Fears of the future

This weekend I enter my mid 30s. And even though I am aging, my knees hurt in the mornings and my ten-month-old wears me out so fast, I have so much to be happy about. I am really in a good place as I near the mid point of my life. I have everything I've ever wanted. Yet I can't get over the fact that I worry about my daughter's future. And I worry all the time, and it's not just how will she pay for college or how many times her little heart will get broken. It's bigger than that.

Was it a good idea to bring a little life into this world? As I rocked my daughter to sleep for her morning nap and she clung to me like a little koala bear all snuggling into my chest I started to cry. If I'm lucky I will not live long enough to see the real horrors that will result from how our species has wrecked this planet. But she probably will. I try not to think of the super storms, floods, famines, droughts and plagues that will inevitably occur. I can't stand to think of her suffering. But unless our species makes huge changes, and makes them fast, all our children will suffer.

So as part of my blog makeover I have added to my sidebar shortcuts to my easy green living tips. They are small changes in lifestyle, very small, such as unplug your wall warts (the bulky chargers like the one attached to my lap top). Simple, easy, saves a ton of electricity. Or go organic on your property, it will keep hormones from pesticides out of the environment keeping future generations of children safe.

So for all the children you know, all the children in the world, give them a safe future. Please. It's time we stop whining about how we can't do without that AC turned on high, or our SUV that gets 14 MPG that we need to buy because we just had a child, or the fact that you must spray your lawn with chemicals to kill that one dandelion. It's not worth it. There's too much at stake.

Project BudBurst - my forsythia offers up data for climate change

Last year I registered the forsythia bush in my back yard with Project BudBurst. I of course completely forgot about my commitment to follow the plant's yearly leafing and flowering cycle and let a whole growing season go by without logging in any data. This year I have vowed to keep a closer eye on the plant and log my data as soon as I notice the first leaf unfold.

Project BudBurst is a wonderful "citizen science" campaign that's collecting data from around the country about when plants are doing their thing. So you, yes YOU, get the data, log it into your site and it will go directly towards mapping climate change. 2008 was the inaugural year for the project so it will be a few years before general trends can be mapped. But there are data from previous years before the project was opened to citizen scientists. Most interesting to me and my little forsythia tree is the following from the 2008 report:

"...in Chicago, Forsythia opened it first flower from April 23 – 25 in 2007 and from
April 17 to 19 in 2008. In both years, the reported observations indicated the first flower for Forsythia occurred in two days, however in 2008 the first flower was a week earlier."

Two years of data does not provide definitive trends. But this year I will definitely remember to log in my data to help the project compile a long-term climate picture. I just went out in the back yard and looked at my forsythia: there's buds about to burst, but no leaves yet....I will keep you posted.

To participate log into Project BudBurst's participation page and get started! There's 75 common tree, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers that you can register from your very own patch of earth.