The second thing the showers are providing is cleansing of the air of our "springtime slime". It's everywhere! It's mainly pine pollen, it's flourescent yellow, it gets on everything and it's nasty. That's not a glare on my table (below), that is pollen...see the square where the wrapper was laying? And those pollen footprints are in lieu of snow prints. After I took these photos, Ken powerwashed the deck and tried to get rid of some of it so we could sit outside without feeling like we needed a shower ourselves. YUCK!
We are trying to be better about conserving water and energy and be good stewards of our environment...and save some money as well. In addition to swapping out all of our light bulbs to compact flourescents and installing water-saving devices on the toilets and faucets, we have 2 rain barrels in which we reclaim water. Ken started a raised-bed, organic garden (below, right) and is currently growing stawberries and lettuce, but will add tomatoes and squash and maybe some other goodies. He and Joe planted a clove of garlic to see what would happen and it's about a foot tall! Ken has managed to invent a sprinker system for watering his garden from the rain barrel by installing a pump in the bottom of one of the barrels and then hooking the hoses to it. There are about 4 other really important steps in there that he also did to get that to work, but I don't understand and I'm sure if you were really curious, he'd be more than happy to explain it to you!!!!
It's alot of fun to watch the flowers bloom, now that we found a spray to prevent the deer from eating them, and the 'forest' fill in in the back yard. The birds are back and flocking to the feeders. I'm still waiting for my hummingbirds, though. We didn't really have a winter, so I feel a little guilty saying we're ready for spring...but we are. Have a great day! 
