The New Year is a great time to restart, recharge, recalibrate and revisit our habits and how we live. Garden Club members are truly some of the best conservationists around. However, each of us canstart the new year with the intention of being good stewards of our spectacular Colorado environment.
The Environment Colorado Website leads with the following quote:“We live in a world of incredible material abundance, but we’re running short on nature. We want more places where we can hike, bike and jog among trees and wildflowers. We want more mountaintops where we can see nothing but forest below, more rivers that flow wild and free. We want more wildlife in our world, from the grizzly on the ridge line to the bee in our garden, from the wolf in the forest, to the butterfly in our backyard. We want and need more, to paraphrase Emerson, of a world so beautiful that we ‘can hardly believe it exists.'”
Environment Colorado reminds us that for decades we have sacrificed our environment for economic progress. As each of us passes through our daily life in 2019, we need to remind ourselves to put the environment first, starting by doing a few of the following:
- Leave the plastic on the shelves and ask for your soda without that plastic straw.
- Support local organizations that protect open space, national parks and monuments, plant trees, educate kids on the importance of conservation, and gardens that speak to nature.
- Plant pollinators and plant natives.
- Use water wisely and sparingly.
- Drive less, carpool more.
- Recycle.
- When looking at your next car, think electric or hybrid.
The list goes on; please add your own ideas. Intention equals action, which in turn will help protect our stunning state’s fragile environment.