Saving the Earth

Hannah, Lizzie and I learned a lot this weekend. We learned that trees help to stabilize the water table and put oxygen into the air. We learned that gnats are out early this year. We learned that pricker bushes do NOT make good chairs (that was my own personal lesson). And we learned that this country is VERY LUCKY INDEED that Hannah and Lizzie and I were never pioneers. I don't think we would have gotten much past the threshold of our Little House on the Prairie.
Where did we learn all this valuable information? During the Girl Scout Tree Planting Service Project. Six members of my troop (plus a parent for each of them except for my two-for-one deal) helped plant trees at Beaver Farm. Our morning group (some are pictured below) planted 300 trees. The afternoon group planted 700 trees at a different site. Our site was rocky, hot, swampy and (did I mention?) very very very buggy. The afternoon site was, we were told later, a piece of cake. If you don't believe how rough this work was (and not just for my cane-carrying, air-conditioning loving self) let me tell you that I BROKE one of our shovels trying to get the rocks out of the soil. But all's well that ends well. And like I said, it's fun to save the Earth: Here's a picture of Hannah helping my friend and fellow leader (of two troops -- she's a girl scout superstar!) Kelly tamp down the soil around a freshly planted tree. This tree was sort of small. Some of the trees were in gallon containers. Right here Hannah is HAPPY to be helping. About 35 seconds after this picture was snapped she started complaining. About everything. Here's Lizzie after the job was done. I have no idea why she's still wearing her vest as the rest of us were all sweating and huffing and puffing. She was a great tree planting assistant, though. She was runner and would run up and down this huge hill getting trees to plant (they were color-coded by species) while myself and two other adults dug the holes. Hannah had deserted us when she found a Junior Girl Scout to help her plant one or two trees, but mostly just talk about hair and make-up. Lizzie is standing in front of some of the pots that previously had held the trees. The flags were used as markers to tell the girls which type of tree went in that area. I have absolutely no idea what kinds of trees we planted. We all just knew that we did NOT want to find a pink flag because those were the gallon containers and they were HEAVY!! It was a good day, though, and we all felt very accomplished after it was done.

And here's my other big news for the week. I bought a new couch for the family room. It's very comfy. Lizzie doesn't like it. She doesn't like change at all. She wants us to keep the old couch even though it is broken, because Daddy keeps broken cars in the garage. But I told her that I DON'T KEEP BROKEN THINGS. So Lizzie is staging her own protest and has promised to chain herself to the old couch which is currently sitting on our deck until the bulk pick up day the first week of May. Let me just add here that Lizzie has actually sat on this couch about 17 times in the whole 5 or 6 years we've had it, as she has another chair she prefers. But she still doesn't want to see it go. See what I mean? She's not moving: