Even though we are not within the boundaries of the Greenbelt, we've been trying to do our part to maintain the natural landscape. As I walked through the gardens this morning, admiring the beauty of our first snowfall, I had bittersweet feelings.
We know that on our own property we have done things wrong in the past. Things like paving our driveway. We should have either left the driveway gravel or installed a surface that would allow rain to slowly seep into the soil below.
For the past few years, we've embraced the notion of leaving our garden plants in place over the winter. They are home to many beneficial insects. Why ruin the home of something that helps to feed me?
Bonus: there is beauty in decay.
Our small piece of land increasingly feeds more people. We've tried to strike a balance between encouraging native species around the edges, gardening in the middle where there is sun and perennial and fruit gardens in between the two.
Isn't it cool how some plants, like these dill, capture snowflakes? It looks like fluffy fireworks to me. Nature - allowing precipitation to take its time as it makes its way back into the soil.
There is still some colour here and there.
I felt like our future was in the balance this morning. Our government is planning on taking land out of the greenbelt to fast track housing. Anyone I know who is in need of housing would never be able to afford to live in the greenbelt. You would need to have a vehicle to drive to get your groceries, to go to doctor appointments and to go to work if you were to live there. Folks I know, don't have those resources. They need a home close to amenities, not out in a woods somewhere. I have a feeling that our government is under pressure from developers to build mega-homes on the land that should be left to re-generate water for all of us. Land that feeds all of us.
I cropped this image so you could see that one perfect snowflake balancing on the edge of the goldenrod's snowy blanket. Do you see it?
I hope the tadpoles and frogs are tucked into the mush at the bottom of our ponds. We've got ice.
On Friday, we hope to be at the Rally for Greenbelt.
Details:
November 18 from 11 am to 1 pm in front of MPP David Piccini’s Constituency Office, 117 Peter St., Port Hope
Maybe, together we can find a better path to housing our vulnerable neighbours.
So they can come in from the cold.
More info at Blue Dot Northumberland.
“Look again at that dot.
That's here.
That's home.
That's us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,
every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies, and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager,
every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilization,
every king and peasant,
every young couple in love,
every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician,
every "superstar," every "supreme leader,"
every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there
-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner,
how frequent their misunderstandings,
how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that,
in glory and triumph,
they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance,
the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe,
are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity, in all this vastness,
there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.
There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes.
Settle, not yet.
Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image of our tiny world.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot,
the only home we've ever known.”
Carl Sagan
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