Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!  Today is the one day a year EVERYONE thinks about Mother Earth.  In our house “everyday is earth day”.  I know that sounds so cheesy but it’s the truth.  Everything we do, everything we eat, everything we buy, every decision we make we think about how that will affect our environment.  It’s not forced, it’s just who and how we are. 

So for this earth day I wanted to share our passion about the Grand Dame herself,  and we decided to spearhead Earth Day at Ryder’s school.  We had been wanting to put in a drip system for the garden and for their flower area – the teachers have so much on their minds with caring for our children that we figured if they didn’t have to worry about watering the plants everyday it would be helpful and it would help the plants survive.  I think it’s such a wonderful experience for children to have gardens in their environment.  It is so important for them to see where their food comes from.  Ryder learns about gardening at our house, but I really like the idea of him having this at his school as well and I wanted the other children to learn about the benefits of growing your own food and the sense of accomplishment.  This is a great way to teach healthy eating habits – without forcing it down their throats (literally).  

So we sent out an email asking for volunteers and we had such a wonderful response from the other families.  It was a lot of hard work but it was all worth it.  A couple of the parents said they were very grateful to be learning about running drip irrigation and about the different plants and techniques that we were using.  This made me so happy to know that they would be bringing this knowledge home to their families.  THIS is what it’s about. 

Lots of weeding and working the soil before we could have fun with the plants.

We planted a lot of California Native Plants – to teach about using native plants and drought tolerant plants.  We are trying upside down tomatoes.  This is my first time doing it – so we’ll see how it goes – I have read a lot of great things about growing tomatoes this way and I thought the kids would get a kick out of this as well. 

It was a scorching hot day, but we all pulled together and worked hard and had fun.  The kids were really into helping too. 

Earth Day isn’t only about doing things for the earth – it’s about coming together as a community and building a better community.  If you care about the community and feel like a part of the community you will be more apt to keeping that community clean and really care about it. 

It was such a wonderful day – I can’t wait for next year – I have sooooo many ideas! 

What are you doing to honor Mother Earth?  What kind of community activities where you and your family involved in?  I would love to hear about other Earth Day festivities.