HAPPY MAY DAY and EARTH DAY ONE AND ALL!

Here’s a little upbeat news from the isle of milk and honey to counteract the present negative energy pervading our country. And this negativity is not just confined to our borders. Sometimes it’s difficult to be philosophical or even optimistic when so much destruction, death, and hatred is rampant in the world. What can I do about it? Forget it, it’s hopeless, you say.

But is it? So you’re just one person. You can choose to be depressed and discouraged and a naysayer or you can find what makes you and others happy and throw yourself into it. Like a pebble in the lake, your ripple, a small ripple to be sure, will eventually reach the shore, and added to all the others, make a sizeable difference. Look around at your neighbor, or find people who are working one-to-one with young people in one of a hundred ways to add excitement, meaning, and color to their lives. All it takes is one person over a period of time to make a child feel acknowledged, loved, and special. And sometimes that’s all it takes for us.

Then there are the hundreds of people on South Whidbey Island involved in the care and feeding of the homeless and those families who are having a struggle economically.

I had an opportunity to observe two exciting projects right in my own backyard over the weekend.

One was the May Day Celebration at the Good Cheer Garden, an organic garden that provides fresh produce for the Good Cheer Food Bank. It is run by young people who are dedicated to community-based sustainable agriculture. They have now expanded to a second garden where the celebration was held. For the occasion they added a maypole, face painting, rock painting, music, and lots of fresh food. I loved it! Finally somebody painted a goatee over my chin and I looked thirty, again. Well, maybe more like sixty.

Here are a few pictures as we waltz around the maypole. Click a picture to start slide show.

The week before, April 22nd, I witnessed 500 students celebrating Earth Day at the South Whidbey School Farm started three years ago by my daughter, Cary Peterson. What a success it has been! Elementary School youngsters get to grow the vegetables that are now served for lunch in the school cafeteria (Michael Moore take notice!), and stuff themselves with home-grown veggie tacos, which they make on the spot using kale leaves and filling them with assorted fresh vegetables they pick from the garden. This not only gives young people an appreciation of fresh food and how it is produced, but gives them a chance to learn about soil, garden insects, and how healthy food is produced.

Oh, and you can’t imagine how great the pea shoot pesto was, grown and made by the children. There was also spinach pesto and kale pesto. All so delicious! And the children had a contest to see which was the favorite.

There were many activities from planting plants that attracted pollinators, to making garden flags, bugs, spirals, fairy houses, and rock friends. The boys, especially, enjoyed digging ditches and spearheading trench composting, and everybody got into planting winter squash.

The School Farm website has many photos of this delightful event… click HERE to see them!

To read more about the School Farm, click HERE for a report on King 5 news. The Facebook site has over 47,000 views as of May 15th!