Earth Day

I spent most of today creating my herb garden. It's in the front yard - near the front door.

I had tilled the area a couple weeks ago - today I broke up the soil - got rid of most of the dirt clods - refined the shape (it ended up a nice crescent shape) - added peat moss and such - and planted the herbs I bought yesterday at the farmer's market (and a few from the Owen County garden club) along with some lettuce seeds, various herb seeds, and a couple of tomato plants. Plus I moved 3 lavendar plants from the nearby garden across the sidewalk. I have 3 varieties of thyme and 3 of sage, and two kinds of basil, among other things.

I had taken a mini-class from an herbalist recently - so that inspired me to buy a calendula plant.

I had been reluctant to dig into the front yard - but since I was returning a large part of the front yard to woods - it seemed like less of an issue. And the less grass the better. It's a good sunny spot for herbs.

Plus when it comes to getting ones food locally - it doesn't get any more local than your own yard.

I still need to look into getting a sod cutter to cut away the sod from around the orchard trees.

After working - I sat down and read some of the New York Times headlines. One article - How the Worm Turns - seemed esp. appropriate. I met a lot of worms today. I tried to save them for the garden as I was breaking up the sod. There would often be 2 or three in a small clump. The usual variety was pinkish - but there were some brown ones and one little black one. Maybe the black on is rare?

I'll have to remember to look for bats in the shagbark hickory trees - I heard there was a federally endangered variety that likes to live in them.

Other nature news revolves around our ponds. My husband and I installed a couple of small ponds last summer (I did the planning and moved the rocks into place). Since I had discovered what toad eggs are like at the pond of a friend last month - when I saw the curly strips of black dots - I knew what they were. (We may have some frog eggs, as well. I'm not sure about that.) And yesterday we saw the very young toads swimming around. At least that's what I I think they are. They look like giant sperm.

In other Earth Day news, Sheryl Crow and Laurie David went on a "Stop Global Warming College Tour" that ended up today at George Washington University where they were joined by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, Carole King, Bobby Kennedy Jr. and David's husband, Larry David.

Last night Sheryl Crow and Laurie David were at the White House Correspondents Dinner. They reported on Huffingtonpost:

"The "highlight" of the evening had to be when we were introduced to Karl Rove.... We asked Mr. Rove if he would consider taking a fresh look at the science of global warming. Much to our dismay, he immediately got combative. And it went downhill from there.

We reminded the senior White House advisor that the US leads the world in global warming pollution and we are doing the least about it. Anger flaring, Mr. Rove immediately regurgitated the official Administration position on global warming which is that the US spends more on researching the causes than any other country.

We felt compelled to remind him that the research is done and the results are in (www.IPCC.ch). Mr. Rove exploded with even more venom. Like a spoiled child throwing a tantrum, Mr. Rove launched into a series of illogical arguments regarding China not doing enough thus neither should we. (Since when do we follow China's lead?)"