I’m sure my reputation as the “daffy old lady” of the neighborhood was bolstered this morning:\u00a0 I was out plucking worms from my sidewalks and driveway, where they had wandered cluelessly after our first big rain of the season.<\/p>\n
How can I justify wasting 10 minutes picking up worms?<\/p>\n
I think this is the crux of Earth Day.\u00a0 It’s sweet to visit a celebration at the local natural foods market (where you’ll get a grab bag of freebies, half of which will end up in a landfill.)\u00a0 It’s also good to vent some frustration over legislators who can’t seem to put special interest aside and lead us off the path of self-annihilation.\u00a0 But ultimately, saving the earth comes down to this:\u00a0 Our Precious Time.<\/p>\n
It takes time to ride the bus or bike.\u00a0 It takes time to cart Styrofoam from the latest computer purchase to a special recycling facility.\u00a0 It takes time to wash and dry produce bags for reusing at the store.\u00a0 And it takes time to pluck worms from certain death by pavement dehydration.<\/p>\n
Admittedly, my role as Protector of Worms is a fairly recent development.\u00a0 For years, I never even noticed the worms underfoot.\u00a0 When I finally became aware of their plight, I remember clucking my tongue and wondering at their silliness.\u00a0 Why would a worm’s natural instincts lead it out to certain death?\u00a0 Well, duh.\u00a0 Because a worm’s natural instincts were not developed for a world that is 50% asphalt and concrete! <\/em>That’s when the light turned on:\u00a0 Maybe she who mucks up the natural scheme of things could at least take 10 minutes every so often to save the innocent lives affecting by her mucking!<\/p>\n And it can be a very win-win sort of thing.\u00a0 I relocated a number of worms into my new vegetable gardens, then plopped a whole passel into my struggling compost bin.\u00a0 I can’t wait to see the magic they work.\u00a0 Oh and I also forced myself to do squats while plucking, so I got a 10 minute, sweat-inducing workout before 7:00 a.m.<\/p>\n Consider this:\u00a0 What if earth worms decided they just couldn’t be bothered making the soil that grows our food?\u00a0 We’re sort of in a symbiotic relationship, you might say, with even the lowly worm.<\/p>\n Happy Earth Day<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How can I justify wasting 10 minutes picking worms from certain death by pavement dehydration? I think this is the crux of Earth Day: Our Precious Time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[173,187,391,662],"class_list":["post-733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-supportive-thinking-for-healthy-cooking","category-green-kitchen","tag-earth-day","tag-environmental-action","tag-moment-of-decision","tag-worms","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cookhappylivehealthy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}