Of all the feedback we receive here at Natural Home, among the most frequent are reader complaints about the cost of going green. "I can't afford to be green!" "It costs thousands of dollars for solar panels, radiant heat and other alternative energy." "Shopping organic is just out of my price range!" Trust me. I'm a journalist (read, not raking in the dough). I'm with you, readers! To combat this, we try our hardest to show people who built or remodeled smaller, more affordable green homes; those who used creativity to find almost everything to build/remodel and decorate their homes from secondhand and salvaged resources; discuss ways to budget to build green; feature real readers who have to make choices about what green renovations they can make; and to talk about food gardening, CSAs, local farmer's markets and other ways to eat healthy foods on a budget.

But despite all of these choices, one idea keeps popping into my mind: Maybe it's a good thing that green is considered a luxury right now. Think about it: What makes something appealing to the masses? The idea that only the elite can have it? The fact that just about every major celebrity out there espouses their green good deeds and love for the environment?? Pretty much every technology that's considered standard today—from electricity to refrigerators to automobiles to plane travel—started off as the special domain of the elite. I think this eco-elitism is a fabulous thing for our society. Maybe the fact that green costs more is actually a WONDERFUL thing! Market prices come down; attitudes are a lot harder to change. For the first time, "going green" has left the realm of the weird, the fringe, the dirty, old, small and undesireable to...the realm of the stars! The rich and famous! The elite! And isn't that going to make everyone want it that much more? It seems to me that everything that becomes a norm starts out with the upper class, then as demand goes up, production follows and prices fall. And if this is a stage in green's conversion to mainstream, I'm all for it. (I just hope it gets to the affordable part soon!)

In the meantime, frugal greenies, being smart, informed and creative will help you do more good for the environment than Julia Roberts using biodegradable diapers. But, hey, let the celebs bring everybody onboard. You can say you knew Green before he was somebody.

With rising food prices, growing your own is a very attractive option. But, for many like me who live in apartments or townhouses, planting a garden isn't an option. But I do have a small balcony and was hoping to plant a few herbs there. One of our advertisers' cool products immediately came to mind: The Stack and Grow lets you plant a whole bunch of herbs, flowers or even strawberries in an extremely small space. Its moveable, stackable planting trays can be moved around to customize various plant sizes and it's conveniently placed on rollers so you can move it around easily.

I was lucky enough to get a bunch of herb starts from Cheryl Long, editor-in-chief of our sister publication Mother Earth News. Cheryl has a wonderful organic farm just a few miles from our office and she brought me a big tray of happy, healthy herbs: chives, garlic chives, thyme, basil, lemon balm and cilantro. Yum! We planted them and they've been growing so happily...plus they taste great! I've been eating a lot of garlic chives lately and loving it. If you don't have a gardening friend from whom you can get some starts, the company sells kits with seeds ready to grow herbs or strawberries. Otherwise, look for organic starts at your local nursery.

Growing foods is a great way to save money and to reduce the shipping costs associated with conventional foods. Even with little space, there are a ton of tools out there to help you grow a lot in a small area. Leah Gauthier is an artist creating an "installation" out of several parcels of land all around New York City...she's trying to show that even urban dwellers can provide for themselves. We will feature Leah's project in our upcoming September/October issue of Natural Home. A couple other stories come to mind on this subject:

When Scott Sanders remodeled his Washington, D.C., row house, the designer included several built-in planter boxes on the tops and sides of the patio walls to meet his gardening desires. These built-ins allow Scott to make growing room within another feature of his balcony.

And check out the absolutely incredible amount this family grows in their Pasadena yard. It's truly amazing. (Think 3 tons of food on 1/10th of an acre!!)

So, we finally found a new car last weekend! Hurray!

For the past few months, I've been looking for a more fuel-efficient car (yes, I will admit it: I've been driving a Ford Explorer for the past few years...we needed the space/were desperate when we got it and it's a sport model!), but with moving into a new place and my many recent business trips, it's continuously been put on the back burner.

Still, with rising gas prices, we—along with pretty much every other person in America— have been feeling the crunch. We car pool to work (from Lawrence to Topeka, about 25 miles each way), but it's still eating away at the budget. Plus, I'd much rather be paying my hard-earned money to a car loan than the oil companies. 

We found an 03 Passat...it's no hybrid, but its EPA rating is over 30 mpg on the highway, and it can do even better depending on how you drive (if you're looking, check out this handy site, recommended to me by reader Jeff Ganger-thanks, Jeff!). This leads me to one of my favorite features: the car tells you what gas mileage you're getting as you drive (I know a lot of cars do this, but I've never had one). 

Driving to my yoga class last night, I noticed it totally altered the way I drive..."you mean, if I lift my foot off the gas a bit, I get that much better mileage??" It seems so obvious, but I'm a lead foot. I like driving fast and zipping around! Suddenly, I  found myself accelerating more gradually, coasting more often...all the usual tips, but made much easier because I was trying to keep those MPG numbers high.

Though I'm sure this won't completely change my driving style, it definitely helps make me conscious of the way I drive and that's sure to lead to improvement.