7 Quick Takes - Earth Day Edition

A big thank you to Kelly at her blog for hosting this (belated) edition of Quick Takes!

I loved being a child of the '70s. It was just an awesome decade to grow up in. I wore sundresses and bell-bottoms and had long hair. In elementary school, we learned all about energy conservation and had long recesses. Neighborhood kids played outside (a lot) while our mothers were inside, trying to figure out how to make things like soybean patties and homemade granola. At Christmas time, very few neighbors hung lights on their homes, and when they did, we were amazed at how much electricity they were wasting. We took short showers and waited in long lines at the gas station. We grew up with Woodsy Owl, who told us to "Give a hoot. Don't pollute," and the crying Indian commercial. Being concerned about the environment didn't make you a liberal or a democrat or a hippie or a tree hugger. It made you an ordinary citizen.

So, I suppose it's only natural that I think Earth Day is a good thing. A product of the '70s (April 22, 1970, to be exact), Earth Day was intended to be a celebration of the one thing we all have in common...namely, this planet we all share... and a call-to-arms to take care of it. If it goes down the tubes, we all go down with it, kinda like the Titanic. Unfortunately, people like me now must bear the many labels that go with being concerned about our natural environment. Caring for the environment, like so many other issues, has become highly politicized and polarized. It makes me long for the 1970s again, when at least we could all agree on something.

Anyhow, I wanted to share a few of the things my family is doing this week in honor of Earth Day. I hope maybe it inspires others to consider getting in on the act as well.  Just be forewarned. Someone might call you a hippie. Or a granola-cruncher. It's okay. You're in pretty good company.

1. Go Outside

I know. Sounds like a no-brainer. But seriously, I wonder how many people, especially school kids, will spend this entire week indoors?  Walking to and from the car doesn't count! So, if you do nothing else this week, just take a little extra time to go outside. Find a park, playground, or just your backyard, and spend some time in it. Go for a hike or maybe just sit in the sun. It's all good! We went for a hike yesterday to an old fire lookout tower in a park near our home. My son got to learn about history and conquer his fear of heights plus fill his lungs with some fresh air.  Win win!

2. Look at the Moon

This year, Earth Day coincides with the full moon.  My boys and their dad just love to sit outside and stargaze. They look for airplanes and satellites and shooting stars and when the moon is full, they love to look through binoculars at it. Odds are, this Friday night, weather-permitting, we'll be checking out the full moon again. And if you live in an area where the light pollution is bad, check out some of the parks nearby.  Several parks have stargazing programs for the public. Or perhaps you could visit a planetarium, or take a drive out to the countryside and find a place to stargaze. It's always humbling to look up and remember just how small we really are.

3. Feed the Hummingbirds

The ruby-throated hummingbirds showed back up here this past week and we were so excited! It always feels like the return of a long-missed friend when the summer birds return, especially the hummingbirds. We rushed to get our feeder up so that they will set up housekeeping in our backyard.  My son was so excited that he hurriedly designed and built his own hummingbird feeder and then hung it on his bicycle. He was so proud of his handiwork! Those hummingbirds will have to be pretty quick to catch that feeder!

4. Plant something

We are planting potatoes this week, but you can plant anything for Earth Day. Weather still too cold to plant in the garden? How about picking or buying a few fresh flowers for the home?  Or perhaps taking a field trip to a local plant nursery and buying herbs for the kitchen? Just one flower or green thing can go a long ways towards lifting the spirit.

5. Backyard Camping

We went camping this weekend. In the backyard. About 20 yards from our house. It was wonderful. I love "real" camping but I hate hate hate getting all the "stuff" ready to go camping. So, I get around the latter by advocating for backyard camping. Pitching the tent in the backyard saves me lots and lots and lots of time and effort and the kids still love it. They still get to sleep in a tent and eat s'mores and I still get to use an indoor restroom and take a shower and keep my sanity. I highly recommend it.

6. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle

I know, this one is pretty obvious too. But perhaps you are like me and didn't quite get around to giving some stuff away to charity for Lent. Why not do it for Earth Day? Every piece of clothing or item that gets reused by someone else reduces manufacturing and consumption by just a teeny little bit. We'll be cleaning out our winter closet this week, so it's a great time to consider reducing, reusing or recycling a lot of what we've got.

7. Eat Some Dandelions

Okay, so this one will definitely get you labeled a hippie.  But seriously, don't knock it 'til you try it. I have always known that dandelions are edible (and very nutritious) but didn't realize just how yummy they can be until I tried this recipe. We loved them so much, we've picked every dandelion we can find on our property and made three batches! It makes a great little appetizer and is fun for the kids. You might actually be able to get them to eat something healthy this way.

So how are you planning to celebrate Earth Day?  I'd love to hear your ideas or stories. As a friend of mine once said, "There's a little bit of hippie in all of us." I like to believe he was right.

Happy Earth Day!

My Birthday Bouquet

It’s April!  And Easter! And Spring!  Alleluia!

I love this time of year, not as much as I love autumn, but springtime is definitely a close second.  Perhaps if I didn’t suffer from an annual spring allergy each year, which always leaves me feeling miserable for about a week, or until it rains, whichever comes first, I’d love springtime more than autumn.  But for now, autumn takes the prize.

Of course, it doesn’t exactly feel like spring here yet.  I begrudgingly built another fire in the wood stove this morning, and most of the garden is still under plastic, and the spring warblers are only beginning to make an appearance.  We’ll have snow flurries this weekend, they say, and then another warm-up.  Most likely, if the forecast holds true, we’ll lose our apple crop, peach crop, pear crop and perhaps the acorn and hickory crop in the next forty-eight hours.  If not, it’ll have been a close call.  If so, it was bound to happen, considering the fact that we enjoyed a bumper crop last year.  As with all things, not every year brings every blessing, yet somehow, we still end up with enough.

I’m a spring baby, with a birthday that usually coincides with the sneezing and sniffles of my springtime allergy, and this year did not disappoint.  Right on schedule, I said goodbye to another year lived, and welcomed the next one with a handkerchief and some antihistamines. So, I suppose my husband thought I’d lost my mind when he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and my response was “to go see wildflowers.”  I figured if I was going to be miserable, I might as well be miserable doing something I love, and it takes more than a runny nose to keep me inside when I know the dead leaves on the forest floor are giving way to a carpet of color. 

So we hit the trails and wandered through the woodlands of the Cumberland Plateau and Kentucky River Palisades in search of the birthday bouquet that God had prepared just for me.

Of course, it’s not just for me. I simply say that because I believe that every small beauty or good thing that comes to me is given to me by a God who loves me.  But certainly not only me. 

The natural world and all its beauty is for all of us, yet God makes it so grand that each of us can find the opportunity to see one particular wildflower or watch one particular sunset and believe it was made just for us.

Because God is like that.

He can create a universe and still manage to give each of us our own star to look upon.  He can create a forest and give us each our own wildflower to admire. 

I guess that’s why I love the natural world so much.  Because it’s easy for me to feel privileged and blessed when I look upon a wildflower and know that I am the only one who sees it at that moment and perhaps, ever will see it. 

That particular flower, at that particular moment, feels like it was made just for me, and perhaps, for the bumblebees.

In a world that craves self-acclamation and validation, it is comforting to know that such self-worth can be found in a wildflower.

After all, it’s hard not to feel like part of the elite when we are the only apparent witness to so much natural beauty.

And yet, the tragedy is that nearly every natural beauty on our earth has no appreciative witness, other than perhaps the angels and God himself.

But I suspect that for God, that is more than enough. 

And when I think of God in that context, it really does not seem all that surprising that the most beautiful things he gives to us are things that we would never even notice if we didn’t make the effort to see them.

Birthdays can be like that; when time feels like an enemy, a birthday can hardly be seen as a blessing. My birthday has often felt like that. Waiting to be a mother to children who never come has often made my birthdays feel like a mile marker along an empty trail barren of wildflowers.  I saw no beauty in being another year older.

But the truth is, God does not leave anything barren. Even the most empty, desolate-appearing desert has life just below its surface, waiting for the rain or for the coolness of night to fall before it can make its appearance. 

And as I celebrate another year, I realize more than before that even when my life looks the most empty, the most barren, God is planting wildflowers along my trail.

And they will bloom... 

...when the season is right.

7 Quick Takes - Leap Year Edition

Linking up with Kelly over at her blog for another Quick Takes.  Thank you, Kelly!

--1--

Considering I haven't done a Quick Takes since November (yikes!), it seemed like perhaps this would be a good time. Blogging has taken a backseat lately for a few reasons, mostly thanks to homeschooling, plus the final farewell our boys made to naps. Simultaneous napping was the only thing that saved my sanity (and this blog) for the past few years, and I am really missing it. However, considering we had a good five-year run, I know that I was luckier than most mothers searching for a mid-day sanity break. John still naps occasionally, but Joah is over it for good. Not surprising, considering he started to resist at around age three, but we powered through that and got another good year and a half in before I decided it was time to throw in the towel. Ah, nap time...may you RIP.

--2--

Before moving on to what's happened around here this past month, I'll back up to January, which can best be summed up with these photos:

For hire. Cheap.

Things were really looking up around here, as far as the weather was concerned, until January rolled around. We'd been on record for having one of the mildest winters yet, and I was even harvesting broccoli and greens at the end of December. The daffodils were four inches tall, and the buds on the maple trees were starting to swell. It was delightful but also, a bit disconcerting. Thankfully, nature always seems to find a counterbalance before things get too carried away, and sure enough, by the end of January, we were under 14 inches of snow with temperatures around zero. The snow was so deep, the boys couldn't walk in it, so we were forced to stay indoors most of the time, which really made the cabin fever set in. But, I am happy to report that we are survivors of yet another Snowmageddon, and the daffodils and maple trees have been put back in their rightful place and will now be blooming in a few weeks, right on schedule.

--3--

February has been a whirlwind month for celebrating feasts and liturgical days around here. In one week, we had two birthdays, St.Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday. My head started spinning as I tried to prepare for all three. But before all that, we celebrated Candlemass. I kept that one pretty simple by just putting all the candles in the house on a mantle with a few flowers and lighting them after sunset. It was actually very pretty, but I did have a hard time convincing the boys that no, we are not expecting the power to go out, and no, we are not under a tornado warning. So, something might have gotten a little lost in translation this year regarding the significance of Candlemass.

--4--

Anyhow, coming back to birthdays...Joah had a great one. We had a houseful of family and he was all smiles. His request this year was for a peanut butter cake with a blue car on it. So, I did my best to accommodate. Unfortunately, my baking powder was less accommodating, so the cake was actually more like a cookie, but Joah loved it none-the-less.  I'm sure it is obvious that I just winged the design; cake decorating is not my charism, but if anyone out there is looking for a cake design to promote strip mining, mountain top removal, or overall environmental destruction, feel free to pin this one.

--5--

Speaking of things environmental, like last year, we spent another weekend holed up in our house, looking out the window at Snowmageddon, and counting birds at our busy feeder as we participated in the Great Backyard Bird Count.

I even made some bird cookies to commemorate the event.  Can anyone guess what bird this is?  It's okay if you can't; my husband couldn't either (reference my cake decorating skills above).

Anyhow, I really tried to promote this citizen survey project this year by sharing the information with all my social media friends. Last year, we had three people from our county participate. This year, my goal was to get that number up to five. When I last checked the county results, we had one participant. Me. Needless to say, environmental activism is not my strong suit. But if any of you reading this did participate, let me just say that the birds and I thank you. We need more people like you. Lots more.

--6--

Another significant event this past month that deserves a round of thank yous to all my dedicated readers is my blogiversary! Two years and counting. It really has flown by. I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote my first blog post (which, when I read it now, sounded oh so lame). Hopefully, time has improved my blogging skills, and for those of you who visit me here, thank you. I am very humbled that anyone takes the time to read even a little about my ordinary life in the backwoods. And a special shout out to Our Lady of Lourdes, whose feast day is my blogiversary, which I only realized in hindsight after starting this blog. Now, I know who all the credit goes to! Anything good that comes out of this blog is thanks to her. Hopefully, she will help me find a way to keep blogging now that nap time is a thing of the past.

--7--

And speaking of Our Lady, now that it is Lent, one of my goals is to say the rosary every day. Most days, I get it done in the wee hours of the morning, after my husband goes to work but before my boys get out of bed. But when that doesn't work, I have discovered that saying the rosary makes a pretty good cadence when walking. If I take a step on every third or fourth syllable, I can get a short, brisk workout in. The cadence works pretty well during the Our Father and Hail Mary's, although the creed is a little trickier, so I say that part during my warm up, and the Hail Holy Queen is a good one for the cool down. I'm guessing I'm not the first one to discover this, but thought it might be worth sharing in case other folks are like me and struggle with walking and chewing gum at the same time, if ya know what I mean.

--Bonus--

The elusive wood frog.

And in honor of our bonus day that we get this coming week, here's a little leap day trivia.  Did you know that if we didn't have leap years, in 100 years, we would lose 24 days on our calendar? It's all because it takes the earth just a little more than 365 days to circumnavigate the sun, so every four years, we have to add a day just to compensate. So basically, leap day gives us the chance to get caught up with the rest of our galaxy, which is somewhat reassuring in a strange way.   Plus, who couldn't use an extra day every so often? A nice little gift, thanks to our solar system. I personally think it should be a paid day off for everyone!  Maybe one of our presidential candidates could adopt that as part of their platform??  In the meantime, I guess you could say that it's a good reminder that we are all part of something much greater than ourselves, and it is best to stay in sync.

Have a great weekend but don't forget to check out Kelly's blog for everyone else's Quick Takes.  Thank you, Kelly!