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  • Author Author: ralphjy
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Happy Earth Day 2025 to the E14 Community!

ralphjy

Technically Earth Day here in the US is on April 22 but it is generally celebrated for the whole week.   Reminded me of it this morning because I need to watch my son's dog while he participates in a cleanup activity in downtown Portland (OR) with his company and others.

I'm still making my small contribution with my solar system,  It just got past 39 MWh of production.  Hopefully much more to come.

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I also noticed that iNaturalist is doing their City Nature Challenge 2025 which encourages people to make observations of wild plants and animals 25-28 April, and take part in one of the largest community science events in the world while helping us better understand – and therefore, take care of – nature that lives in and around urban areas.

I've been trying to observe the native bees and plants in my neighborhood so I'll try to document some observations this weekend.  I have some pics from earlier this week but need to submit new ones to satisfy the observation window.

Trillium

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Skunk cabbage

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Camas

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Happy Earth Day!

  • in reply to genebren

    It's great that your wife has a gardening program.  My grandson loves to garden.  I wish that we had a nearby community garden but between my son's yard and ours - he manages to get by...  loves to plant and harvest so it's a good way to get him to eat vegetables.

    We support a local nature park at Tryon Creek (with $$ not sweat equity).  We recently contributed to the construction of a new education pavilion and it should be ready before he is old enough to attend their summer programs.  It's a great hiking park and the dogs can go too - just need to stay off the horse trails Laughing.

    I decided in the spirit of the City Nature Challenge that I'd try to get some pictures when I walked the dog this morning.  He wanted to go into a green space that was recently cleared of brush and blackberry bushes.  It was a bit of a challenge as the city likes to leave habitat for wildlife.  I was surprised to see lots of Giant Trillium and Common Camas as this is a somewhat "drier" greenspace.  I wonder if it will bother the deer now that a lot of the cover is removed.

    image image

    I got some pictures of a bumblebee on Rhododendrons, French Lavender, and Bleeding Hearts on the way to a nearby park.

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    But the dog got spooked when we got to the park and I had to bring him home.  In the last couple of days friends with dogs have had problems with a very aggressive coyote.  We think that there is a den in another nearby greenspace and have been avoiding that area but maybe the problem is worse than we thought.  

  • Happy Earth Day to you too!

    We celebrated Earth Day Tuesday at the Children's vegetable gardening program that my wife runs.  She has 50+ home schooled kids and their parents, for 12 Tuesdays, twice a year (Fall and Spring).  For Earth Day, the children were encouraged to notice all the insects in area and then they water colored a picture of a ladybug in the outdoor class area.   I spent most of the morning planting two grape vines that were given to us by one of the garden staff members and setting up an arbor for the grapes.

    I am a be fan off iNaturalist. We have been using it for years now and I have 140 observations submitted

    The spring has been bringing us some rain (1.25" the other day) and our yard is really bringing us flowers. The majority of the plants have overwintered and are thriving with the rain.  We have been super busy pulling weeds and remove invasive or otherwise unwanted plants (we are donating weeds and cuttings to the dear, shredding some for mulch, compositing and also filling our waste can with seedy or aggressive plants).