Juniper Networks

Sunflowers may be my favorite flower. I have planted them for many years and will plant them again this year. I also have a garden and plant basil every year. I didn't know bees love basil until doing research for this challenge.

I like to walk in my neighborhood several days a week. Until this challenge, I hadn't really noticed the bits of trash on neighbors' lawns and open spaces between properties.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

Currently on a mission to use up the majority of non-perishables in the pantry. No more hoarding! This forces me to just buy the few missing ingredients for the meal I have in mind. I would like to have a picture worthy pantry someday with just the necessities - nicely organized and with preferrably with reusable containers.

Food packaging is big place where plastic shows up in my life (rice, milk, nuts, berries, snacks, meat etc.) This is also the hardest area for me to find plastic free alternatives. I've shopped at zero waste stores, but find that they are significantly more expensive than buying plastic wrapped food from the grocery store. I'll continue to look...

It's fairly easy for me to reuse bags. If I forget them, I just don't use any.

One of my areas of passion has to do with native gardening (and since I live in California, I'm talking about Cal Natives and specifically the importance of conservation in our own backyards). Our family is fortunate to live close to an amazing preserve with incredible native plant restoration efforts, and I have slowly been working on reducing...

I have been vermicomposting for many years. I don't have a large setup and can only put so much organic waste at one time. I used to freeze fruit/veggie peels to avoid the landfill and my husband would get so annoyed with my frozen containers of banana peels and apple cores. Fortunately our city recently adopted a composting program and I can...

Just learned that eating meat is one of the largest contributors to my water footprint. I'm going to keep that in mind when I plan my weekly menu and make more vegetarian meals!

I made all purpose cleaning solution with vinegar, essential oil, soap and water. It was very easy to do and I feel good about using less plastic and harmful chemicals.