Oh, April! I wrote back in September of last year about the yellows of that time of year, but April's daffodils and forsythia certainly give goldenrod and black-eyed susans good competition. The air and the ground and the water are all warming up, things are springing up left, right, and centre, and oh, it is so good!
It was Earth Day yesterday, and I drafted this post but didn't publish it last evening because I was otherwise occupied tending to a fire and sitting in the midst of thousands of peepers on a warm, summer-like evening. On my drive for work yesterday morning, I was listening to podcasts, as usual. In an old podcast from several years ago that happened to be next, Wangari Maathai was interviewed on an episode of On Being. She died in 2011, and lived a truly inspiring life. In short, she saw the connection between a lack of trees and the encroaching desert in Kenya, so she started out by planting seven trees. (Five of which died - but two survived.) And I think that's what it's so hard to remember sometimes - every movement started somewhere. Since those first seven trees, 51 BILLION trees have been planted in Kenya by the Green Belt movement which she founded. I found the whole conversation so heartening - despite all of the struggle she faced, the arrests, personal injustices, etc - she was such a strong woman doing one right thing after another in a pretty hostile environment. You can listen to the episode here.
I was thinking of ways that we can reduce our plastic consumption (the sort of thing I think of pretty regularly) and one thing that I have not yet done is to ask at our local bulk store if we can use our own jars rather than plastic bags. At some stores, they can weigh and tare your jars, which you can then fill and avoid the plastic bags. At some stores, they have policies against that, so I'm planning to stop in this week and see if that's an option at our store. I've also been working really hard to avoid plastic bags whenever I make purchases for years; if I've forgotten my bags and can carry my purchase, I just say "I don't need a bag, thanks!" and I'm on my merry way. And most of the time, I don't need one at all.
*
Along with podcasts, I've been listening to The Kinks lately, and have this song on repeat. It is SO GREAT. It's on The Darjeeling Limited soundtrack, which we have all been loving, and the boys especially like this song. And I have this one set as my morning alarm on my phone. It's perfect!
50 eggs from my flock and two other flocks are in incubators at a local school and should hatch in a few weeks if all goes according to plan! I'm hoping to add at least a dozen hens to our flock. Chicken math is a funny thing. At first glance, you might think that 60 eggs is way too many. But once you count in eggs that might not have been fertilized or may die during development (let's say 20) that leaves 40. If 40 hatch, at least 20 are likely to be roosters, which I will give away to another farm. I think 20 would be a reasonable estimate for hens that we might end up with, but who knows, there might be 35 roosters! Or 35 hens! Exciting times, however the math works out.
May the rest of your April be full of cheerful yellow blooms and love for our beautiful planet.