What have I done to celebrate the earth, I ask myself? Mostly, it’s involved informing others of the precious resources the earth provides. In the past, for celebrations of Earth Day I’ve presented to whole schools on topics such as the forest and monarch conservation. I’ve presented on the prairie as an ecosystem, and helped…
It was getting later and later. My watch told me it was now approaching five thirty! Club dismisses at 4:45 p.m.. It was early February and now dark outside. The school parking lot was empty and the outside lights were shining on the snow piles, reflecting with a glare. All but one of my garden…
Who will win this round? Molly, our 80 pound, yellow Labrador Retriever on the home team? Or, Peanut, an 8 pound visiting feline? Slow introductions of new animals are a must. We understand. But, eventually, you hope they will come to an amicable understanding of one another. Molly, our lab, will be 2 years old…
Today I started working on a project for a local elementary school. Due to the pandemic, environmental day festivities – usually held on or around Earth day in April – are being planned as virtual festivities. My choice, as a presenter, was to do a live “Zoom” presentation on April 1st or to make a…
Today, is my one thousandth, three hundredth, and twentieth blog post! That’s right I’ve made 1,320 posts to The Apples In My Orchard! It all started just before the Slice of Life Story Challenge in 2017. I opened my blog during the last week in February to test the waters and be ready to write…
For the last few days, I’ve been in a slump. It’s really the first slump I can recall during the pandemic. Mostly, my “slumpiness” revolved around feelings about my own self worth and feeling undervalued. But, today, several things have happened to restore my sense of being valued by others. I realized that I do…
One of my goals for this year is to ramp up my blog readership to at least fifty visitors a day. This month, February – a short month, that goal will be hard to reach. I was on target until a few days ago when I noted a failure to reach the previously attainable number….
In a few hours, the League of Women Voters in our area will host a candidate forum for those running for our local school board. As you can imagine, it has been a challenging year and it will be an interesting forum to watch. I intend to do so. Rarely, do I post more than…
What have I worked on this week? I am a reflective thinker. Perhaps, too much so. I find that sometimes all my thinking stalls my actions and prevents forward movement. I get caught up in questions such as, what should I do now? What would be most productive? Should I stop editing and put those…
Yesterday, I wrote twice. I started a blog because I was angry. Angry at what specifically, I cannot really say because I don’t really know. However, by the time I was finishing the blog, my anger had waned and I did not know exactly how to end the piece. I was also ashamed for feeling…