Today is Earth Day!

I sincerely hope that you are planning to do something positive for our planet today. At work, employees were asked to wear green in support of earth day. As a reward, we were allowed to wear jeans. I'm happy that most of us are wearing green today (along with the company sponsored green "Mardi Gras" beads. . . that were made in China) but I question whether or not any of us will be doing anything differently today, or any other day.

As I've probably mentioned, we have replaced nearly every lightbulb in our house with CFL bulbs. Yes, they do take a little while to warm up, but only a few seconds. Their light is just a bright as a standard bulb.

We've planted a garden, and a pretty large one at that. Dana wanted to start from seed this year, so we've ordered A LOT of organic seed. We saved egg cartons this winter to use them to start the plants. Dana ingeniously made little greenhouses out of them. It worked really well and you can see some decent sized tomato plants in this picture.

We also plan to purchase some chickens. Katie is REALLY excited about this and wanted to name them. I told her we could not name them because we were going to eat them. I don't want her to think of them as pets. Dana is working on a chicken coop. And guess what? He's doing this with re-claimed wood, right from our barn! There's a ton of good wood out there, no need to buy more. He took part of the old manger and will use that as a roost. I'll try to get a picture of that to post. He's also planning to use some of this wood to make a coffee table and an outdoor table.
I felt guilty the other day because I didn't get a chance to pack my lunch for work. I drove to Burger King and sat in the drive through while my car ran the entire time. I suppose at the very least I should stop using the drive through!

We're also planning to set up rain barrells and collect the rain from the tool shed roof. Also in the barn are some huge, old field tiles that Dana is going to fashion into rain barrells. He's so smart. . . that's why I married him. I only wish this project was done since we've been having so much rain lately.

We've also been watching "Living with Ed" on planet green. That's an entertaining show. But Ed said something one day that really struck me. He commented that it's not a pass/fail in going green. And he's right. Even if you're only doing one thing (I'd like to see you do more) at least you're doing something! I told Dana last night that we may not be able to change the world, but at least we're making an effort. We're doing our best to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem. I'm hoping that by me writing this blog, I'll inspire just one of you to make an effort to reduce your carbon footprint.

And finally, you may have noticed that I'm following a new blog - True North. I stumbled on this last week from an article that I was reading on my phone. You might want to check them out. There's a link to the article in their April 16 post.

Tell me, what are you doing today to protect the earth?