Earth Day at Our House

Dane smelling some of our apple blossoms.

At home with the other seedlings. Patting down the soil or, as Dane understood it, tucking the seeds in for night-nights.

Apple blossoms on one of our apple trees. They smell even prettier than they look :)

I know Earth Day was officially yesterday. And we are not the most environmentally conscious family I know. However, it turned out to be an especially "green" week at our house:

One of my New Year's resolutions was to institute a recycling system at our house. I am declaring us half-way there. We are recycling all aluminum (cans and foil), plastics with the symbol on it (thank you Kristen Hammer for the 101 lesson on recycling plastics), and paper (including paper towels and Kleenex). I was having to haul it to Rockton's community drop-off but this week I stream-lined by taking advantage of the curbside pick up our waste company offers. Next step is to create 1-2 compost bins out by the garden and begin throwing my kitchen scraps and yard waste in them. The end product will be free compost for my garden. The end goal is to eliminate our need for a waste company and therefore eliminate the bill entirely.

To be clear, I'm not trying to save the planet - I'm just frugal.

Secondly, Dane planted a tree almost by himself. We picked up one of those seedling kits out of the beloved $ bins at Target. He did all of the steps (water the pellet, put the seeds in the soil, pat it down, etc.) with very little help. He was very proud of his seeds and we put them right next to Mommy's seedlings in the sunny window. We pointed out other trees in our backyard and how they need sun and water to grow. Then we said a little prayer over our seedling thanking God for beautiful trees and asking Him to help it to grow as big as the other trees. I am so proud of him everyday with every new thing he learns. These have to be the best days of my life!