Welcome to the Earth Month edition

The quote above is by Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass. “We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world.”

Happy Earth Day, Month, and Year!

I have no spotlights this month yet, but one is coming soon. I’ve posted some new books at Dragonfly, so check them out. I figured I’d tell you some news and then look back at how I spent Earth Days/Months in the past decade.

News

• First is the new Rewilding our Stories Reddit. This is a place to share our nature stories, our thoughts, in a place I will make sure stays positive and doesn’t turn into a place to rage. Thanks to those who have joined so far. I’m looking for one more moderator to help me run the place and spread the news about it.

• Second, I think I will continue this newsletter, but writing it on a schedule every month is sort of hard. I want to be freer; I want to write when I feel like it. I recently started at least trying to blog again. I am also working on a novel and have been really good at keeping to my writing plan. I’ll share more about that with you later. Anyway, I used to try to post the newsletter at the same time every month, but expect it to not be too scheduled in the future.

• Check out the spring issue of Ecology & Action Centre’s Magazine (PDF). I wrote an article about solarpunk.

Past Earth Days

You can consider this newsletter going off-format, but I do have a lot of blasts from the past in this section.

2016

I lived in Vancouver, had just ran in the Vancouver Sun Run, and was getting ready to attend the Earth Day Parade and volunteer for the Great Climate Race (which is where I ran my first 10K without stopping to walk), though I don’t think the race is still a thing. Our race team was the Blue Dot Run team and consisted of Aunt Linda, Morgan and me, my father-in-law and his partner Randi and our friends Ross and Dara.

For Earth Hour, I entered a contest at my workplace for the coolest plan. Mine was to build a hammock stand with Morgan (he did most the work) and read Lorna Crozier’s The Wild in You by solar light in our back yard. I won the contest and got a nice gift certificate to a farm-to-table restaurant. I still remember that beautiful experience and book.

2017

I did a run around Como Lake in Coquitlam and wrote, “I love the little Como Lake park area. A trail goes around the lake, and the trail is about 1K, so I went around several times. Old men were fishing, a couple boats were in the water, geese were protecting their soon to be mamas, seeds and petals and raindrops floated in the breeze, and kids played in a nearby playground. I lingered in all of it.”

2018

I had just finished my Exploring the Ecological Weird series at SFF World. We also spent the day with some Harris Hawks.

2019

This year on Earth Day/Month we spent time hiking at Buntzen Lake and did the Vancouver Sun Run, like usual. It was very hot at the race but cool and rainy on the hike. I didn’t write a lot that year for some reason!

2020

Earth Day 2020: Covid had just hit, and I had moved to Nova Scotia to get the house ready, while Morgan stayed in Vancouver for three weeks to finish with the old house. He was here shortly before Earth Day. Earth Day was on April 22, but four days earlier, not only were we kinda worried about Covid but a mass murder took place nearby, and we were locked down in the new house. Outside the horror, that month was all about planting 40 new trees and getting used to black flies.

I wrote in May that year, “Black flies have ecological importance, especially in regards to nutrient cycling via water. And while they seem pesky, the greening of the acres around our yard is a wonder to watch. So, as with how life goes, I know that my own conundrums are short-lived. Whether or not our social lives will change back to what we considered “normal” is not going to affect my overall love of life, even if it changes my mood here and there. The mood has also been upped by listening to Jimi Hendrix lately.”

2021

My blogging started to slow down this year, but for Earth Day I declared three days of climate action of the literary kind. Lovis Geier and I had begun the Rewilding our Stories Discord the year before, and had 90 members by 2021. We put our heads together to do some climate novel suggestions. You can read more about it here.

2022

This Earth Month meant more tree-planting in our meadow and front yard. We planted an additional 21 trees, including multiple fruit trees. We even tried some pawpaw trees, but they never took off. We also built a bat box to try to encourage bats to roost in our yard. I had been talking with Karen Vanderwolf at the Canadian Bat project, and learned more about bat boxes. Well, that one blew down in Hurricane Fiona. There’s always next year, right?

2023

This Earth month we spent time restructuring some of the garden beds whose wood was rotting. Every year in Nova Scotia is garden planting, but not until June 1st! By Earth Day, we saw our first pheasant—who has been around since then. I don’t know if it’s the same guy, maybe a son of the first one. I named him John Boy. April is always the start of work outside in the meadow, but I don’t remember any specific events outside of that. But that is enough and keeps us busy.

2024

The Earth Day project this year was to build a stronger bat box. We started it in April but didn’t finish it until July. Hat’s off to my husband, a woodworker and general handy person all the way around, who came up with a crank system so we could pull the roost down and check for bats.

2025

During Earth month we built 3-foot high garden beds and redid all the fencing around our trees, which were now five years old. Some are still pretty small, but the oak trees are probably 10 feet tall by now. The trees were just foot-high saplings when we planted them in 2020. It was a lot of work building those higher garden beds, but this past year was the best harvest we’ve ever had, even with drought. I still have beans, and we just ate the last winter squash for Easter this year.

2026

This year I will plant some milkweed seeds that a coworker gave me. I was supposed to plant them in winter, but the ground was already frozen, so I just kept them in the fridge for cold stratification. My coworker and his wife have successfully grown milkweed with the same seeds, and they are attracting Monarch butterflies. On the weekend, I plan to sit outside and listen to spring peepers late at night. I’d like to also hit up the Wolfville Farmer’s Market.

Resources

• Rewilding Our Stories: A Discord community where you can find resources, reading, and writing fun in fiction that relates strongly to nature and environment

• Reddit: Rewilding our Stories. A brand new place that needs your voice!

• Book recommendations: a growing list of recs

• Eco/climate genres: They’re all over the place, and here’s an expanding compendium

• Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews

• List of ecologically focused games

• List of eco/climate films and documentaries

• Eco-fiction links and resources

• Book database: Database of over 1,100 book posts at Dragonfly.eco

• Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults

• Indie Corner: The occasional highlight of authors who publish independently

• World Eco-fiction Series: Climate Change and Beyond: This series travels the planet exploring fictional stories close to natural landscapes and wildlife, often with environmental concerns.

• Artists & Climate Change. This site is no longer being updated but still has a wealth of info. I was a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.