Want to see something lovely?
Well, you’re in luck. This video clip is just a taste of a full-length feature film that’s being produced by a partnership of Films for Action and Overgrow the System, a grassroots organization dedicated to “raising awareness around our food system and how to live a life that is more in tune with nature.”
Photo by Moonsun1981 via Wikimedia Commons
In case you were scrambling to jot down the fabulous quote at the beginning of the video, attributed to author and filmmaker Valerie Andrews, let me save you the trouble of re-playing it again:
“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unselfconsciously to the soughing of the trees.”
If you haven’t seen the newest Johnson’s ad yet, you’re in for a treat …
Welcome New Sisters! (click for current roster)
Merit Badge Awardees (click for latest awards)
My featured Merit Badge Awardee of the Week is … CJ Armstrong!!!
CJ Armstrong (ceejay48, #665) has received a certificate of achievement in Outpost for earning a Beginner & Intermediate Level Speak for the Trees Merit Badge!
BEGINNER
I have always been interested in the trees growing in our area, but it became more of a “project” to learn more after a fire in July 1994 that destroyed our house and most of the natural wooded area around it. So, in order to replace trees, we did a lot of research on what would grow well, knowing that we could never replace the trees that grew here naturally and took many decades to do so.
We planted Colorado blue spruce, aspen, Ponderosa pine, white fir, yew, Alberta spruce, golden raintree, Japanese pagoda, sour cherry, apple, and pear trees in our yard and they are all doing well. Not all of the native trees were destroyed, and what we do still have growing on our property are: cedar, pinon, cottonwood, and scrub oak. While they are not “trees,” we also have native sagebrush, rabbit brush, and even some prickly pear cactus.
INTERMEDIATE
In the immediate area of our house, there are lots of natural wooded areas and orchards and not too great of a need for windbreaks. However, in the dryland farming area just to the northwest of us, there are acres and acres of farmland that are wide open and susceptible to wind erosion. Thus, the windbreaks are a great need and many folks have successfully planted trees that are suitable to the area and the dryland farming concept.
We have some beautiful parks in the towns in our community, and they have planted Colorado blue spruce, Ponderosa pine, and Navajo willow trees there. While not native to this elevation, the blue spruce and Ponderosa pine are native to Colorado higher elevations and they do well because they aren’t far from “home.”
It’s been a challenge to replace trees we lost, but we are happy with what we did plant and the growth we’ve seen. We have some absolutely stunningly beautiful trees in our yard!”
Sunday, March 8, was International Women’s Day, helping to kick off Women’s History Month in March. Women’s Day has been celebrated in America since 1909 and in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland since 1911. In 1975, the United Nations finally declared it an international holiday.
Companies and organizations around the world and the web are celebrating women, and here are a few of the sites I thought you’d enjoy.
Biographile, Random House’s nod to literary biographies, celebrates with “quotes from 9 literary ladies.”
Maya Angelou, Charlotte Bronte, Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, and Margaret Atwood, Biographile.com
Microsoft reminds us that girls like science, too, with their latest commercial:
The initiative, a collaboration between the Clinton Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, posted this celebrity-, fun- (and fact-) filled video:
Buy props used in MaryJane’s books and magazine!
5% of profits will benefit www.firstbook.org, a non-profit that provides new books to children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.
Here’s how:
MaryJane will post a photo and a description of a prop and its cost along with a few details as to its condition here: https://shop.maryjanesfarm.org/MaryJanesCurations. It’s a playful way to be the new owner of a little bit of farm herstory.
