What is the best way we can celebrate Earth Day? Celebrations, planting trees and cleaning up rubbish are all a big part of this day. The environment seems to be on our minds more often but we are still needing to do more on a daily basis. It’s important to have one day where we all take notice.

Perhaps one of the best ways to appreciate the importance of caring for our environment is by taking some time during this day and paying attention to our own corner of the world.

Head Outside

So many of us go from our house to our car to the office to turn around and make the same trip home and may not have the time to really notice our surroundings or even spend any time outside. Can we really appreciate this planet we call home if we have so little connection with nature?

How about this? On Earth Day walk your neighborhood and enjoy spring in it’s full glory.

As you are walking pay attention. Is it garbage day? Just a weekly occurrence but just how much trash is on the curb for the houses or apartment buildings around you? Keep in mind that’s one weeks worth in one small section of the city multiplied by 52 weeks for however many years.

Perhaps it’s such a nice day that it has motivated everyone to do a little spring cleaning or yard work. So many of our outdoor tasks use water. It never seems like we use very much but as you look around do you see ways it could be used more wisely or maybe even a way a job could be done without it.

Do you live near water? For all the beauty that is usually found around bodies of water if we look more closely what do you see? Do you see garbage lying around? Has someone used it to dump junk or toxic stuff? Have Styrofoam cups and other kinds of plastic garbage floated in to shore?

A walk on a even a well maintained trail almost always turns up plastic water bottles or a plastic shopping bag stuck in a tree somewhere. We can’t escape it. City, suburb, country, no matter where we live we can see the effects of man and woman both good and bad on the world around us.

You get the idea. When we live in an area it becomes easy to overlook the problems. We become accustomed to doing things the same or seeing the same things everyday and sometimes we just don’t see them anymore. But with a fresh awareness you may look around and begin thinking how am I contributing to this? What can I do to start to improve things and then do something.

Right now finding the resources to help us make changes are plentiful. This Earth Day, by just bringing our awareness to problems within our own neighborhood we can begin to do our part in making sure our kids will be able to enjoy the wonder and beauty of this small planet.

It starts with us.

Losing Continents

Climate change scientists tell us what we may lose in the future. Already they reckon the ozone hole is as large as Antarctica.

I learned from my gardening teacher, Klaus Lautenberger, that we have lost soil the size of North America. We lose it through wind and rain. Remember the Grapes of Wrath? John Steinbeck’s classic told the economic and personal dislocation experienced by the climate catastrophe experienced in the American Midwest during the Great Depression of the early 1930s.

One of my fellow students exclaimed, “But then soil is more costly then oil!”

Yes, soil is precious. In Ireland we have lost a huge amount through lashing rain and bellowing wind. We use wind turbines to create renewable energy quite efficiently here in the Northwest. After a heavy rain the streams are brown with the soil that is getting washed away. Because Ireland is the most heavily deforested country in Europe we lose even more because we don’t have trees to help anchor the soil.

Whether it is the prairies or the wind-blasted Northwest of Ireland, what I keep coming round to are trees. We really need more trees. We can help deter soil erosion with them. We can carbon offset with them. They create beautiful green lungs to combat air pollution.

Growing our own vegetables is good in terms of reducing food miles and getting us to eat our five a day for health. The veggie scraps help create compost, which creates the organic matter we need to keep soil healthy and productive. But we need to also plan in trees into any planting scheme. Rowans and certain dessert apples or plums are quite happy in smaller gardens. Really small gardens can sport acers and dwarf Japanese weeping cherry trees.

If you really have no space at all try growing a lemon tree from a pip. You need to make a terrarium. Get a shallow wide-mouthed jar and put a few drainage pebbles at the bottom; fill it up with seed growing compost. Take a couple pips from an unwaxed, preferably organic lemon. Put them in the compost and then cover the top with some cling film. Or pop it into a sandwich bag. Put it on a sunny, south-facing window sill and wait. Be patient. Check for any signs of germination. Once the leaf has broken though the surface you can take off the cling film top. It will still need to stay dampish but don’t get too frisky with the watering. Once there is the ‘true’ leaf - two or three leaves formed - transfer it to a plant pot. With care and warm, keeping it out of cold drafts in winter, you will watch your lemon plant go from strength to strength. It will take a few years for it to flower and fruit but the leaves always have the most delicious clean, citrus scent.