In honour of Earth Day we have been doing a mini unit on conservation this week. Today, Earth Day 2009, we spent the day outside attempting to beautify our somewhat neglected front yard, and limiting our use of electricity. After breakfast, I turned off my computer and told the girls that we would be using the minimal amount of electricity possible until after dinner.
A couple of years ago, our front tree bit it. We had the tallest one on the block and one day it suddenly developed large brown patches in the leaves. Despite our efforts to save it, it was gone within the week. We've been meaning to put another one in since, but never quite got around to it, so Tuesday night I went in to Wal-Mart and bought a little live oak. The girls had NO idea I was planning this, so it was a fun surprise for them.
After we finished planting the tree, arranging bricks, and topping it all off with organic potting soil, we had our (mostly) electricity-free picnic lunch of cheese, baked potato chips, peanuts, juice and organic vanilla yogurt with fruit and organic granola. YUMMY!
We finalised our yard work by pulling (some of the) weeds, and mowing. Yes, that is me you see with an old-school push mower, and yes that is the mower we use all the time. We always try to make a conserted effort to be environmentally friendly, and that is one of the ways we do it. Not to mention that you can mow at ANY time of the day without disturbing your neighbours!
After all of our tiring yard work, we enjoyed a chapter out of Anne of Windy Poplars while lounging in the shade on the front porch, and then went in to do a bit of conservation-themed school work. Most days we don't turn on the lights at all beacuse we have so many windows, so we of course didn't this afternoon, either.
The (mostly) electricity-free festivities were wrapped up with veggie "turkey" and meunster cheese sandwiches for dinner!
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