Earth Day Choices

setting out
Originally uploaded by Robbi Baba.

At 9am Meredith called, asking if we'd like to bike over to the Santa Rosa Creek, where a clean-up had just begun. Sunday morning, Earth Day.
I'd been up since 7, but was still in my pj's and hadn't had any breakfast. India was still asleep. Ugh. "Maybe we'll see you there".

About 5 minutes later Karen called and asked if we'd like to go for a hike at Sugarloaf. Hmmm.

There's an EB White quote that goes something like 'every morning I wake up torn between improving the world and enjoying the world...this makes it hard to plan the day!'. Yes indeed.

I would have enjoyed cleaning the creek very much, but it wasn't in the cards. We decided to meet at 1pm for the hike.

So I spent the morning planting and transplanting my beloved veggie starts, with Eden joining in.
We planted sunflowers up front in the half wine barrels. Both girls planted the 'dinner plate' dahlias they'd gotten in their Easter baskets. But my favorite moment was re-potting my little basil starts.
I don't remember, but I'm guessing their seeds were pretty small, because in each cup there were 5 to 7 little seedlings. They are beautiful plants, with little roundy leaves and they came apart easily, without any tearing or stress. I swear they were giving off a happy energy or something--it really felt like they were enjoying being transplanted--each to their own cup. I found the experience inexplicably and profoundly enjoyable.

Our hike was beautiful but rather chilly. We even got sprinkled on just for a few moments. With all the rain we've been having, the moss on all the trees and rocks was a wonder to behold.

About half way through we spotted something wild. And tawny. And Feline. It was almost certainly a young mountain lion! I came up late and just caught sight of it slinking away. It seemed to me to be about three or four times the size of a house cat. Very exciting!

After that we kept Eden and Zoe a bit closer. We were all wondering if the mama cat was around. Though with so many fat deer around, it seems unlikely our noisy kids were much at risk.