Earth Week Monday

This week I plan to post an agenda of activities for each day, to show my dedication and love for the earth.

Agenda today:

1. Watch videos

2. Earth Week petition walk

3. Finish Braiding Sweetgrass

4. Start a Hugelkulture terrace

1. Watch videos:

Interfaith Earthkeepers (which I've recently joined) has a page of short environmental videos, and I plan to watch one each morning. Today I watched Regenerative Agriculture: The Soil Story - How we grow our food is related to the health of our planet.

2. Earth Week petition walk:

Each day on my walk this week I will repeat this prayer of petition:

That the Earth be cared for, I pray. 

That we learn to live simply and lightly on the Earth, I pray. 

That we stop poisoning the soil and seas, I pray. 

That global warming is halted and reversed, I pray. 

That protection of the Earth becomes the political priority, I pray. 

Amen.

3. Finish Braiding Sweetgrass:

I've been reading this book for several weeks now, and I'm nearing the end, so this week I will give attention to the last chapters, and the questions and themes.

Yesterday I finished the chapter called the "The Sacred and the Superfund", about the destruction of Onondaga Lake outside Syracuse, New York, after it was turned into a Superfund site following years of destructive industrial misuse that began prior to 1940 and continued into the 1970’s. 

Kimmerer states that “scarcely thirty years ago, covering up your mess passed for responsibility—a kind of land-as-litter-box approach.” She points out that when land is “just real estate, then restoration looks very different than if land is the source of a subsistence economy and a spiritual home. Restoring land for production of natural resources is not the same as renewal of land as cultural identity.”

"The Onondaga people still live by the precepts of the Great Law and still believe that, in return for the gifts of Mother Earth, human people have responsibility for caring for the nonhuman people, for stewardship of the land.”

4. Start a hugelkulture terrace:

I've got a lot of branches and an area I'd like to terrace, so I'm going to start work today on a hugelkulture terrace. 

Hugelkultur, pronounced Hoo-gul-culture, means hill culture or hill mound. It's a permaculture technique I learned a couple years ago, and have used with success. The main advantages are:

• I use a lot of my hedge and tree pruning onsite instead of sending them off to the city composter.
• The gradual decay of the wood is a consistent source of long-term nutrients for the plants. 
• The composting wood also generates heat which should extend the growing season.
• Soil aeration increases as those branches and logs break down... meaning the bed will be no till, long term.
• The logs and branches act like a sponge. Rainwater is stored and then released during drier times.
• And best of all, it sequesters carbon into the soil.