Good Morning, Gaians!
I am up so early this morning, 4am. That’s what comes of flopping into bed at 8pm! Life is good, eh? I was out in the garden in the morning, got chased in by the sun by 11, stepped on a tiny thorn that is now needing to be soaked and pried out with tweezers. Ah, the joys of going barefoot in springtime!
This newsletter will soon be coming to you from our new website, LivingEarthAction.net! Please check it out. It is the work, largely, of Liam Mulholland, the son of Core Group Member David Mulholland. Thank you, David and Liam for making our new website possible. One of these days I’ll figure out how to send the newsletter from it!
LEAG Planning/Core Group has been meeting faithfully all winter, mainly over Zoom, but lately in-person at the church. We are looking forward to gathering outdoors with YOU! You are welcome to join us today at 5pm. at Gordon and Mary Hayward’s property:
Visit Haywards’ Forested Riparian Buffer Friday, April 21 at 5pm with Living Earth Action GroupLiving Earth Action Group has arranged with Gordon and Mary Hayward for a tour of their stream-side plantings along Westminster West Road. If you know where they live, go ahead and meet us there. Turn at the mailboxes on McKinnon Road. Park in the field on the right. Or, meet some of us at the West West Church at 4:45 and we will carpool or follow each other to Haywards’. A great way to mark Earth Day (April 22) by learning how to take care of our watershed.
I hope you can join us!
"Gordon and Mary Hayward are presently working with Cory Ross of the Windham County Natural Resources Conservation District as well as Jennifer Garrett of the Vermont Land Trust. The Haywards own the five-acre field adjacent to the Westminster West Road and Josh Gold’s place. They are creating what they call a Forested Riparian Buffer over 150 feet wide at the bottom of that five-acre field. You’ll see the unmown area either side of a small seasonal stream that runs north to south at the bottom of the sloping field. Over 500 very small native trees and shrubs have been planted by volunteers (including Rich Talbot, Sky Rhomberg and Gordon) in that grassy band. From the road, you can see a pink or white flagging on each plant. As the young plants grow they will provide more and more habitat, especially for birds. A big patch of existing milkweed for Monarch butterflies remains in place. Each year, in late Fall, the area east and west of the buffer will be mowed.”
Grow Your Own gorgeous poppies and poppyseeds!
At the above event on April 21, in celebration of Earth Day, Caitlin will hand out seeds of the poppies pictured below. They are annuals called “Lettuce-leaf Poppy”, palaver somniferum. They bloom in July. "I have a quart of poppyseeds from last year’s crop!" Honeybees LOVE this flower. It is native to the middle east, I think, but is good food and medicine for honeybees.
Papaver Somniferum, Breadseed poppy; opium poppy, lettuce leaf poppy, go-on-your-bagels poppy
Jean Cannon is an artist and an activist. She is awesome! She lives in Bellows Falls. If you feel as she does about art and trees, you might consider joining her at Island Park in BF: Go Jean!!!
Save the Trees Open Air Painting
Jean Cannon • Canal St, Bellows Falls Shared from Neighboring FPF
When: Weekly, Saturdays: 10 AM to 2 PM, Apr 22, 2023 Where: Island Park or Centennial Park, Bellows Falls, Vermont The plan for a new bridge over the canal in downtown Bellows Falls calls for every tree in Island Park (a.k.a. Centennial Park) to be cut down. A group of artists is opposed to this destruction of trees, some of which are quite old. They provide a much needed green space in a densely populated, urban/industrial area of town. We will be painting, drawing and appreciating these trees beginning at 10:00 on Saturday, April 15th and again on Saturday, April 22 (Earth Day). And many other days - schedule TBD. If you are an artist who feels strongly about this issue, come join us! Island Park is across Depot Street from the Waypoint Center
Living Earth Action Group is thrilled to present an author talk by Vermonter Curt Lindberg. Thank you to Cheryl Charles for making the connection!
"Our Better Nature: Hopeful Excursions in Saving Biodiversity" with Author Curt Lindberg - Friday, May 5, 5pm*
All are invited to an event on Friday, May 5, sponsored by the Living Earth Action Group and the Vermont Alliance for Half-Earth to celebrate the book Our Better Nature: Hopeful Excursions in Saving Biodiversity edited by Curt Lindberg and Eric Hagen. Full of beautiful color photographs and illustrations, the book is a collection of new essays by regional conservation experts and of stories about creative citizens who are protecting and restoring nature. Dedicated to pioneering biologist and author E.O. Wilson, Our Better Nature inspires individuals and communities to expand Vermont’s framework for sustaining biodiversity beyond borders and into meaningful action to protect nature in our backyards and around the world. The book addresses what E.O. Wilson called the gravest challenge facing the planet: the loss of biodiversity and the current extinction crisis. In the face of this crisis, Our Better Nature offers messages of hope. Curt will join us for this conversation and will also talk about how we can all participate in another new alliance, Biodiversity Vermont.
Come learn why Bill McKibben writes, “This book could not be more timely, more charming, more useful, or more needed! Anyone who cares about our small and lovely state will want to spend time with it—its impact will spread beyond Vermont’s borders.”
*We don’t yet know if this event will be in-person in someone’s garden, or on Zoom. We'll let you know closer to the event. In any case, not to be missed! Y”ALL COME!
Mother’s Day Weekend Ephemeral Wildflower Walk
Join the Westminster Conservation Commission in search of woodland wildflowers on Saturday, May 6, 2022 from 1:00 until 2:30 pm. We will meet in Westminster West village and carpool to local deciduous forest trails where these short-lived blooms are plentiful and varied. (Exact location TBD). Registration is required, and maximum number of participants is 12. To register, please email westminstervtconservation@gmail.com, or call Rachael Shaw at (802) 869-3184
Wild Ginger bloom at base of fuzzy heart-shaped leaves
Photo by Rachael Shaw, 2022
Charles Eisenstein, my personal favorite prophet and philosopher, shares his thoughts in this excerpt from a recent essay: The Next Five Years CHARLES EISENSTEINAPR 16 Comments by Karl Thidemann of Soil4Climate, On the terrible sandstorms going on in China: If the ecological health of the Loess Plateau in China is being maintained by well-managed grazing, I would expect it to be doing fine. Free-range grazing (i.e., unmanaged grazing), as practiced for the past 10,000 years, is very destructive to the environment. Of course, the harm is not the responsibility/fault of the cows, sheep, goats, etc., but of the humans managing the livestock. When managed well, cows are extraordinarily effective at healing degraded soil, increasing water and food security, improving wildlife habitat, replenishing dried-up rivers, and sequestering carbon. Eminent conservation biologist M. Sanjayan, PhD, CEO of Conservation International and former lead scientist at The Nature Conservancy, says in this video clip, taken from a National Geographic documentary, that Holistic Planned Grazing “could be the absolute best thing conservation has ever discovered.” https://youtu.be/XfPpC258ZwM At the time of the Loess Plateau restoration, neither filmmaker John D. Liu nor the restoration ecologists who managed the project were familiar with Holistic Planned Grazing. Hence, the approach they chose required extensive inputs including the use of earth-moving machinery, much fossil fuel, and a tremendous amount of human labor. This approach would not be feasible for healing 1.5 billion hectares of cropland and 2.5 billion hectares of rangeland, as well as another 2 billion hectares of degraded, abandoned cropland worldwide. For reference, the land area of the U.S. is almost exactly 1 billion hectares. The same is true of permaculture, which heals soil by improving the capture and utilization of rainwater. While Geoff Lawton and others have shown permaculture can be effective for restoring relatively small areas (~20 acres) of degraded land, this approach also requires considerable inputs in the form of bulldozers (including maintenance and replacement parts for repair), diesel fuel, and human labor, making it, too, impractical for restoring continent-size land areas. Some time after the Loess Plateau restoration was completed, Allan Savory reached out to Liu, who is now a close ally of Savory’s and an advocate of Holistic Planned Grazing. In this interview, Liu, who filmed the restoration of the Belgium-sized Loess Plateau in China, says he “met many people who are using [Allan Savory‘s] method, and found excellent results.” While discussing global scale ecological restoration, Liu states, ”If you do Holistic Pasture Management in all grazing situations ... all over the world, it’s going to have an enormous impact.” John D. Liu, founder of Ecosystem Restoration Camps, talks about Allan Savory & Holistic Management (2015, 20 mins.) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HnC_LUIicR4 Remember to Be Kind to the Earth by being Kind to Yourself. You are a unique and precious being. You deserve your own kindness and caring, the best care you can give. These are challenging times emotionally as well as every other way. Love your land, love your local wildlife, love your family, your community and especially LOVE YOURSELF. That means different things for everyone. Recognize what YOU need to be happy and love yourself the very best way you can. I think I’ll end with that message. Be Well, Caitlin Adair for Living Earth Action Group Westminster West, Vermont www.livingearthaction.net
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