I am doing a combo post this week for Weekend Snapshot and Nature Notes. Saturday was Earth Hour and this was my second year participating. I decided to expand my participation and not use any lights during the afternoon on through the earth hour until 9:30 pm. It made me realize that I'm ready for a break in the rainy weather. Since it was rainy and dark all day Saturday I was ready for some light by the time I turned them on at 9:35 pm.I didn't think I'd ever grow tired of rain after the 2007/2008 drought we dealt with where I live, but I was thrilled to see a break in the clouds on Sunday. We have had a very wet March. I think what I'm missed the most is natural light. I took the shot below this morning when I saw some blue in the sky. I was surprised to see that even the oak trees are starting to show signs of new life since they are one of the later trees to do that. Everything smells so fresh and clean from the rainy week but there has been so much rain there is a whiff of decaying matter mixed in with the more pleasant spring smells. Of course decaying matter will be adding nutrients which is good. Saturday when we had a few moments without rain falling, I darted out to shoot my first tulip of the year. I didn't even know that they had begun to emerge much less bloom, until I spotted this one when the white daffodils were beat down by the rain. As a matter of fact, when I first spotted the red above the white from my window, I thought it was a pair of cardinals. Below is a shot I took of a brown thrasher surrounded by the fresh rose foliage. I haven't spotted any rose buds yet but the boughs of my climbing roses are leafing out. On Friday, I drove through my neighborhood in the rain to snap some shots of the trees which are bursting into bloom every where I look. I knew that the rain was going to beat down a lot of the blossoms so I wanted to snap them while I could. I was correct about that because in addition to rain we had fierce winds and a tornado warning. A tornado did touch down outside of town but I don't think anyone was hurt.Most years, I walk around my neighborhood daily in the spring and photograph the changes surrounding me. However, this year the rain hasn't made that practical but it dawned on me that I could do something similar in my car and roll down the window for shots. Even on dark, rainy days, the cheerful blossoms of spring brighten up my natural world. The birds do too with their constant chatter. I can also spy on the bathing beauties in their bird bath from my deck door.I guess this is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up with one last shot. The azaleas are budding out earlier than ever, or it seems like that. I hope we don't get a hard freeze because I have too many azaleas to cover and some are twelve feet tall, as I let my azaleas go wild. April 15 is our average last freeze date but last year I think we had a hard freeze at the end of April which damaged trees and flowers alike. For other participants you can go to the home of Nature Notes, and the home of Weekend Snapshot.
If you are interested in participating in Earth Hour this year, you can go to here to sign up. At the end of this post I will insert the video which tells you more about earth hour but all you have to do is join people from around the world and turn off your lights on March 28 at 8:00 pm (your local time) and keep them off for an hour. Last year for earth hour I didn't use any electricity all day which included not turning on my computer. I may do the same this year, especially since it falls on the weekend again so I hopefully I won't need to work on my computer. I also remember that I tried to start walking for many of my errands which were near by as part of my efforts to be environmentally conscious. I hate to say that I didn't keep that up although I did for several months. Theresa has been posting her Kermie tips on her blog this year, leading up to earth hour. She has some great tips for going green. I have to believe that doing something is better than doing nothing.
I am combining my photohunt post with the last day of Bridging the Gap. Alice mentioned that she may turn this into a weekly challenge for anyone who is interested so be sure to check out her site if you are interested. The photohunt theme this week is beautiful. I thought I would feature a walk which included a bridge on one beautiful day from each of the four seasons. The shot above was taken in November of 2007 at Shelley Lake which is close to where I live. You can see the long bridge better if you click inside the picture but the bridge itself isn't particularly unique. None of these bridges for my last day of the challenge are particularly special but they are pleasant to walk across on beautiful days throughout the year. I've even slid on parts of them when they were icy although I'm not quite that adventurous any more. The second photograph was shot in February 2008 and was taken at Lake Lynn which is also close to where I live. I don't go there that often because Shelley Lake has a 53 acre park and many side trails so I tend to go to the lake one mile from me as opposed to the one that is two miles from me.Lake Lynn has a long bridge which you can see above in the winter shot. It's a much smaller park than the one at Shelley Lake but it has a longer bridge. The shot above shows two bridges on a beautiful May day in 2008 when all the trees have leafed out. I was walking on one of the many side trail which extend out from Shelley Lake. I end where I started, back at Shelley lake looking at the bridge, but this time it's a beautiful morning a few weeks ago in August of 2008. I have enjoyed this bridge challenge so much and thanks to Alice at Born2cree8 for coming up with it.
To find beautiful photohunter posts you can go to PhotoHunt or photohunt
I've had a great weekend. Making the decision to turn off my computer Friday night and to leave it off until Sunday, as an extension of my earth day activities worked out great. I also decided not to turn on my TV Saturday either. Saturday morning, I found myself falling back into the old rhythm I had for decades, prior to my habit of starting off the day online. I've had internet access since the mid 1990s but it's only been the past three years that I've started spending so much of my leisure time and work breaks online. It was a rainy day so after I read my newspaper and wrote in my paper journal (something I almost never do anymore), I finally started trying to make some progress towards cleaning my house which is long over due. You can see in the shot above how clean my bathroom is. Just kidding. That's one good thing about earth hour. My house looked much cleaner by candle light. Even the rooms I didn't clean yet.The first job I tackled prior to Earth Hour on Saturday was to get rid of some of the piles of paper (mail, papers to file, etc.) which collect on all of my table tops. Even though I used candles which were in containers, I am very fearful of fire. We have been getting a little rain this weekend. However, due to the long drought we've been in, the fire warnings are frequently going out. No outdoor burning, including barbecues are allowed for much of the time. Although I did turn my computer on this morning, I found myself reading my newspaper with my morning coffee as well as writing in my paper journal again this morning. Although there is a lot of news available on the internet, I find myself skimming so much when I read newpapers via bloglines. I have several major newspapers in my bloglines reader as well as some of the blogs I read. I'm not sure why but I think when I read the news in paper form, I focus more on the details and take in more. I think spending a little less time at the computer will be good for me.
I won't be participating in photohunters this week due to my low tech start to the weekend. I'm sure I'll be back to the photohunt next weekend. I'm turning my computer off tonight as usual but the difference is that I won't be turning it back on until Sunday morning. Small step but as I've mentioned in prior posts I wanted to add some symbolic gestures to my participation in earth hour on Saturday. At 8 pm (everyone uses their time zone), many people (billions according to latest press releases) will turn their lights off for one hour to call attention to global warming. For those of you in the U.S., if you go the this link you will see a list of major skyscrapers and other iconic landmarks which are turning off their lights during earth hour. If you google with earth hour, you can find press releases from many different parts of the world. Earth Hour began in Australia in 2007 and this year has spread to become a big even in many different countries.I haven't taken a laptop on my last few vacations so it's not like I don't have longer periods of time than this 24 hour period where I'm off line. However, I'll admit that I'm very aware of the fact that I won't have my computer on all day Saturday. It also occurred to me that my plan to do taxes this weekend will mean that I'll have to work on them Sunday, since I use my computer for that. That's actually a positive of having my computer off tomorrow, I have a good excuse to put off doing taxes one more day. Happy weekend!
Yesterday was Day 20 of my latest effort to begin anew with regular exercise. I decided to mark the occasion with a long walk. I did the walk which was my regular walk and then jog for many years. I leave my house and walk a little over a mile to the lake, around the lake, and back home. That walk is almost exactly 5 miles and I knew would be a stretch for me at this point in my life but I did it. That brought me up to 18 days of exercise out of the past 20 and it felt great. One of the main parts I like about my long walk is that I get to walk around the lake without driving to walk. I don't mind driving to walk when it's an outing with Bill or I'm meeting another friend but in terms of my regular daily solo walking, something about the idea of driving to walk bothers me in terms of energy usage. I also have so many alternate walks without driving to walk. The closest greenway trail is less than a 1/2 a mile from my house. Once I get to the lake trail if I go that far, there are many variations and alternates. The biggest problem with walking to walk is if I'm only walking 2 to 3 miles, I can't walk around the lake which I enjoy. Therefore, I'm hoping my energy will be sufficient to do the 5 mile walk at least once a week.I was very tired after my 5 mile walk but didn't have much extra pain. Minor additional pain in my left leg which is the one with some lymphedema but nothing major. Perhaps the most encouraging part is later in the afternoon when I realized I needed to pick up a few things at my corner pharmacy, I was able to go on the short walk there. When I say short, I mean short because it's only 2 short blocks from my house. There is no excuse for me to ever drive there. I walked there within a week of my lymph node dissection when my leg was still fresh from surgery years ago. However, as close as it is, if I hadn't made the decision to walk to run errands as much as possible as an energy conservation measure, I'm sure after my 5 mile exercise walk I would have driven there. I had to walk slowly but I was fine. This morning I'm feeling pretty good too. Saturday is earth hour and I wanted to mention an article related to global warming. Dee who blogs at Dee's Updates sent me an article which I found very interesting and is directly related to global warming. The city of Kivalina and the native village of Kivalina filed suit this month against the oil and energy producers over their huge greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming. Kivalina, located north of Kotzebue on the tip of a six-mile barrier reef between the Chukchi Sea and Wulik River, is home to 399 people. “Kivalina residents are Inupiat Eskimo whose ancestors occupied the area since time immemorial. Global warming is destroying Kivalina and the village must be relocated soon or be abandoned and cease to exist,” reads the complaint. You can read the whole article at the link I provided but I thought I'd mention that part of the complaint is this - The plaintiffs allege that not only did the companies increase their greenhouse gas emissions, but engaged in a conspiracy, spearheaded by ExxonMobil, to discredit and distort scientific facts of global warming. Coincidentally, I was reading through the Nature Conservancy resources on Climate Change which is well worth checking out, and I stumbled on a 2003 article which mentioned the Inupiat Eskimos and how they were watching their world melt beneath them. It is very sad and an example of how the repercussions of global warming involve devastating loss. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has a very succinct page on global warming basics which gives a very good overview of the issues, and challenges facing us.I am going to cut off my computer Friday night and keep it off until Sunday as a symbolic gesture. I am trying to add conservation measures to my daily routine but also as part of my Earth hour participation, I'm not turning my computer or TV on at all on Saturday. Therefore, unless I do an early photohunt post Friday, this will be my last post until Sunday. I almost always post my photohunt post on Friday but since I won't be able to visit photohunters on Saturday, I'm thinking I may skip this week. I like to come up with a post for the theme every week because it's fun so we'll see.
This is a great time of year to photograph the birds. The little Carolina Chickadee above is nesting in a box up against the driveway side of my house. Earlier in the season, the chickadees and other birds fly off when they hear or see me. At first I couldn't figure out why she would stay put, for the most part, fussing at me but not leaving while I snapped a bunch of pictures. Once I walked to the other side of the tree the little chickadee flew into the nesting box and I realized she was waiting me out. I have nesting boxes on 3 sides of my house and there are advantages and disadvantages to the ones on the driveway side. The disadvantage is the little bird and her babies, when they come, have to tolerate me walking up and down, and driving up and down, the driveway. They seem to get used to me this time of year or maybe they have too much to do to bother with flying farther away from me like they do during less busy seasons.I am enjoying the contrast in the neighborhood trees this time of year. Some in full flower, some barely starting to bud, some leafing out. I'm curious what will happen with some of the brand new subdivisions. I hate the practice of cutting down old forests and trees on old farms to put in new subdivisions. I'm not even talking now about the issue of development as much as the issue of how it's done, in some cases. I know it's easier when putting in roads and new houses on lots to cut everything down and then put in new landscapes. It's a shame that more of the old growth isn't saved but to an extent I came to realize that ugly lots did turn into lovely landscapes with fast growing trees and sometimes including interesting gardens. However, with the drought my area has suffered a new issue has come up. Without irrigation, the newer subdivision will probably remain barren, at least that's what they look like now. Established landscapes and trees may suffer some losses but so far we have had enough sporadic rain to keep them going. However, the new lots that were stripped of all their trees to make it easy to put in houses and landscape from scratch look sad. I feel very fortunate in terms of my situation. I have eased away from irrigating for many years now and what I have is adapted and tough. I do collect rain water but most of my plants are on their own and have done pretty well. I learned after the fact that March 22 was World Water day. I found A.'s blog through photohunters and she discussed World Water Day on this post. She mentioned a new film about the women in Ethiopia who collect water each day. She has links in the post to WaterAid and to clips from the film you may want to check out. It certainly puts into perspective issues surrounding water and the lack thereof. A. had a link to the U.K site for WaterAid and from there I found the international WaterAid site. On the international wateraid site you can click on an individual country's site. I was sorry I didn't check all this out sooner because the American History Museum was having a webcast on women and water called the Heaviest Load on World Water Day. According to the site - The panelists will be Yassine Fall, Netsanet Mengistu and Lydia Zigomo, all of whom have extensive experience in championing women's rights in the developing world. I am glad that I found out about this even though I was too late to hear the webcast. It is such an important issue to think about. I was reminded of the burden unsafe water and sanitation place on women in many parts of the world, since they are the ones collecting it from great distances. I saw a documentary on PBS about this issue many years ago but like so many things, it had not been at the front of my mind until I was reminded of the issues. I feel a little weird about how I went from minor suburban concerns in my part of the U.S. to the heroic efforts which it takes on a daily basis for women in other parts of the world to collect water for their family. It is what it is. I have the luxury of fairly moderate worries although continued drought conditions anywhere eventually create big problems. With changing climates and extended droughts, if municipalities don't take action to conserve water where I live they may find themselves unable to support the influx of people that have moved to the area. I'm glad that we have finally instituted permanent restrictions on certain type of water use in my city rather than the bandaid approach that has been taken in the past.One reason I'm writing about World Water Day, even though it was several days ago is that it's like International Earth Day (which I'm a week late mentioning), Earth Hour which is coming up this Saturday, or any other event to call attention to enormous challenges. It's not about a specific day so much as it's about awareness and daily efforts. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and like it doesn't matter what we do but I have to believe that these cumulative efforts will help in some small way. Speaking of small steps. I walked to the grocery store today which was only 2 miles round trip so not a big deal at all. It merely meant I was walking past office buildings instead of walking in my neighborhood or on a trail.I feel tasteless mentioning my walk to the grocery store after mentioning what women in Ethiopia and other countries go through in order to provide water for their families. However, it's counterproductive to feel guilt over things outside my control. I recently read a title somewhere that said think globally and act globally which I liked. I believe it was in connection with cooperation towards offsetting global climate change. I believe in supporting world organizations that are oriented towards the world as a whole. I also believe that it's also necessary for us as individuals to make those small changes in our every day life, and for me trying to, in part, get exercise by walking instead of driving to the grocery store is one of those changes. I didn't expect to take many photographs or see much of interest walking on the side walk of a busy street which took me to the store, but with a turn of the head I spotted all sorts of surprises. The pansies above surrounded by fallen blossoms, from the trees, which looked like snow from a distance, were shot in front of an office building I passed on the way to the store. I felt like quite the lucky woman walking past such pleasant sites. If I had driven by, I wouldn't have noticed them as they are set back from the road. This brings me up to getting exercise for 17 of the past 19 days.
I love the way macro shots of flowers show so much more than is apparent when a flower is viewed as part of a group. I am taking so many photographs these days that it's hard to know which ones I want to include in my posts. I am better at closeups than I am at landscape shots or even telephoto lens shots of individuals that are distant.For this post, I'm going to include up close and personal shots. The banner and video at the top of my blog announcing Earth Hour will come down Sunday. If you are interesting in participating, you don't have to sign up or do anything except for turn off your lights at 8 pm on Saturday and leave them off for one hour. The purpose of this exercise is to call attention to global warming and was started in Australia in 2007. It's pretty impressive to think about the fact that in 2007 when 2.2 million people in Sydney Australia turned off their lights for one hour, the greenhouse reduction they achieved was such that if it was sustained for a year, it would be equivalent to taking 48,616 cars off the road for a year. Earth hour has become a global event in 2008 and the advantage to signing up is so that they can track how many people in different parts of the world are involved. In addition to turning off my lights for one hour, I have decided not to turn on my computer or television at all on Saturday. That will be a big change for me. I am not sure when I started leaving my computer on all day, or when I started half watching TV. I always had phases of watching TV but in the past I would also have long phases of barely watching it at all. For quite a few years now, I will turn my TV on and half watch, meaning I'm doing something else and the TV is more of a background. I have to have my computer on during the day for work, and I communicate with family via email a lot since we are spread out across the U.S. But I don't need to go back and forth between the TV and computer like I've started doing in recent years during leisure time. It's odd to me, that deciding not to turn on the TV or computer for one of the weekend days is an event. It used to be fairly common place for me to have days without TV or computer time. However, that is rare at this point, for me, and primarily when I'm on vacation. I read an article in a magazine when I was at a Doctor's office recently which suggested that everyone should try to walk if they are running errands within a mile of their house. I have been doing that recently and am going to try to continue. I like the idea of combining exercise and errands. I am encouraged on the exercise front. I have managed to get some kind of exercise 15 out of 17 days. I'm going to go for a walk shortly which will bring it up to 16 out of 18 days. Each of those days except one was walking with the alternate exercise being on a rainy day. I have also been remembering to stretch. I am starting to feel better too. I have more energy.I've found some interesting sites which I'm going to be mentioning in my upcoming posts this week in case anyone who reads my blog are interested. The Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service has several Climate Change Atlases. You can view the one for trees and one for birds. Each species was modeled individually to show current and future changes according to two emissions scenarios. The databases are for species in the Eastern U.S. Another site of interest to me is the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC). The CEC is an international organization created by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. The CEC was established to address regional environmental concerns, help prevent potential trade and environmental conflicts, and to promote the effective enforcement of environmental law. There are so many organizations which are trying to address the impact of global warming. I particularly like the fact that some are involved in international efforts. More on that later.
Mimi has come up with a cool new meme called the Message in a Bottle Meme. My message in a bottle is below. You may have to click inside the graphic below to read the message which I put in the graphic Mimi created. Note Mimi has set up a new site just for all these messages in a bottle so check them out at Message in a Bottle. The way this meme works is you copy the blank graphic from Mimi's site on her Message in a Bottle Meme post , you can then put your own message in the bottle and post it. You are supposed to tag a minimum of five people or your whole blog roll. Since I'm too slow for tag, if you want to participate, consider yourself tagged by me and please let me know so I can see your message in the bottle. For anyone who has read my blog, or who knows me, it is probably not too surprising that I'm not going to stop here. Yes, I am going to jump up on my soap box. If anyone is here from Mimi's Mr. Linky and doesn't want to hear my long winded explanation for my message in the bottle, this would be a good place to stop. However, I thought some of you might be interested in the I love the mountains effort. I love the mountains and I love the beach. Somehow I liked the idea of my message, coming ashore on the blogosphere's beach, being about the I love the mountains campaign to end mountaintop removal. Similarly if I buried a message in a blogosphere mountain, it could be about the destruction of the fragile shoreline ecosystem. I am fortunate to live in a state with mountains at the western end and beautiful beaches at the eastern end. The state I live in, North Carolina, isn't currently using mountaintop removal for mining coal, but when I went to the site about this practice and plugged in my zip code, I found out that my energy company does use coal mined from this practice. Mountaintop removal is a radical form of coal mining in which entire mountains are literally blown up -- and it is happening here in America on a scale that is almost unimaginable. If you go to the I love the mountains site you can learn more about this practice which is going on in KY, VA, TN, and West Virginia, and you can join with others who are trying to stop it. I should mention that so far as I know, the photographs I'm using for this post are not directly related to the issue. The photographs were taken by me this fall at the James River Park in Virginia. The industrial plant that I shot was on the way to the park from Bedford, VA where we were staying. If you look at any shot of a mountain range and imagine it being blown us so the tops are flattened, you can get an idea of what this practice does. One of my MPIP friends who lives in KY has become involved with a grassroots effort in her community to stop this practice. She attended the I love the mountains rally which you can read about on the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth site. I was pleased to see photographs of people of all ages involved in this cause. Mountaintop removal is devastating hundreds of square miles of Appalachia; polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions of Americans; and destroying a distinctly American culture that has endured for generations. The appalachian mountains are near and dear to my heart. My mother grew up in Boone, NC and her mother lived in the mountains her whole life. For that matter, my father grew up near the NC coast at the eastern part of the state. I have roots in, and an affinity for, both of these vulnerable eco systems. It doesn't matter either whether it's in one state or another. It's all part of our finite planet. I also realize that economics come in to play and communities have to be concerned with jobs and the welfare of the people in a particular area. Sometimes it isn't initially clear that accepting certain industries and practices into a community that promise jobs can actually end up destroying the welfare of the people by polluting the streams and air. These can be very complex issues.I've talked before on my blog about how surprising, at one level, it was when Bill and I were struck by a similarity in our respective grandmother's perspectives and how different they were from ours. My grandmother lived in Boone, NC and across the mountain Bill's grandmother lived in Bristol, TN. Both of our grandmothers wanted to show us new developments and shopping centers in their towns. Too us it was sad to see these ugly developments in what were small mountain towns. To our grandmothers who both lived through the depression these were signs of progress, jobs, improving economies. However, if either of our grandmothers were still alive, I have no doubt that they would be deeply saddened to see mountains literally blown up, not to mention the water pollution and wide range of environmental consequences. So here ends my message in the bottle. Between now and earth hour (the top of my blog has information about earth hour), I will try to post about some of the issues that concern the planet we live on.
I am doing a combo post this week for Weekend Snapshot and Nature Notes. Saturday was Earth Hour and this was my second year participating. I decided to expand my participation and not use any lights during the afternoon on through the earth hour until 9:30 pm. It made me realize that I'm ready for a break in the rainy weather. Since it was rainy and dark all day Saturday I was ready for some light by the time I turned them on at 9:35 pm.
I didn't think I'd ever grow tired of rain after the 2007/2008 drought we dealt with where I live, but I was thrilled to see a break in the clouds on Sunday. We have had a very wet March. I think what I'm missed the most is natural light. I took the shot below this morning when I saw some blue in the sky. I was surprised to see that even the oak trees are starting to show signs of new life since they are one of the later trees to do that.
Everything smells so fresh and clean from the rainy week but there has been so much rain there is a whiff of decaying matter mixed in with the more pleasant spring smells. Of course decaying matter will be adding nutrients which is good.
Saturday when we had a few moments without rain falling, I darted out to shoot my first tulip of the year. I didn't even know that they had begun to emerge much less bloom, until I spotted this one when the white daffodils were beat down by the rain.
As a matter of fact, when I first spotted the red above the white from my window, I thought it was a pair of cardinals. Below is a shot I took of a brown thrasher surrounded by the fresh rose foliage. I haven't spotted any rose buds yet but the boughs of my climbing roses are leafing out.
On Friday, I drove through my neighborhood in the rain to snap some shots of the trees which are bursting into bloom every where I look. I knew that the rain was going to beat down a lot of the blossoms so I wanted to snap them while I could. I was correct about that because in addition to rain we had fierce winds and a tornado warning. A tornado did touch down outside of town but I don't think anyone was hurt.
Most years, I walk around my neighborhood daily in the spring and photograph the changes surrounding me. However, this year the rain hasn't made that practical but it dawned on me that I could do something similar in my car and roll down the window for shots.
Even on dark, rainy days, the cheerful blossoms of spring brighten up my natural world. The birds do too with their constant chatter. I can also spy on the bathing beauties in their bird bath from my deck door.
I guess this is getting pretty long so I'll wrap it up with one last shot. The azaleas are budding out earlier than ever, or it seems like that. I hope we don't get a hard freeze because I have too many azaleas to cover and some are twelve feet tall, as I let my azaleas go wild. April 15 is our average last freeze date but last year I think we had a hard freeze at the end of April which damaged trees and flowers alike.
For other participants you can go to the home of Nature Notes, and the home of Weekend Snapshot.
photohunt
Weekend Snapshot
