Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day, y'all! In the paper today were inspiring stories of people who are planting trees, putting out recycling bins, exchanging their light bulbs for the "curly" kind, and a variety of other planet-saving ideas. I applaud them. I think all those ideas are great and that everyone can do each one of those things at the very minimum.

Then I read an article by an "earth" group whose spokesman came out negatively about Earth Day. (I WISH I could remember the name of the group! Unfortunately, I already recycled the newspaper that article was in. That's called "irony".) Anyway, he said every day should be Earth Day. The things we do specially for this day should be the things we're doing anyway. Earth Day, if it's to exist at all, should feature some larger, better activity that we wouldn't normally do.

I understand that thinking. I even applaud it. However, I don't want to negate the smaller things and discourage people who've never given a thought to keeping our planet healthy. For a child to put a seed in a pot, water it, watch it, and ultimately glean the results... well, that's an awesome first step. That child will hopefully grow and do more and more, maybe someday planting a kitchen garden.

For Earth Day today my children and I are going to go to the beach. We're going to meet some friends and play, but we'll also bring a few trash bags and see if we can scoop up some debris and leave our area a bit cleaner than we found it. When I was a child my mother routinely asked us to pick up three extra pieces of trash when we picnic'd or went to the beach -- she said it's always better to do a little than to do nothing.

And then we'll come home and maybe we'll put a few more seeds into our ground. We're currently growing peas, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, rosemary, mint, strawberries, blueberries, lemons and peaches. Hubby has asked for a tangerine tree! It would be fun to surprise him with one today.