Discussion: What is important to you?

Take a walk with your family or friends around your yard and neighborhood. What do you see related to the environment that makes you feel either really proud or inspired to do something to make change? You may at this point have a long list of positives and negatives...that is okay. Take stock in what feels important. Feel free to be as creative as you would like with your response.

Share your response to this question in the discussion, and comment on the response from at least one other family. Note that you must be signed in to Moodle to respond and to see comments.

First off I admire the beautiful creation of this Earth that I hope one day everyone has a chance to experience. As I walk along the farmer fields near my house and through the woods I notice some trash that the wind has carried here. A big one is plastic bags or packaging caught in trees and brush. There are also things like balloons and kites that blew away and then once land in nature. These sort of things make me inspired to make our environment a better place and always strive to keep nature clean.

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I agree. Tidying up the natural world feels good, and like cleaning up anything...I equate it with "I care". It is interesting to see what you find and where. It sort of tells a story about what people might be doing nearby (boxes and plates and straws near the pizza shop, or plastic bags near the drug store...etc.). Keep caring and doing :)!

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I think my answer to this question continues to change and grow... planting things and caring for plants and growing food are my current "thing". I am feeling inspired this year to plant more trees and shrubs. Each year a little more of our yard gets turned into plantings...which equates to less mowing. I am curious how long a manual mower might take to mow the lawn.

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I love this idea of transitioning spaces for useful plants and less mowing. Our first year on this property, we began with a couple garden rows. Each year we have expanded until half of the yard is used for gardening. Also love your addition of a compositing process. We need to do some research on a practical way to do this again now that our compost tumbler crumbled to bits. -- Yet another reason to remove plastics from the process ;-)

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We love to see the beautiful trees, grass, and plants in all their glory. A couple topics have come up for us in discussion.

-Within our city there is a real need for clear communication about a safe way to handle the disposal of hazardous items found around. This would be mostly drug-related items that pose a danger. It will need to be a long-term discussion and project. But it definitely needs attention.

-We often talk about the need for trash collection at playgrounds. Nothing quite as frustrating as having a small child in a full-out meltdown because they can't finish the juicebox they found on the ground while playing . . . not to mention a toddler chewing on a razor left behind by a thoughtless passer-by.

-The decreasing number of pollinators is a big deal to all of us. Our fruit trees and our vegetable gardens depend on them. So, this will be the project we will adopt to take action on.

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These are great ideas Danielle. Some of the kids in my 4-H club talked about the fact that there are more carry in and carry out parks...leaving parks that end up looking uncared for. We talked about starting a petition to have garbage cans put back near a local playground. While carry in and carry out makes sense on one hand, figuring out solutions that work seems important. Sounds like your family has noticed the same issue.

We started seed saving last year - common things like zinnia and marigold. I'm interested to see how that all works out (seedlings are coming up now, but it could help pollinators, and save money. This will be fun to continue to experiment with. Good luck with your projects!

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Another topic that had come up before and we were able to follow through with on Earth Day was to save our own seeds from heirloom varieties and start our own plants. They are coming along nicely and we will be sharing these plants with many friends and encouraging as many people as we can to experience the joy and fulfillment of growing some of their own foods.

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