Earth Day and Easter

Two of my favorite holidays were this weekend--Earth Day and Easter. I believe my love for Earth Day and environmentalism was ignited by a 5th grade program where we sang songs to our parents like "Everyday is Earth Day" and "When a Tree Falls", and "Recycle Rap". There was no going back. The rap was accompanied by homemade instruments. Mine was two paper plates taped together with beans inside. A good way to reuse stuff I guess. Ohhhh, I get it. Recycled instruments for the "Recycle Rap"! (5th grade classmates! All three of you! Check out audio of the songs here!)

Since I enjoy really getting into holidays for Kimball's benefit (oh, and mine too, I suppose), I wanted to plan out a fun Earth-centered Earth day, but time got away from me and we didn't really do anything. But looking back on the day, I'd say it was a properly, if inadvertently, celebrated Earth Day. We watched this beautiful movie about oceans, Jordan rode his bike to school, I used reusable bags at the grocery store and hung-dry two loads of laundry, and Jordan and I had a date working our garden while Kimball played at a friend's house (thank you, babysitting co-op!)

The next day we took a family bike ride to campus where we ran into, again inadvertently, a Green Fair. Today in church we sang "All Creatures of Our God and King", one of my favorite hymns (any hymn with Alleluias is my favorite). I'm sure that was coincidental, but it pleased me to no end. I found one, two new blogs that I will definitely follow. I am especially very much excited about the second. One of the administrators is my all-time favorite biology teacher at BYU, and the subject matter is some of the best stuff I could ever sink my teeth into.

Did I mention that we have a garden?? After several months on the wait list, we have been given a plot in the community gardens! It's pretty big. I haven't measured it, but I'd guess it's at least 12' x 12'. This is how it looked when I saw it for the first time:

The pictures don't do the waist high grasses and woody weeds justice. We have made a lot of progress since then:

Trust me, it looks waaaay better, but we still have a lot of work to do. It doesn't feel like work though! We've even unearthed a lemon tree (with ripening lemons!) and a rosemary bush under all those weeds. I love our Secret Garden, as we call it. I wasn't sure that Jordan would be as into this project as me, just because of all the school work that takes precedence. But one trip to the garden and he was hooked--even though all that weeding leaves him a sniffing, dripping, itching, allergenic mess. Once those weeds are gone, he'll have an easier time of it, I'm sure. I'll definitely be giving garden updates.

And Easter! Now it's almost midnight, this took me way to long to write, my pictures aren't loading, my computer needs to be emptied so I can upload more videos (any wonder I don't blog more often?), and I have a lot to say about Easter, so I will postpone that for another time. Fingers crossed that it will be tomorrow, but don't get your hopes up.