Dreaming of sweet corn

The first seeds went into the newly minted garden boxes tonight. We planted peas, lettuce and corn as the sun was setting on a second blisteringly hot day. 

Although spring is just getting into gear, the heat made it feel like a summer night, and we planted and worked until the light was gone from the sky and we had to fumble to pick up our tools as we trudged back up to the house. If it weren't for the blooming dogwood watching us off to the side and the lack of fireflies in the dusk air, I could almost believe it was the middle of the summer.

Such promise.

Better steward

When I was in elementary school, my family was featured in the local newspaper for our recycling efforts. This was nearly two decades ago, when recycling was not yet mainstream. My parents, who were far more progressive than I ever appreciated back then, embarked on an ambitious project to recycle everything they possibly could. They canceled trash pickup, started a compost pile and began burning their trash. This meant we had to be vigilant in our recycling, as the remainder was headed for the burn pile. 

The large barn behind our farmhouse was enlisted in the effort, as were make-shift tables and loads of brown paper bags. We sorted the items according to type, with your basics -- plastics, glass, cans -- and more challenging items, like light bulbs and batteries. Then we would haul it into town, a 20-minute drive, to an equally make-shift recycling center where we would empty the bags into various bins, collect a few dollars for the redeemable cans, and be on our way, to begin the process all over again.

How the local paper caught wind of all of this, I do not know. But nonetheless, there we were in black and white, with our very own article and picture. A novelty amid the farms and homesteads of central Iowa. 

Now I live in town and I have a bright red recycling tub to put out in front of my house every Friday for the city to whisk away. Over the years of living with this system, I have slowly weaned myself off of sorting everything into brown paper bags by type, and now it is a jumbled collection of collapsed cartons, milk jugs, beer bottles and tin cans. Recycling has become an expectation, and when I am at someone else's house and they don't recycle, it raises eyebrows. 

Now that we have a Green Movement afoot, I find that I have grown a tad complacent with my green activities. Certainly nothing I do now would land me in a newspaper. Recycling, washing and reusing plastic Ziplock bags and employing reusable shopping bags. CFL light bulbs, buying organic when I can, resisting the urge for what is processed and packaged ... but these are all comfortable, reasonably easy things to do. And they are not enough.

On this Earth Day, I resolve to push myself out of my comfort zone, as my parents did more than 20 years ago, as they stood in front of our aging barn, frozen in the pages of a country newspaper, pioneers of a very different sort.