I walked to school this morning and remembered a couple of things that i wanted to tell y’all.
The last two times i have walked i have done so in my fancy new running shoes. The first couple days of new running shoes is like walking on pillows. Awesome. I haven’t bought new running shoes in like 5 years. It really is a difficult decision. You want something that looks good (everything is bright and shiny and says “look at me” these days), you want something that works for you and fits your needs (and you don’t want twenty pairs of shoes), you don’t want to pay a ton of money, and you care about where and how it was made. These shoes are from Vietnam. They are really nice. I am afraid to dig too deep to find out about them though.
Walking over the bridge this morning i saw a couple new cargo ships. It really is amazing knowing that they are coming from so far away (over the open ocean). I have recognized ships from Australia, Venezuela, The Philippines and Holland. There could have been other countries too, but i didn’t see the markings on them. The funniest marking i saw was this huge sign painted on one that said something like “NO SMOKING – POLLUTION IS BAD, DO YOUR PART”….. It seemed quite ironic (especially because the sign was real big).
Today i also saw a seal from the bridge which was pretty neat. Even cooler was that a couple of weeks ago on a nice sunny day i could see a school of big big fish swimming in the water. I don’t know what kind they were, there was probably about 20. It was really cool being able to see them from so far up. One time in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia i looked down from a big cliff over the ocean and saw Minke whale come up and breach and then go back down into the water. The view looking down into the water is really an amazing one – somehow it is as if you can see deeper into the water the higher you are above it (maybe this is way off…..). I don’t know how far it is from the top of the bridge to the water, but i dropped a small rock a few times and timed it – about 8 seconds till splash.
Finally i thought i would add that the leaves that i collected and mulched up and added to the garden have an important role in keeping carbon from getting into the troposphere. As you know, the leaves, through the process of photosynthesis, absorb carbon, water and light and release oxygen while turning the absorbed substances into sugar for the plant to grow. Some of that carbon is stored in the leaves. When they fall, they often break up and the carbon goes into the ground. Sometimes it is burned, and released into the atmosphere, and without proper composting of the material it can be released into the atmosphere in other ways as well. The plants appreciate the carbon in the soil, and the soil organisms need the carbon in order to compost properly. Finally there are apparently lots of beneficial micro-organisms in the leaves that promote healthy soil and the combat of plant diseases.
ok now really i am out.
One step at a time... 