Celebrating Earth Day

Today was the perfect day to celebrate Earth Day (which is actually Wednesday) by planting some seeds for our new 'pot garden'. McKinley and I headed out to the patio where we donned our gardening gear and planted basil, cilantro, lettuce and chives seeds in little egg crate-like starters. The starters are super-cool because you can plant them right back into the ground without disturbing the root system and because they are made of biodegradable materials and peat. We should see the seedlings pop their little heads out by late next week.

McKinley had so much fun placing dirt in each little 'cup', then he helped me put the little tiny seeds into each plot of dirt. We covered and watered them and took the starters inside to label and keep an eye on. I wondered if it was a little early to do this, but I was proven very wrong! He was SO into everything, I thought he would be over it by the time he got the starters filled with dirt, but he kept on truckin' to the very end! I can hardly wait to see what he thinks when he sees the end result. My, wouldn't my Grandparents be so proud?!

I loved spending that time with McKinley today - it was very special. And I love the fact that we are continuing with our move toward organics. I haven't posted much about it for fear of overkill, but now is the right time for sure! We have made a lot of changes through the house in the last year, in an effort to reduce our carbon footprint. We use reusable bags for everything (except when we occasionally run low on bags for cat litter), almost every light bulb in the house is compact fluorescent (which I'm proud to say that even our first two bulbs from 2001 are STILL going strong!). We've even gone so far as to make our reno as eco-friendly as possible with the addition of new lamps made for energy efficient bulbs, using a BPA free shower curtain liners (which aren't stinky like their non-eco-friendly brothers!) and new carpeting made from recycled plastic bottles. The carpet is so cool - you cannot tell it's made from old plastic!

The best part of our footprint-reducing efforts to me is that I know my family is getting much less of the harmful hormones and preservatives put into many foods. If we can buy it organically, we do. I feel good about what we are doing and Cary and I continue to educate ourselves on easy ways to make this happen.

Something else has made an impact on our lives too - recycling. Full. On. Recycling. We have always recycled aluminum because it was easy - even when I was a kid, this is what we always did. But back in July, on McKinley's birthday I decided I'd had enough. Our son was blessed with so many wonderful tokens of love from so many wonderful people, but I didn't want to bless the landfills with all that non-biodegradable cardboard. So, we checked around and found a wonderful thing that's been going on forever around here, with little publicity - ISU recycling center. Now, since that hot day in July we have been recycling aluminum, cardboard, plastic, glass, newspaper, magazines and batteries.

Happy Earth Day to everyone, hope you can all find a small way to impact our environment too.

Lynn