The green consumerist?

I love my garden. I love having the space to plant things and watch them grow. I love thinking of how my garden will develop and imagining what it will look like in months and years to come. I love watching the daily progress of seedling and fruits and vegetables. I love eating meals with home grown produce. I love that my daughter has asked for her own garden bed, and when it was promptly built for her, and just as quickly planted out, she asked why is it that she only has one garden bed and Mummy has so many more.

Recently I was talking to a friend, about my garden and what I have planted recently and what plans I have when a thought grabbed me. Am I a consumerist greenie?

In setting up our greener life style am I just consuming in a different way? I went looking for a tea camellia the other day, so I can grow my own black tea. I am considering which nut trees would be good to grow. We have our little nectarine tree (with tiny baby nectarines!) and I am considering a peach, because they are supposed to be a little better suited to our climate. I have a kaffir lime because I occasionally like to cook Thai food. I have plans on where to put the passionfruit and need to start researching which grape I want to grow.

I am seeing success with what I have been growing (except for this year's broccoli, but that's a different story) and boosted by this I want to try and grow new things. I want my children to see different things growing and then eat them. In my garden I want an abundant supply of staple veg and an adequate supply of foods that I'd normally consider 'treats' simply because of the price at the grocer and the rate my children eat them when we get them. I want to eat organically grown produce, even if it means having to grow more so that we share a bit with the possums, snails and chickens (YES! We now have 4 hens!) To do this I need to buy stuff. And then the garden centre or hardware store start to softly call my name, beaconing me with the lure of a different heritage tomato or frame for the cucumbers to climb or some other such object that I desire...

Greening our home and lives has cost us a bit of money! The solar panels (although they are starting to pay themselves off), buying a smaller and more fuel efficient car, installing water tanks, the garden equipment, the garden set up, plants...

And I ask myself "am I being consumerist in my attempt to be greener?"...