Welcome to spring! It looks like spring has finally, truly arrived in New Hampshire and I couldn’t be more pleased. As you recall, a group of custom portrait photographers throughout New Hampshire have gotten together for a monthly themed blog circle. Previous themes this year included A Day in the Life, What Love Looks Like, and A Favorite Recipe…..this month, the blog theme for April is Earth Day. You can visit the next photographer in the circle by following the link at the bottom of this post.
I am a firm believer that Earth Day is not one day a year, but every day. We all have so many opportunities each day to make changes, use fewer resources, dispose of things a little differently, and leave the much-talked-about smaller footprint. We don’t do everything right here in the Follansbee household, but we do a few things very well. My favorite earth-friendly practice is reduce-reuse-recycling. I have been a hardcore recycler for as long as I can remember. Here in Goffstown, for years now we’ve had single-stream recycling in 65-gallon bins that included plastics #1-7 (not bad for a small town!). I swear, so often I complain to my mother that so much of my day is taken up with processing trash, breaking down boxes and containers, separating stuff endlessly. Not a complaint, but it seriously does take up a huge chunk of my day. There you have it, my totally unglamorous life spent separating trash. Many weeks our recycling bin is overflowing to the point where we have to use our neighbor’s bin. We recycle everything. I also keep separate areas for plastic bags (even though I take and use reusable bags to the store, they still accumulate endlessly), and also batteries, both of which require separate and different disposals. We dispose of all our food scraps in our woods which reduces the weight of our garbage by about 50%, I would seriously estimate. When you have 3 and 5 year olds, you waste a lot of food, sadly, that has no place in the landfill. When you take out the recyling, and the food scraps, it leaves very little in the actual trash that has any weight (except when you have cat litter…..)
My other happy little way to make Earth Day every day is simply my enjoyment and respect for our little piece of land (which brings me to the photography portion of this post. I wasn’t going to show you pics of my recycling bin). We have always tried to be a good steward of our property and I’ve enjoyed gardening for the 10 years that we’ve lived here. I learned macro photography before I ever learned much of anything else, and it’s still something that I enjoy now when I have time (which never happens). So here’s a little peek into my yard at this time of year.
Ferns at this time of year look like aliens being birthed, shown below.
For more Earth Day goodness, head over to Bow, NH and visit Jenn Bakos Photography!