In addition to that, this year I’m having a ‘living tree’ in my home. Rather than
cutting down a perfectly healthy tree for the purpose of a few weeks of scent and
decoration, I’m using a potted, living tree, and re-planting it in the Spring so it
survives the festive period. I tried a few years ago and the re-planting was not a
huge success… So I went on a search for tips, and discovered that I hadn’t used ‘bone
meal’ to nourish the soil. Bone Meal? I’m a vegetarian and was mortified that I had
to use a meat product to keep the soil healthy. I then came across the wonderful
vegetarian Gardening supplier in Palo Alto called ‘Common Ground’, and they have
excellent alternatives to animal based soil fertilizers (one even contains bat poop
harvested from caves!). So, next Spring I’ll be planting my Christmas Tree with
tasty, organic, meat free soil. Please, be my guest and give it a try! Happy Holidays
to you guys and our beautiful world.

Me, I love clothes – texture, colour, pattern, warmth, protection. I love garments like
I love trees and buildings, lights and leaves. But I don’t love all of them. I feel shame
at the tragedy of rails and rails of cheap, badly made clothes. There has been so
little care in their creation. Quite the opposite; there’s been low-income disrespect
for every level of workmanship; from harvesting the materials to grinding out the
stitching. We’ve all heard stories of human rights violations in sweat shops and
factories. Nowadays I can’t think about clothes without thinking about their origins.
As consumers we have an enormous amount of power in influencing the rights of
people who create our clothes.

If it’s cheap to buy, it means it was dirt cheap to produce – what are the advantages
of that other than we can change our look three times a day, and fuel our compulsive
consumer addictions? Rumour has it that some charity stores won’t even accept
some cheap high street brands because they lose their value as soon as they’re
purchased. That said, with public pressure some high street brands are now
creating capsule collections of Fairtrade clothes, this ethos should be encouraged by
us, the consumers, because one rail of Fairtrade cannot justify an entire warehouse
of factory farmed clothes!

There are a number of websites that can give you more information about how and
who has made your clothes. As Coco Chanel once said “Fashion is not something
that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with
ideas, the way we live, what is happening.”