Earth Day was born in 1970 on my husband’s (Gary) birthday ~ April 22. We both remember the first Earth Day. I’m glad we’re still celebrating it, and I’m glad we’re still celebrating my husband’s birthday. HA!
For his birthday, we picked up trash along Highway 60 in Faribault, Minnesota. This clean-up is a bi-annual task the Faribault Flyers Bike & Ski Club does for the community. We are a part of the bike club so we volunteered to help.
This year’s clean up date happened to fall on Earth Day, and Gary’s birthday. Little did anyone expect that the temperature would climb to 90* in April! It was sunny, windy and hot. And there we were in the middle of the afternoon picking up trash in the ditches. It was hard work, but we survived and the group met at a Mexican restaurant for dinner afterward.
Our first year, four years ago, we picked up a lot more trash…so we assume our work is making a difference over the years. However, we placed multiple yellow bags, full of trash, on the side of Highway 60 to be picked up by the highway department.
There was one snafu. Gary and I started at one end of a section, and two others started at the other end so we would meet up in the middle. Along the way I took a photo of trout lilies in the ditch, blooming in spite of the trash.
I also took photos of animal bones in skeleton form. We have a retired vet in our group so he identified it as a deer (from my photo). We had no idea deer had such fierce looking teeth.
When we met the other two in the middle of our section someone asked me for the time. I went to retrieve my cellphone out of my pocket and lo and behold, it was not there! Sigh.
It must have fallen out while bending over for trash. So, Gary and I started retracing our steps. Fortunately, Gary had my cell phone on his “Find My” app on his phone…so it pinged when we were close. Even though we were in the vicinity, it was still hard to find, but after about 20 minutes we did find my phone in the ditch, and all is well.
Whew… I did not want to find my phone in the ditch among the trash next year!
