Earth Day, Earth Week...Earth Day Every Day!

Yesterday, I attended 2 earth-friendly events.  Both were very enjoyable and more focused on greening up the outdoors & our food supply than green design.   Although the process of making our kitchen as eco-friendly as possible was the inspiration for this blog, the real message that has emerged is that our journey, like all of you who are making efforts to live more consciously & sustainalby, is about making small changes that will result in a cleaner, less toxic & more sustainable world for future generations, as well as ourselves.  Earth Day every day, inside & out, makes more sense the more you learn!

I attended a workshop on "Incorporating Desert Plants in a Native Garden" at the Tree of Life Nursery.  They have a great series of free workshops, held under a giant California Sycamore tree on their grounds.  Sitting there, you feel like you are part of the original California landscape. 

 Wendy, from Mountain States Nursery gave a very helpful presentation with lots of ideas for combining the structural succulents I love, with California perennials, trees & shrubs.  These pictures give you some idea of the variety of California natives & desert plants that blend together so beautifully. Well...that inspired me to buy more native plants, so I came home with lots of work for my Sunday garden team (thanks Lee!)...yippee!  More holes to dig.

While at TOL, I met Gary from Killer Dana Surf. He has a large garden with mostly natives plus fruit trees & other edibles...pretty impressive pix. As a surfer, & owner of a surf shop, he is in a unique position to enlighten surfers about the need for environmental stewardship. It seems like a lot of young surfers don't get the relationship between Earth Day & surfing, but Gary seems to get it and is sharing his message with other surfers.  Clean water & sustainable design all fit together, especially in light of health issues related to spending a lot of time in polluted water here at O.C. beaches. Go Gary!Next, I went to The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano for their Earth Day festivities.  The event featured music, food, a plant sale, as well as information about their mission & membership.  Since they are a community project in my area & focused on teaching adults & children about strategies for living, eating & gardening more earth-friendly, I became a member.  I'll be posting more on their efforts in future.

Since Earth Day/Week/Month is special to me (April 22 is also my birthday, so I guess I was born to be an Earth Mother!), I'm going to celebrate by sharing more posts about a variety of ways to live greener & healthier in the coming weeks.  We'll also be having a great Earth Day Celebration, 2-5 p.m. on April 22 at our Neighborhood Cup in Aliso Viejo...more details on that this week. Share you thoughts & ideas on living greener, too.