Apr 22 2025 - Earth Day more than 50 years old

 

Did you realize that Earth Day has been marked for more than 50 years?  And the first earth Day in 1970 led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency? Earth Day 1970 is considered the major milestone in the "dawn of the modern environmental movement."    The Earth Day website says that 1990 market the globalization of Earth Day with 200 million people in 141 countries participating. And Year 2000 Earth day saw 5,000 environmental groups worldwide along with hundreds of millions of people in 1854 countries participating.  Compare that to 2010 when l billion people and 20,000 partners were involved.  The Paris Agreement was signed in 2016 on Earth Day.  It seems too bad that the 50th Anniversary was in 2020 during COVID, as so many of us were in isolation.   The U.S. leaders of this movement were Gaylord Nelson and Denis Hayes. Denis Hayes is still with us as an environment activist and solar power advocate.  He was the brains behind the promotional activities that made Earth Day so prominent. 'He was chairman of the Earth Day 1990 and 2000 anniversaries.   The Grimsby Garden Club did an Earth Day tree sale of native trees in 2022.  It was extremely successful.  It did take a lot of work - I took care of the promotion and the spreadsheet of all the orders - More detailed work than I had experience for but it was worth it so see so many native trees go to happy homes.   And today?  I'll be at the outdoor school in Grimsby - the Greenbelt Academy - with the children learning all kinds of gardening things.

Here's that Earth Day poster.

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April 22 2021 - Snow Flowers

 

“One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken.” —Leo Tolstoy Perhaps this is sufficient for this Earth Day, 2021.     Here are pictures of Sunnylea's Magnolia in the snow - we have two of these 40 year-plus trees on the street.  I am glad this is a seldom-seen combination. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

April 22 2020 - Earth Day Shadows

It is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.  There's a picture of the first Earth Day, 1970 in New York City, and lots of young people are wearing masks.  We would have a similar picture today, but would be six feet apart and likely a few years older.  For Earth Day this year, our reduced impact due to COVID-19 is being shown with pictures showing the reduction of pollution, showing wild animals walking down main streets, and the song of spring birds being noticeably louder.  There are many things about this Earth Day that will become historical. Earth Day made me think about the scale of things and as I looked at a large bank of clouds was on the eastern horizon this morning, they seemed to look like a mountain range.   Did you know that mountains cast shadows into the sky? Mt. Rainier in Washington State casts a triangular shadow into the sky in a picture from the top of the mountain  HERE. Triangular shadows are not seen from objects much smaller than mountains because their shadows are not long enough. Perhaps as part of Earth Day, we should look at the Earth's shadow. The Earth casts a shadow which is viewable after sunset.  Here's the explanation:  "After sunset look eastwards. A low horizon is needed but not a volcano. As twilight deepens a dark band rises upwards from the horizon, The band is the shadow of the Earth on the atmosphere. Immediately above, where the evening air is still lit, glows a pink band called the anti-twilight arch or "Belt of Venus". The pink arises from scattered and deeply reddened sunlight mingling with the deep blues of the eastern sky. Look westwards before sunrise to watch the shadow sinking towards the horizon. The shadow is a three dimensional void of unlit atmosphere. The sky high above the shadowed air is bright because it is still sunlit and the air scatters light down to the eye. " And what about the picture of Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan's photograph of his own shadow cast on the coal black lunar surface December 1972? "His shadow, or more accurately his camera's, appears to be surrounded by a bright glow.  Cernan's shadow, like many images on the Moon's surface, is surrounded by a bright aureole.  It is an example of the "Opposition Effect". "Lunar soil has an open structure with many areas of deep shadow.  But, when looking in a direction directly away from the sun, shadows are hidden by the object casting them.   The antisolar point and the adjacent areas therefore appear brighter than elsewhere because they have more sunlit surfaces and less shadow. There are other factors that contribute to the glow, retroreflection by crystalline minerals and a phenomenon called coherent backscattering. The heiligenschein, also at the antisolar point, is a separate effect." There are no representations of the earth in my database, but there is a picture of Mount Rainier posted last September when we visited Sacramento.  The second is a piece of plastic with drew drops at a gas station.

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Earth Day and More

It was Earth Day this week and tonight I will be at our local coffee shop and the topic is bird friendly coffee.  The coffee roaster will talk about making coffee growing more sustainable for birds.  In Latin America, coffee is heavily sprayed and fertilized with synthetic fertilizers.  Sprawling massive fields stretch out for miles. While this created high coffee yields it was also devastated the environment and wildlife.  Returning to organic methods and going coffee in concert with a rainforest canopy have resulted in beans with a deeper and richer flavour.   And how does my Grimsby garden relate to coffee growing? The answer is simple:  many of the birds who live in Latin America in the winter are migratory, so live here in the summer.  These include orioles, tanagers, and warblers. What about hummingbirds? The Indigo bunting?  The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C has identified ecologically sustainable farming methods that provide a welcome habitat for birds. They developed certification standards for making bird-friendly coffee.  One can differentiate between shade-grown, organic, fair-trade and bird-friendly. So back to our gardens in Grimsby where the hummingbirds, Baltimore Orioles and small warblers made their home in summer.  Our job is to grow native trees and plants, so that they have the insects to feed their young.   Here's the handout on what trees and flowers to grow here in Ontario, along with sources of information. I've been watching for this little flower to bloom in my garden.  It's Bloodroot and will bloom for only a day. Please consider coming to the meet and greet this Sunday in Hamilton - the address is corrected from an earlier invitation - it is on Dundurn St. S.

Earth Day Turns 48

Yesterday was Earth Day.  Google's contribution is a doodle made in partnership with Jane Goodall. The founder of Earth Day was Gaylord Nelson, who wanted to make the environment a political issue in 1970.  Remember the rivers burning? We never guessed then that the environmental issue this year would be plastics.  The measure being used for the crisis is that there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Earth Day marked a new Guinness World Record set in Dubai - with the longest line of bottles to spread awareness about plastic pollution.  That was 58,477 bottles and the line was 3,842.5 metres long. If you were in Toronto, you could have gone to the Earth Day Festival at Downsview Park, and made Garlic-Mustard pesto! Its new shoots are edible in cool weather.  It turns bitter with the warm weather like many greens. In British Columbia they celebrated by broadcasting 24 hours of wetland noises. The UN News site had various articles. Of interest was  the coverage of new agricultural heritage sites:  farming in harmony with nature.  The article is HERE.   Their coverage of climate change is HERE.   Our pictures today feature purple flowers - Verbena Bonariensis at the Denver Botanical Garden and Wisteria with bees in it.  Purple is the flower colour of the year in 2018.