time for large scale conservation

woot-woot...there have been some wonderful examples of large scale land conservation happening in the past month. in florida the state has made a bid to buy property from big sugar to work on protecting the everglades, a group of conservation organizations have made agreements to buy and conserve property in montana over the next few years, and in in ontario a huge swath of borel forest will be protected. i appreciate land conservation on any scale, a few acres can make a big difference to a community in the right place, but there is something so impressive about the large scale projects. partially because the large parcels of private land are becoming fewer and farther in between, and partially because, once in a while, conservationists can actually apply some of the theories behind landscape scale ecology...looking at ecosystem level projects. these opportunities come up rarely, and will get rarer as time goes on, so i am excited to see large scale conservation happening, right now, and those further down the line will hopefully get to appreciate and benefit from the foresight of those making these landscape scale projects happen.

(of course, i also recognize that some of these projects, especially those with the various logging companies are only happening because of the recent economic downturn-lowered real estate values-decreased housing market-decreased new construction...thus a hurting logging industry... but it's a great opportunity for conservation, we've got to take advantage of these situations as they come up!)

The Canadian Press: Ont. premier pledges to preserve giant swath of northern boreal forest

Florida to Buy Sugar Maker in Bid to Restore Everglades - NYTimes.com

Rocky Mountain land deal tops $500 million - Environment- msnbc.com

what we all deserve

a woman on our board came in and told us she had the best story for us. her in-laws just passed away, within 5 days of eachother. in their mid 90's they had been married for 72 years. when the wife passed, her husband gave up and passed on a few short days later. i realized that, there is probably nothing else as wonderful in the world as knowing for 72 years that you are with a person you love, so real, so true, so honestly. we all deserve to be loved that way.

local forages

a few weeks ago i wandered around my neighborhood picking mulberries. tons of mulberries. i came home and put them in the fridge and ate a few here and there and then was too busy to do anything with them before they molded BUT, i felt that at least i had given the little free fruits a chance at a second life, rather than them lying on sidewalks, getting trampled and sworn at by people who's yards they came from. it makes me feel terrible to see fruit go to waste, uneaten by it's owners or the neighborhood birds and squirrels.

i wonder if this comes from a childhood of foraging. i remember picking pomelos and avacados and mangos from neighbors' trees and gathering coconuts on the beach in hawaii as a kid. and of course the summers were filled with picking fresh fiddle heads from ditches and forested streams, wild strawberries in roadside fields, raspberries from abandonded rockpiles, blueberries in the forest company owned bogs (which had a kind of guerrilla feeling to it like "hey-big logging company that tried to rape this area of all the trees and vegetation, look at all these magnificent blueberries you left. you missed out, big time!"), and tagging along with my parents as my dad collected hundreds of cutting and suckers from abandonded heritage apple trees while my mom dug up chunks of the perennial flower beds remaining from farm houses long gone.

so, i was so excited to find these two links, and find that i am not alone. both of these talk are groups that have attempted to map out fruit trees in public spaces that others can pick. the first one, fallenfruit, is based in LA (i cna just imagine the wonderful fruits there!) and has done some maps in other parts of the country. the second one, a group based in portland, actually maps the trees and schedules group harvests where 1/2 the fruit goes home with the volunteers and the other half goes to community food banks. what a wonderful use of this naturally occuring food! (the only thing is to be cautious of sprays that the owners or the city applies to the fruit...other than that, gather away!)

http://www.fallenfruit.org

http://portlandfruit.org/WebPages/About.html

dare

over two years ago, i was eating a dove promise. the exta dark kind, with the smooth foil wrapper. the quote inside read, simply "Dare to love completely." and it resonated. and i cut it out and taped it on my monitor. and i tried to love as completely as i could. and i did. and i do. and i will again.

and today i looked up and consciously saw that quote for the first time in months. and it resonated. again.