that help us keep life interesting (no, none involve chanting or sacrificing small animals). One of them sprung from a desire to recycle something we hated constantly throwing away. We have a big bin in the garage into which we toss waxed cardboard beverage […]

Five Unorthodox Reasons Why You Should Grow Some Your Own Food (A Little…or a Lot)
In no particular order: When you grow your own stuff, you can tell Monsanto to shove it. In September of 2014, GMO giant Syngenta Crop Protection LLC asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to increase the legal tolerance for neonicotinoid pesticides on crops. Neonicotinoids, as you may have read, are now widely regarded as the […]

The Luxury of Just Being Right Here, Right Now
Last night, my amazing niece called me (after I’d gone to bed) to let me know that she’s become engaged to a guy we all like a lot. I was smiling all over, listening to her voicemail. Almost in tears, really. Not just about the news, but about the fact that she took the time, […]

Happiness and Hedonism: Nudging Yourself Toward a Happy Life
People ask me why I write about what I write about. At least one person in my life gives me a hard time for “glorifying hedonism,” as though I’m advocating for naked drunken reveling with the Rockettes in a posh Gold Coast mansion (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I wonder about it sometimes. […]

Friday Freedonist: What’s Free in YOUR Town?
We like to have fun, but our greenie life can be expensive sometimes, and that money has to come from somewhere (have you priced really good local cheese lately?) So we’re always on the lookout for free things to see, do, and learn. We live near Denver, which is hardly L.A. or New York or […]

Friday Freedonist: A Half-Hour of Pure Bliss
Do you know what yoga nidra is? Before your brain starts conjuring up images of twisting your body into odd shapes and stretching to rest your head next to your buttocks, hold up (Martha Beck once described her yoga instructor as looking “… like the very serene victim of a terrible, terrible crime.”) Yoga nidra […]

The Garden in Winter: Five Things Gardeners Can Do to Beat the Winter Blues
Confession time: At the height of the harvest in early September, I am praying for the peace and quiet of February. My kitchen counters are groaning with produce that needs to be chopped, blanched, canned, frozen, dried. There’s not much room for anything else, to be honest, and so it sometimes sneaks out into other […]

Happy Birthday to Me: Are You Celebrating Your Birthday (Week) in Green Hedonist Style?
Let me start by explaining that, here in our house, the concept of isolating a single 24-hour period to celebrate the day of our emergence on this planet is laughable. Twenty fours hours to celebrate 52 years of this wild, inexplicable, crazy, maddening, magnificent aliveness? Yeah, see, I don’t think so. So some time ago […]

A Pictorial Friday Freedonist: The Extended Picnic, $2.75
Sometimes, giving yourself a thoughtful hedonistic treat can be as simple as taking advantage of a nice sunny day, a pretty space nearby, and a little creativity. My fantastic near-free Friday afternoon started with a simple craving for an outdoor picnic before the weather turns to ice next weekend. This is an easy Friday Freedonist […]

I NEED vs. I WANT: How Do You Tell the Difference? On Happy Moderation, or Finding the Just-Right Life
It’s coming on winter in the Rockies now, and I’ve shifted from making icy-cold, fizzy concoctions in the Sodastream to preparing round after round of hot beverages during my work day. The day almost always starts with coffee, then around 2:00 I switch to tea or cocoa (fair trade, dontcha know) for the rest of […]
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