What you can do TODAY:
April 22nd, 2011. Yup, it's Earth Day. A time to look carefully at our distant planet with new eyes, whether it's stuffing a chicken wire armature of a polar bear with plastic bags or picking up the trash from the mass of zoo visitors we encountered today. It's been a "Party for the Planet" at Roger Williams Park and Zoo. Monday I gleaned a lot of info on more local farms, including those that do school visits, have chick hatchery kits, and take orders for lamb. We took home a tomato plant and made it a nice home in this year's crop rotation of the raised beds. We talked to a woman about vermi-composting and Autumn later found a huge night crawler while I talked to another woman about pruning apple trees. There was a lot more useful information (for me, anyway) on Monday than today, but still, fun both times. I even got two activity books focusing on different local insects.
The real joy was asking my students to help turn the compost at school that had been sitting untouched for two months and mostly consisted of fruit. Besides the ick factor (a properly balanced compost should not be slimy and smelly, but there's only so many dried leaves around to add to the buckets of orange and banana peels and apple and pear cores), we made an exciting discovery. The kids were already amazed by every single worm we found, as well as the pillbugs, millipedes, centipedes, soldier beetles, mites, spiders, and gnats. But at the very bottom of the barrel appeared several black beetles with yellow spots. I thought they might be pleasing fungus beetles, but a quick Google image search revealed they were actually picnic beetles. I made the announcement on the intercom to all my helpers, explaining they were attracted to rotting fruit and that was just fine in the compost heap, but not in an orchard. I'm so glad that despite the prevalence of video games and obnoxious movies and the occasional spider squished by a squeamish student, the kids are really appreciating how we're all part of this web. Earth Day isn't balloons and cheap toys, but looking under a log, smelling the spring air, identifying a bird, and sharing your discovery with a friend.
One final note: Using a reusable bag is but one step preventing manufacturing pollution and landfill mass. Keep reusable bags in your car at all times. Organize your outings by bag to save time: the school bag, the sports bag, the grocery/farmer's market bag(s), the library bag, the craft bag, the evening class bag, the poetry reading bag, etc. I keep mine organized in the breezeway, so instead of looking all over the house for something, I just grab my "Monday Night" bag and go. Just don't ask me about the contents of my purse...
Next step: mesh bags for produce shopping, instead of the plastic ones. Have them inside the grocery bags and you won't have to think about them until you're picking out your baby zucchini. Find mesh bags here.
Happy Earth Day, everyone!
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