Happy Holidays

It's been quite some time since our last post. Despite the best of intentions, Fall 2009 has flown by. We've welcomed a new member to our household - Miles Richard Holden, born November 24. He's healthy, has a full head of hair (still has not fallen out after 4 weeks), and has an expanding lung and vocal capacity with each day that passes.

With 2010 just around the corner we want express our gratitude to all of you who have continuously participated and helped with the neighborhood recycling program since its inception in Spring 2009. I don't have any way to measure the quantity of materials that have been transported to the Wetumpka Recycling Center, but each of our bi-weekly Saturday collections fills the back of my truck with paper, cardboard, plastic, cans, and newspapers.

As a reminder, this Saturday, December 26, there will be no pick up because of the holidays and the fact that the Wetumpka Recycling Center is closed. However, we will resume our regular bi-weekly pick up service on January 9, 2010. I hope that the New Year will bring increased opportunities for recycling and continued growth in community involvement in Grand Ridge Forest.

If you have yet to get in the habit of separating your recyclable items from your normal trash for the bi-weekly pickup please consider making a new effort in 2010. There's nothing like a New Year's resolution that has no cost and benefits so many.

Happy Holidays,

DJ, Mara, Eli and Miles

Special Thanks to our Neighbor Ramona!!!

This past Saturday, June 27, we had to be out of town for work and our neighbor Ramona and her family jumped in to collect the recycling. We really appreciate the help and hope that there were many participants over the weekend. It's great to know we live in a place where people are willing to lend a helping hand and that a quick phone call is all that it takes. (On a side note, it could be a worthwhile project to collect names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of those who would like to participate in a neighborhood directory. Please make comment about this idea and your thoughts on whether or not you would like to participate.)

Next weekend is the 4th of July and we will, again, be out of town for this festive occasion. We hope that everyone has a great 4th and if anyone has any local gatherings they would like to invite others in the neighborhood to please let us know and we can make a posting regarding the event.

Please don't forget that the dates for summer recycling pick up are listed in the blog posting below. Our next pick up date is Saturday, July 11th. Also, you can still sign up to receive email notifications about when the blog is updated. Just send an email to GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com and let us know that you would like to be added to the mailing list.

Have a great week and a great July 4th weekend!

DJ, Mara, and Eli

Upcoming Dates for Summer 2009

It's sad to say but I'm grossly behind in posting and working on neighborhood activities. If you or your family are like us the summer time - with its excessive heat and humidity, necessary yard work, and increasing travel schedule - is anything but a slower time of the year. Despite this fact we still see good participation from residents in Grand Ridge Forest every other week when it comes to recycling.

Below you will find the dates for recycling pick up throughout the rest of the summer months, but before I get to that a few comments on important things to remember and potential actions to take:

Almost everyone who participates in the recycling efforts of the neighborhood does so according to the guidelines that we outlined in an earlier post (see below). However, a few have forgotten some important details.

• The recycling center will not accept glass. We've looked into alternatives for this but at this point glass is not an option. Please refrain from including glass in your bags.
• Items must be separated into like kind containers (preferably bags or boxes that can be left at the recycling center). This means a single bag with plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and paper materials is not ok. Please help us to make the recycling efforts effective and beneficial by not putting all of your recycling items in one bag. At the end of the day it means that we have to sort through your bags to separate the plastic, paper, and aluminum - not a fun task.
• Please use plastic bags or boxes that are sealed well and can be left at the recycling center. At this point it is too complicated to try to remember who has bags or containers that need to be returned.

If we can work together to follow these simple guidelines and continue to recycle the items that are acceptable by the City of Wetumpka Recycling Center this will greatly improve the efforts we are making. I wish I had a good estimate on the amount of goods we have recycled in the last few months (don't have any way to measure the weight), but each Saturday that we've gathered bags curbside by your homes we've ended up with a truck bed full of items. I think this is a great accomplishment in the short time we've all been working on this.

I'd like to urge you to consider making our efforts even greater. Take a few minutes to sign up for email updates at GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com and speak to your neighbors and friends about participating if they are not already. We would love to see the demand for recycling increase to a level that it needs to be done weekly or we have to make multiple trips to gather all of the goods. Chat with a neighbor during the weekend or an evening and remind them of our efforts and ask them to submit and email to receive occasional updates about recycling and other neighborhood activities. Without a doubt a friendly face can make more of an impact than a flier, email, or sign on the side of the road.

If you have suggestions for moving forward additional projects or gatherings please jump in an make yourself heard. We would love to see someone who has a desire to help coordinate a neighborhood event, visit neighbors on their street to collect email addresses, or help organize other activities that we could do to get better acquainted with one another.

I hope to write again soon, but for now here are the dates for upcoming recycling pickup. All days are Saturday and the time for pick up is around 10:00 AM.

• June 27
• July 11
• July 25
• August 8
• August 22

Best Regards to Everyone,

DJ, Mara, and Eli

Second Recycling Pickup

Just another reminder that we will be picking up recycling again this Saturday, May 2nd at 10:00 am. If you have any questions about what can be recycled please read the post below. Thanks to all who have participated. We are looking forward to  another successful recycling Saturday!

First Week's Success

Thanks to everyone for your posts, comments, and participation last Saturday. The first week of recycling pick up was a success! I drove to the Wetumpka Recycling Center and easily got our multiple bags into the hands of the experts. I've noticed that the simple act of doing this has already caused me to be more aware of the items that I normally throw away. I'm now saving all newspapers, printer paper, and the endless piles of junk mail that we receive to take on the next round of recycling.

A few notes on what we saw during the day.

• Everyone who participated did an excellent job of keeping like kind items separated and as far as I could tell no one included anything that the recycling center could not accept.



• I did write down a list of what they will regularly accept at the recycling center:

All Paper: News Paper, Printer Paper, Magazines, etc.

Aluminum Products

Steel Cans

Plastic #1 and #2

Ni-Cad Batteries

Cardboard

• However, the Wetumpka Recycling Center will not accept the following:

Glass and Styrofoam

In addition, after reading over comments on the blog and emails I think there are probably a few things we should do sooner than later while we still have nice weather.

1. Let's consider another neighborhood cookout. I know May is often a busy time for families with children getting out of school so if these dates are not good we can move this out to a later time. However, once the summer begins it's often much harder to catch people when they are not traveling or on vacation. I'm assuming that weekends are better for most people so how about either Saturday May 9 or May 16. We're open to suggestions on where and how to do this so please email if you are a great host/party planner or a whiz on the grill and we can start to coordinate our efforts. GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com



2. This could be discussed at the cookout but I hear many people interested in the idea of an entrance sign. I have always been disappointed that we do not have something in place. I have been informed that there are legal issues that would require a neighborhood wide collective effort and agreement to move forward on gaining access to a small piece of property to install a sign. This is something that any legal experts in our neighborhood as well as real estate professionals could help us to better understand.

Please keep in mind that our next recycling pick up date is scheduled for May 2. Same idea as last time, feel free to leave any of the above mentioned items on your curb in separate bags and we'll pick them up between 9:30 and 10:00 AM. If you have any neighbors who missed out on the first week or who have not yet gotten involved in the conversation here please encourage them to do so.

As always questions, comments, and ideas are most welcome. We would like to build a mailing list of those who are interested so that we can send email reminders or notifications when the blog is updated or to inform people about upcoming events. If you would be willing to share your email address for this purpose please simply send an email to GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com and state in the subject something like "sign me up to receive updates". I can assure you that your email will not be abused or sold to any advertising agencies.

Hope to see and meet some of you out and about over the weekend.

All the Best,

DJ, Mara, and Eli Holden

Welcome to Grand Ridge Forest Community Blog

We are delighted to bring this blog together and hope that it can serve as a connecting place for those of us who live in Grand Ridge Forest. Please look around the blog for information about local activities, links to various news and weather reports, and a few additional fun items.

By now you should have received a brief letter from us, the Holden's, explaining a little about ourselves and a project to help our neighborhood have a simple method to begin a recyling program. We will start picking up any bagged recyclable products on Saturday, April 18, 2009. This is in conjunction with the City of Wetumpka's Earth Day recycling efforts. Please place items in separate bags (plastics, papers, aluminum cans) in the same spot you would place your garbage can. We will drive around the neighborhood picking up bags starting at about 10:00 AM. The plan is to begin this on a bi-weekly basis and if the need grows we will consider doing it weekly. Anyone else who would like to participate or help in this effort please feel free to comment or send an email to the link below.

This is a beginning for things to come, new people to meet, and creating a forum for ideas, needs, opportunities, and events. We all live within a few blocks of one another and with a little imagination and discussion I'm sure we can come up with additional ways to benefit our neighborhood together.

Please feel free to post comments, questions, ideas, thoughts, or any suggestions you would like to on this blog. We've added a brief list of ideas (right hand column beneath the quote for the day) that could be of interest to some people. We would appreciate if you would indicate any of the items on the list that you think could be beneficial and please feel free to comment and add more.

You can also sign up to receive emails when the Grand Ridge Forest Community Blog has been updated by sending an email to GrandRidgeForest@gmail.com.