"Today is the first day of spring. The
vernal equinox occurs today, the time when the earth's axis is not turned toward the sun (summer, for those of us in the
Northern Hemisphere), or away from it (winter), but is aligned with the center of the sun. The word equinox comes from Latin: aequus means equal, level, or calm; nox means night, or darkness. The equinox, in spring or fall, is a time when the day and night are as close to equal as they ever are, and when the hours of night are exactly equal for people living equidistant from the equator either north or south."
"
Margaret Atwood (books by this author) wrote: "Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, ....... In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt."
from "The Writers Almanac" with Garrison Keillor
sent in by Shirley Jensen
whose dedication to
March 14 : Green Garden Group went to visit the recycle facility at Greensboro - a very interesting field trip and departure from our usual botanizing. The facility is operated by a "for-profit" corporation, recycles those items that it can sell, with the exception of plastic bottles and aluminum cans, which it must recycle regardless as it is illegal to place either items in a NC landfill. We learned that the recycle numbers on plastics are not the issue - it is shape. The reason: some plastics are pour molded, others blown molded ( bottles) and in melting and reusing (recycling) they are incompatible, and if co mingled in a remelt, will make the batch unusable for either process. We also learned that we should not "tidy" our contributions to the recycle dumpster by bagging things in plastic - that just has to be undone at the facility, causing more work for the employees. Watch a video of the process at :
