Buy organic heritage seedlings whenever you can. Most fruits and vegetables have an incredibly diverse range of varieties, but we typically only see one or two different kinds in the grocery store. By choosing to grow heritage plants we can preserve that diversity and give a big green thumbs down to monoculture.
In 1872, J. Sterling Morton founded Arbor Day, and that year over a million trees were planted in Nebraska. It’s usually celebrated on the last Friday in April (some states choose different dates depending on their weather for best tree planting times). Probably now, more than ever, we need to honor Morton’s big idea-trees hugely improve the quality of our lives. They provide shelter and food for our wildlife, clean the air, absorb carbon dioxide, and release oxygen. They mask noise, prevent soil erosion, and provide wood for fuel and buildings:all this plus the joy and wonder of such a majestic and wonderful plant.
Celebrate Arbor Day by logging onto arborday.org and finding out what you can do in your area. Save a tree by recycling paper. Plant a suitable tree in your garden or neighborhood and dedicate it to someone special.
Get a rain barrel:
One of our fabulous interns here at Viva Editions, Sara Wigglesworth, has a lovely way of saying “Good morning” upon arriving that ensures it will actually be a better day. I have to admit that greeting coworkers sometimes slips my mind, so it’s helpful to be reminded of the power that a simple, well intentioned, and sincere greeting can have. It is a wonderful way to start the day with elegance and ease.
Rich, my beloved, was raised by his grandmother, whom he called “GM.” She had been the wife of the head of their village and clan in Southern China until the Japanese Occupation, when war devastated the community at the cost of many lives. She felt very fook sing (lucky) to have made it to America with her only son and they rebuilt their lives from scratch. She ran a Chinese laundry which I have no doubt was the finest in all of Flushing, Queens. While working and taking care of her grandchildren, she told stories of the homeland, including the hardest times of having to eat insects during drought and war, famine, and pestilence. She relayed all this with no bitterness, only a sense of great good fortune in getting to live in the land of plenty in the US. Day by day, story-by-story, she instilled values of excellence-gratitude, hard work, keeping a positive attitude no matter what-in her children and grandchildren.
When Rich and his younger brother Jimmy went to public school in Queens, they made lots of friends in that melting pot metropolis, including a young African American boy who was really tall for his age and came from a family that had a hard time putting enough food on the table. One day, he stopped by her house with Rich and Jimmy. It took GM about two seconds to assess the situation and she told them to bring him by every day. She always made extra for their new fast-growing buddy. Having faced severe hunger during the war, GM was not going to let anybody in her circle go hungry.
Every day, in ways large or small, she showed her family how to do the right thing-stand on the bus so others can sit, be polite even if others are rude and, above all, “Take care of your clan.”
Open the doors for everyone-young, old, everyone in between- simply because it is a very, very, very nice thing to do.
