What I did for Earth Day

You know, given that the date for Earth Day was originally selected mostly on the basis of when the weather would be warm enough for outdoor activities, Earth Day 2013 was awfully chilly. When I headed out for my afternoon walk, I nearly went back for my winter coat (but I compromised by just getting a warmer scarf). I did not feel at all moved to spend half an hour relaxing in the park and enjoying nature.

Moreover, since it was a Monday, all the really big Earth Day events had already taken place over the weekend (except for a scattered few that are taking place this coming weekend). But we did, nonetheless, do a few small things appropriate to the occasion:

• Brian rode his bike to work, braving the 30-mph winds—though on the way home he found himself wishing he hadn't, as he had to pedal furiously and downshift and be prepared to use the brake to avoid being pushed backward. On the plus side, the huge hill he has to climb every afternoon felt like nothing by comparison.
• I picked up a few scraps of litter during my walk and deposited them in the nearest bin.
• I used my reusable IKEA folding bag on a trip to the grocery store (though that's so automatic for me now that it's really hardly worthy of mention).
• We had local produce for dinner. Really local: asparagus from our own patch. Instead of "miles to market," we could have measured the distance from farm to table in feet (though we didn't actually bother). Unfortunately, April 22, in addition to being uncertain weather-wise, is also early enough in the asparagus season that we only had four spears, which wasn't enough to make the crab-and-asparagus omelet featured in our supermarket flier. So we had the asparagus as a side dish, eked out by frozen peas.

I also attempted to practice the three R's—reduce, reuse, recycle—by doing a little Freecycling, continuing to work my way through the pile of stuff we recently cleared out of our garden shed (about which more in a future post). Unfortunately, the person who made the request was apparently a total flake. First she asked for just one of the three items I listed, even though the listing clearly said "please take all"; then she said she'd take all three and asked if she could pick them up that day; then she e-mailed again to ask the same question, even though I'd already responded in the affirmative; then she sent a message around 5:15 pm to say she'd be there "in 20 minutes" and still had not showed up by the time we went to bed at 11:15. (This morning I got another request from a different person who wanted to take only one of them. Maybe I need to be more explicit when saying "please take all," like "Please DO NOT REPLY unless you are willing to take all three.")

So that was my Earth Day. Anyone out there in readerland do anything more exciting to celebrate?