Today is Earth Day

but every day should be earth day!

Wood Anemones

Every year, 22 April is celebrated as Earth Day, a day for everyone to join together to look after the earth we share. The Earth Hub on the Earth Day website offers a selection of ways to mark this day, from fact sheets to quizzes, along with toolkits and ideas for action. There are also lots of blog posts and stories to read, including a good piece about poetry and nature.

I think the idea behind the Earth Day website is a little like my idea behind this Substack and my other online presences - bringing together different aspects of life to celebrate, conserve and learn about nature, and to find creative approaches to spreading the word about nature and environmental issues. (Though I’m well aware that the content of this Substack is much more Green than Crafty or Poetry!).

Of course, every day should be Earth Day, we should always try to be aware of how we can better look after nature and our local environment. Like many of these official days to highlight issues, Earth Day is really just an excuse to get people interested and writing about the topic. Which is a start, but only a start.

This Earth Day, for example, you could start:

a) learning about the wildlife around you; as I outlined in a post last June

b) volunteering with a local conservation organisation - opportunities are available from recording wildlife to picking litter to planting trees, I shared some ideas in this post from last June:

finding creative approaches to spread the word about nature and environmental issues, I wrote about that in the post below:

Reading is a great way to learn about nature and environmental issues. Tomorrow is World Book Day, an opportunity to celebrate the power of books! Like many people interested in nature, I have learned a lot of what I know about plants and animals from the excellent selection of nature related books that are out there - including field guides and nature based memoirs. I wrote about books about nature and environmental issues in this post (which was also for World Book Day, but using a different date from a different source)

Bird of the Week

At the weekend we had a lovely walk round Edinburgh’s Botanic Gardens, enjoying the rhododendrons and azaleas that are currently in full bloom. We were delighted to see this Nuthatch (thanks to my partner for the photo). When I first moved to Edinburgh, Nuthatches weren’t around, they’ve since moved up here from England and are always lovely to see.

Nuthatch

Climate Stories from the Pacific

Hear stories from people across the Pacific living with the impacts of the climate crisis – from Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands to Fiji, Samoa, and beyond.

News from Norway

I love this Norwegian idea of the interspecific council, where people imagine themselves as other species and give their opinions about looking after the environment. Article on the Guardian website.