Earth Day Round-Up to Inspire Action

Happy Earth Day everyone! I’m so excited to be in Boulder for the week with Katie and her family. I typically visit at the end of April to celebrate Luc, Alex, and our Pop’s birthday. Without fail, it snows, but that doesn’t stop us from getting outside and enjoying a bit of fresh air everyday and especially on Earth Day.

Spending any moments in the sun, snow, wind, or rain is a required Earth Day activity, but today we also took a mini-adventure to the Ares thrift store here in town. A solid reminder to buy used whenever you’re able. Such an easy way to reduce the consumption and inevitable waste that we’ll all create during our lifetimes. Check our insta stories to see the great items we picked up!

We wanted to do a little bit of recycling and reusing this Earth Day ourselves, so without further delay, here’s a round-up of previous posts to inspire some action this April and beyond!

DO!

Pick Your Share! – Now is absolutely the time to join a farm share / CSA. Learn more here and pick your share OR make a commitment to visit your farmers markets several times per month. We are visiting the Boulder Farmers Market this weekend!

Donate With Me – Great reasons to donate your sh!t!

34 Alternatives to Single-use Plastic – I challenge you to follow all the suggestions on this post AND suggest new ones that I can add! I’ve already thought of one that I need to include in my next edit.

Five Best Earth Friendly Products for Outdoor Showers – No, you cannot wash directly in the river or even right next to a body of water, ever. However, these soaps and shampoos are biodegradable, meaning they can be broken down in the soil within a reasonable amount of time (about six months) by bacteria or fungus in the soil.

READ!

A Beautiful Book for Earth Day – The most perfect read for your little ones.

Our Favorite Nature Books – These are adult reads that we highly recommend. We cover the gambit from biographies to science to art and photography and more. Take a look and add these to your reading list today.

Our Favorite Wilderness Reads – Another list of novels, but these inspire you to really dive into the wilderness or stay safely in your bed and live vicariously through these books.

LISTEN!

Podcast Suggestions: Earth Day Editions – Specific episode suggestions to inspire a great connection with Mother Earth. Bonus points if you subscribe to The Wild podcast hosted by Chris Morgan.

DRINK!

Why not shake up one of Katie’s fancy cocktails?

Spring of Deception & Pisco Sour seem like great options for this week!

Cheers!

Spring of Deception

This cocktail was inspired by a meme. You know the one, it names the 12 seasons of Colorado, and right now we are smack in the middle of Third Winter. We need this drink to survive.

Oh Colorado, we love you and we love snow. We’ve lived here for 7 years now and are fully aware that March and April are our snowiest months. But even we can be fooled by the promise of summer the moment we experience our first 70F weekend in March.

Then comes a big snowstorm, and we’re reminded that it’s still ski season! We ski on those bluebird days, so happy to be in the mountains. Remembering that Colorado winters aren’t bad, they’re beautiful.

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Nature-Focused Poetry Books for Kids

April is National Poetry month. Admittedly, I don’t think of myself as needing a special month to wax poetic (wink wink) about the nature-inspired poetry books that we love. But apparently I AM the type of person that needs a national initiative because I hadn’t put together a post sharing this collection until now.

There’s a wide variety of subjects on our list of favorites. Insectlopedia that focus on insects to Old Elm Speaks that highlights trees. One of my absolute favorites is When Green Becomes Tomatoes. But I also get so excited when someone will read Joyful Noise with me. Every poem in that book is written for two readers making one poem. It’s just a pile of beautiful poetry.

It’s supposed to snow in Colorado this week, so let’s dream of summer.

Phenology: Observing Mother Nature’s Cycles

This post was originally published on March 12, 2014. Seven years ago! Since then, I’ve moved from PA to CO, and Sarah’s moved from PA to NC to WA. Wow. I can say for certain that both of us are still getting to know our new home states, and something that brings us joy is understanding the seasonal variations.
This desire to know my place came up for me this week. I was hiking and realized that I could identify more plants, even in their deadened winter state, than I could last year. BUT I also realized that I wanted to make a recipe that called for newly developed evergreen needles, and I realized that I didn’t know exactly when the firs and spruces put out their new needles. Is it soon? Do I have to wait until June? I have no clue, but I bet by next year I’ll know. 

What do you know about the natural cycles of the plants and animals where you live?

Rothrock State Forrest early spring, before the Mountain Laurel blooms

Rothrock State Forrest early spring, before the Mountain Laurel blooms

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