Earth Day 2020...Make Your "Earth Vision" 2020 As Well!

Photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

Its Earth Day today - the 50th year that folks have been trying to remind others of the importance of the well being of our planet home.  Its a tricky year and time to remind anyone that they need to take care of the nest we're all inhabiting. 

The current opening of public lands for mining or drilling, proposed withdrawals of environmental protections such as the National Environmental Policy Act, stifling the input of biologists and experts in the sciences, allowing a step "back" of water and air quality rules...even regulations pertaining to mercury; its a dark time indeed.

But there are still people and non-profits working right now to keep the short term profit industries and interests from defiling our home - but they need your support!  If you cannot afford to join the many good organizations out there working to keep our natural heritage safe for our grand children - speak out!  Look into the records of your elected officials - their records supporting a safe and healthy environment, and vote accordingly; and let them know you will do so!

While so many are spending their time trying to find interesting things to keep them occupied...isn't it a good time to hold people accountable for not keeping your best interests in mind?  Isn't it a good time to take the kids outside and even just explore their yard...to listen to the birds, catch some insects...see that there is something tangibly wonderful about creation!

Take in Spring; breathe in the gift of the natural world that still exists around you...even the small pockets are wonderful.  Be engaged in your world or it will be lost to the short term greed of a very small few.  This Earth is your home and the Earth needs a good steward - treat it like family, after all you were born from it and are kin to it.  Think of it as "that" each day and you will find your love for the natural world around you becomes more important throughout the year.

Stay safe and be good to one another...the Earth too!

Earth Day 2015

(color pencil drawings  © Bruce A. Morrison)

 

The Chipping Sparrows are back; their pitched staccato song is once again in the door yard.  The American Goldfinch males are bold and Yellow once again, and the first White-throated Sparrow male of spring showed up yesterday morning as the frost left the waterleaf outside the kitchen door - It's spring!  And it's Earth Day once again - it should be every day; we live here and wouldn't exist without it!

My feelings about our planet and what we are doing to it have not changed since last Earth Day, nor the Earth Days before.  But I won't get too verbose this year...I don't want to wear you out with what you should already know and hold dear.  If you want to hear it again, you can revisit Earth Day here at the Prairie Hill Farm Blog from April 2013 - Earth Day...It "IS" Important!

I will celebrate Earth Day on this blog a little differently this year, going back to the rebel roots of my youth I guess.  I protested all that was wrong with our treatment of the Earth back then too.  Please take a moment and listen and reflect; after all "Who is Gonna Stand Up and Save the Earth?"

Keep on Rock'n for a Free World Neil...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZyL-FZ4lOU

The Earth is our bed, our nursery and our life - do not spoil it!
 

A Little Early...or Too Late?

Iowa Wetland Study No.1

photograph - silver halide print - © Bruce A. Morrison

I'm going to celebrate Earth day a little early, although it isn't until this Sunday.  This will be its 42nd year and its now observed in 175 countries.  The thing that saddens me about our attempts to celebrate our planet is that we are truly in need of observing this day 24/7/365...did I get that right?  I mean every day we draw breath - all year long.  

In my life time I've seen promise...more restrictions on industrial pollution, attempts to restore habitat and set aside more for our great grandchildren.  Many success stories of bringing species back from the brink.  Other issues too numerous to go into here.  

But there is overwhelming opposition to these issues as well.  Cries of removing government restrictions on industry...regulations, etc.  I always try to be upbeat, even when I don't feel that way, but this is too important...its our lives...our legacy to our children's children's children!  

The photograph at the top of the blog was the first 4X5 large format photograph I ever took of a prairie wetland - almost 40 years ago.  Its one of many images now on exhibit at the Witter Gallery in Storm Lake, Iowa in my solo exhibit titled "From the Tallgrass".  The photograph is a sad reminder to me - its of a wetland that is "no more".  Its now covered in asphalt...it was a beautiful working ecosystem...now the ground no longer breathes there...no conversion of CO2, no cooling the summer air nor filtering runoff and pollutants.  Wetland Choruses no longer sung.  Asphalt.

Recently there was a bill in the Iowa legislature to sell a thousand acres of Iowa public land.  The gist of this bill was to sell 1000 acres of public land that could still be farmed.  Now I don't know what the legislator(s) who put this language into the bill were thinking of using the money for that would come out of a sale of public land, but this was our land - your land , your grand kid's land.  Iowa is "the" state in this union known as "being the most changed" as far as its resources...its natural heritage.  AND someone "still" feels we've gone over the top and need to sell parts of a park, or preserve, or prairie ground to return to what it was rescued from!  You'll hear arguments of a need for more corn to feed livestock, for more income opportunity for some individual(s), for more land to give back to the state's coffers in taxes.  There's always a reason to go back, to not look forward to what our future is potentially holding for us if we only think in the "Now".  Thank goodness there were enough voices raised with this bill (mine included) that the language was dropped. 

So I'm starting to celebrate the official Earth Day a tad early and plan to keep celebrating, being concerned, loving and embracing this amazing rock we're circling that close star with. 

 White-throated Sparrow - male

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

I'll celebrate with the little things - this morning the White-throated Sparrows returned!  They'll be around now for a few weeks before continuing on north to their breeding grounds.  I'll celebrate them and every spring migrant that pauses as they pass through.  I'll celebrate the rain we're receiving today!  I'll celebrate the old farmstead we live and work on...not as farmers but still embracing the earth with our vegetable gardens, berry crops, the native prairie pasture, the bee hives lending a hand with pollination.  I'll celebrate the Earth each day with my art work and photography...with the sounds and smells that are our natural heritage.  I'll support organizations that are working hard to preserve this natural heritage - not squander it on the profit of the moment.

In Iowa, check out and support really worthwhile organizations - with your heritage in mind; like the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and the Nature Conservancy.  And an excellent publication that shares what others are doing every day to embrace their natural heritage is Woodlands & Prairies Magazine...I highly recommend these!

Its not too early to Celebrate Earth Day.  And it is not too early to care...to "Really" care.

Celebrate Tomorrow!

Dutchman's Breeches with Virginia Waterleaf
(Dicentra cucullaria with Hydrophyllum virginianum)

Here's a few spring ephemerals form my last Saturday morning jaunt to the woodlands along the Little Sioux River south of here. The shot above is mostly illustrative, taken to show the Dutchman's Breeches with the Virginia Waterleaf, since they grow together so often. I also like the Virginia Waterleaf because of the nice blotches on their leaves, giving them great interest as a ground cover early in the spring. As these plants get larger through the spring and bloom, they tend to lose their "water spots" for which they were named. The blooms of the waterleaf (will be 2-4 weeks yet) are magnets for wild native bees, particularly our Bumblebees.

We do have a "lot" of Virginia Waterleaf here in our own grove and do encourage it to substitute for ground cover around our warm weather stressed plantings...I feel it helps hold moisture a little longer wherever it shades roots of other plants. But even waterleaf needs good humus and moisture and our place is characteristically dry...by mid summer the waterleaf looks pretty rugged; but it's a tough plant and seems to spread more each year.


We also have a handful of Dutchman's Breeches here at Prairie Hill farm but the grove was reduced by about 75% several years before we arrived and is in rougher shape. We are trying to reintroduce more leaf mulch each fall to try and help the dry soil situation there now. The leaf structutre of these little plants makes an interesting shape through the later part of spring, long after the flowers are spent and gone.

Perfoliate Bellwort

(Uvularia perfoliata)

There were a few Perfoliate Bellworts in the timber Saturday also...these unique plants get their name by the way the stems appear to perforate the leaves (not really illustrated here).

White Trout Lily or Dog-tooth Violet
(Erythronium albidum)

Georgie introduced these small beauties to me as Dog-tooth Violets many years ago before we were even married. They grew profusely in the woods behind her home along the Des Moines River in Ft. Dodge, Iowa. I'll be honest...I was not real informed on the identities of wild flowers at the time...teenagers, what can I say! Georgie gets the credit for making me look at the woodland (and now - prairie) floor and I hope I had the same influence on her where birds were concerned!

Dog Tooth Violets take many years to mature and flower. The immature plants only have one leaf stalk, mature plants have two. It took me a long time to figure this out...but when you walk through undisturbed woodlands, you'll often see masses of these small mottled leaves and only a few blossoms.

Tomorrow is Earth Day...I believe it's the 40th Anniversary for this event as well. We all need to seriously take stock in our "part" of this fragile globe's existence and not continue business as usual. I sometimes have problems verbalizing issues I care about; perhaps this is one of those times. Georgie and I watched a program the other night on the American experience. It was frustrating to see how political our government always makes things - regardless of what "issues" they are. We seemingly make strides toward a desirable goal, then administrations change and the years of hard work is discarded for the next "flavor". I'll try not to get too political here because that is not what this blog is about...however I do distinctly remember a very positive surge 35 years ago...our first department of renewable energy, serious development in solar energy and wind energy began; even hydrogen fuel cell development began. A farmer that lived 55 miles from Prairie Hill Farm Studio had refused to go on the grid...was still powering his entire farm operation with wind and batteries. His vehicles all ran on methane - created on his farm. Where did all this "progress" go??? Well, the farmer died (of old age), the administration that started the dept of renewable energy was replaced and the next administration tore down that department - fired nearly all the employees and cut it's funding by 80%. Oh, and tore down all the solar panels that were providing all the hot water and supplementing heating for the White House. I won't delve any further because it'll just get muddied and sorted...the jist is "we need to take stock and stand accountable" for our actions and the future of our grand children and theirs!

Three cheers for this planet - planet Earth! Think about it, not just on Earth Day.