Nature Center Celebration
Our day had an environmental focus yesterday. In the afternoon Michelle and I visited the Maplewood Nature Center for its Arbor Day celebration. We enjoyed a walk around the Nature Center paths, heard about the new purposes Wipers Recycling has found for old leather goods, bought a pound of shade-grown fair trade coffee, and came home with two trees for planting. Everyone who attended was offered a free tree to plant to celebrate the occasion; Michelle chose the swamp white oak, to complement the numerous pin oaks that already adorn our yard. We also won a drawing for another sapling, and for that Michelle without hesitation chose the pagoda dogwood.
While we were there we picked up our kit for Maplewood's Great Tree Search (info PDF). I doubt any of our yard's trees will make the #1 spot (though some of them are very tall and old), but it will be fun to measure their height and girth and make a record of them for posterity.
After we got home we even had an environmentally conscious DVD to watch — our current Netflix rental was Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It was a sobering film, but it also gives me hope — a world that successfully addressed the ozone hole can rise to this challenge as well, and a big part of the battle is just to spread the message that the problem can and must be addressed.
While we were there we picked up our kit for Maplewood's Great Tree Search (info PDF). I doubt any of our yard's trees will make the #1 spot (though some of them are very tall and old), but it will be fun to measure their height and girth and make a record of them for posterity.
After we got home we even had an environmentally conscious DVD to watch — our current Netflix rental was Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. It was a sobering film, but it also gives me hope — a world that successfully addressed the ozone hole can rise to this challenge as well, and a big part of the battle is just to spread the message that the problem can and must be addressed.
