Plant a Flower Day

Today was Plant a Flower Day. Did you get outside to work in your garden? Or maybe it's still too cold where you live and, like my mom, you are germinating your seeds inside. I'm sorry to say that I didn't make it outside today despite the lovely weather.

But though I've been too busy lately to tend to my yard, I can tell that winter is ending. New leaves are pushing through the soft earth in my front garden bed. I wonder what is growing there? I don't remember the names of the different bulbs that my older son and I planted these past two years. Maybe some daffodils or crocuses. We'll have to wait and see. And now that the snow has turned to rain, the trees are starting to bud and grasses are coming to life, my children are tracking mud all over my house. Whether I am ready or not, spring is here!

If, like me, you are too busy right now to start your spring gardening, maybe you'd like to stop to smell the virtual roses. Do you know your state flower? How about your national flower? The National Gardening Association has a nice selection of resources online, including a section for children and teachers.

Even when things are crazy hectic, don't forget to enjoy the natural beauty around you.

Photo credit: EvelynGiggles, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

National Seed Swap Day

Thanks to my friends at Celebrate Green!®, I learned that the last Saturday in January is known as National Seed Swap Day. The event started in 2006 in the Washington, D.C. area, but has quickly spread across the country to become a national event.

• What is a seed swap?

Simply put, you trade seeds with someone else. Why? You can share extra seeds that you don't need and they won't go to waste. It's a fun way to gain seeds for your garden inexpensively. You might even obtain rare varieties that you can't find in local stores.

• How do you save seeds?

Jack Rowe has posted a marvelous free Vegetable Seed Saving Handbook to get you started. Some seeds are harder to save than others. Modern-day carrots, for example, can be cross-pollinated by the wild carrot, or Queen Anne's Lace. The seeds you'd wind up with from this cross would not produce tasty carrots.

• How long do seeds last?

It depends upon the seed. Even the experts disagree, as explored in this post by A Way to Garden.com.

When I was studying wetlands in graduate school, we talked about the government's idea of letting folks drain a wetland as long as they created one somewhere else. This was part of the No Net Loss wetlands policy first touted in the late 1980's.

This line of thinking fails to consider the functionality of wetlands. Wetland soil contains important seeds - a "bank" of future plants. Just adding water to an upland area doesn't turn it into a wetland. Conversely, some industrial areas built on drained wetlands have been successfully converted back to wetlands.

Seeds, when properly cared for, can last a long time.

• How important is it to save seeds?

One of the problems with modern agriculture is that we tend to fixate on certain types of plants at the expense of others. Let's say we have grown the perfect tomato. Other tomato varieties might be discounted because their fruits are too small, too squishy, maybe a funny color. If no one saves these seeds, we are in for a big problem when later, our perfect tomato falls prey to an insect or disease. Some of these lesser varieties might be resistant, but if we don't save the seeds, we don't have a way to deal with the problem.

This is the rationale behind seedbanks - we want to save the seeds for posterity. You never know when we might need them.

• How can I swap seeds?

Ask your friends and neighbors to swap seeds with you. The advantage of swapping seeds locally is that you know they are likely to grow in your climate and they won't harm your local ecosystem.

The National Gardening Association has set up this page to help you swap seeds online. HeirloomSeedSwap.com is an international seed swapping site. But be careful when sending seeds long distances - a seed that is welcome in your area might be considered an invasive somewhere else.

Happy swapping!


Photo credit: Kirsty Hall, via flickr // CC BY 2.0

The Calendar of Science Holidays

Each year holds a wealth of weird, wacky, and interesting -- yet under-celebrated -- days for science, like World Weather Day and World Water Day. I decided to put together a calendar of annual science holidays and special events that celebrate science so that we could enjoy them together.

National events listed here refer to the United States, unless otherwise noted. Of course, if you live outside of the US, you are more than welcome to celebrate with us! (And I'll admit, some of these holidays are a little less "official" than others.) I expect to update this post in the future, so feel free to send me your special day and I'll add it to the list. Thanks!

* * * *

January
5 - National Bird Day
17 - Kid Inventors' Day
Last Saturday of the month - National Seed Swap Day

February
2 - World Wetlands Day
11 - National Inventors' Day
12 - Darwin Day
mid-month - Great Backyard Bird Count (four days)
third week - National Engineers Week (includes Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day)

March
12 - National Agriculture Day
12 - Plant a Flower Day
14 - Pi Day
22 - World Water Day
23 - World Weather Day
on or near Spring Equinox - Sun-Earth Day
National Wildlife Week

April
12 - Yuri's Night (The World Space Party)
13 - International Plant Appreciation Day
14 - Citizen Science Day
22 - Earth Day
second full week - National Robotics Week
last week - National Environmental Education Week
Earth Month

May
4 - Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you!)
8 - National Rain Day (Australia)
12 - National Lab Day
22 - International Day of Biodiversity
23 - World Turtle Day
third Friday - Endangered Species Day
first full week - National Wildflower Week

June
5 - World Environment Day
6 - National Butterfly Awareness Day
8 - World Oceans Day
first Saturday - National Trails Day
National Pollinator Week

July
20 - Moon Day

August
fourth Sunday - World Kitchen Garden Day
National Water Quality Month

September
14 - Protect Your Groundwater Day
18 - International Observe the Moon Night
18 - World Water Monitoring Day
25 - Nature Rocks Day
26 - World Rivers Day (Canada)
third Saturday - World Tree Day
last Saturday of the month - National Public Lands Day
24-30 Take a Child Outside Week

October
10 - Powers of Ten Day
14 - No Child Left Inside Day (new!) (date varies, part of Earth Science Week)
15 - National Fossil Day (date varies, part of Earth Science Week)
17 - Geologic Map Day (date varies, part of Earth Science Week)
20 - World Statistics Day
23 - National Mole Day (celebrating Avogadro's number)
4 - 10 World Space Week
week containing the 10th day - National Metric Week
second full week - Earth Science Week
third full week - National Chemistry Week
Waste Reduction Week (Canada)

November
15 - America Recycles Day
30 - Computer Security Day

December
(No listings yet.)

[Last updated - 3/16/18: Added Citizen Science Day and National DNA Day; 3/28/14: Added Star Wars Day and No Child Left Inside Day, corrected dates. 10/20/12 - Added Geologic Map Day.  1/29/11 - Added National Seed Swap Day; edited link for Sun-Earth Day. 10/4/10 - Added World Space Week. 9/17/10 - Added International Observe the Moon Night, National Metric Week. ]


Photo credit: SantaRosa OLD SKOOL via flickr // CC BY 2.0

Where were you when the wall came down?

Twenty years ago today, as a college student, I sat transfixed before my television. People were standing on top of the Berlin Wall, tearing it to shreds. It was an event that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. The wall went up less than ten years before I was born. As long as I could remember, the wall had always been there, immovable and permanent. But on November 9, 1989, the wall came down. Amazing.

Today, the Berlin Wall reminds me that some problems, though they seem insurmountable at the time, do eventually have solutions. It might just take some time for us to break through.


Photo credit: Mama Joules (This portion of the Berlin Wall is currently on display at the Newseum.)

It's time for a Green Halloween®

[Note: The following article, in slightly different form, first appeared at Natural Family Online in 2007. At that time, I was fortunate enough to interview Corey Colwell-Lipson as she began her adventure with Green Halloween®. Today, Celebrate Green! has nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter. Corey and her mom Lynn have been interviewed by such journalistic heavyweights as U.S. News and World Report, National Public Radio, and ABC News, along with many other media outlets. I remain awed and impressed with Corey and Lynn's perseverance and tenacity. Despite their new-found fame, the message of Celebrate Green! remains profound, yet simple: Let's create eco-friendly, sustainable holidays.]

***

It’s nearly dusk on Halloween and, once again, you’re running behind. You sprint into the nearest grocery store and scan the shelves, looking for something to hand out to your trick-or-treaters. You find your resolve weakening. Sure, you’d like to hand out treats with less packaging, something not laden with sugar. But the bulging bags of candy look so tempting …

Hold it right there. With a little help from Green Halloween®, an eco-friendly, not-for-profit movement, you can avoid this situation entirely.

What is Green Halloween®? Founder Corey Colwell-Lipson puts it this way. “Green Halloween® is a community movement to create child and Earth-Friendly holiday traditions, beginning with Halloween. Green Halloween® incorporates choices from at least one of three considerations: child-friendliness (including health), Earth-friendliness, and people-friendliness (the people who grow or make the products we buy or use). Ideally, Halloween choices and purchases would take all three areas into account but that is often hard to do. We suggest that families do what they can and what will make their Halloween and their consciences happy.”

Corey Colwell-Lipson was inspired to start this grassroots movement while taking her daughters trick-or-treating in 2006. While most houses handed out typical sugary Halloween fare, a few gave her daughters non-sweet treats like bubbles and stickers. As she recalls on her website, “I was so thrilled that someone thought outside the candy-box.”

She vowed to visit these homes the next year, but soon forgot which ones they were. An idea dawned. “I mentioned to a nearby parent, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if there were a sign you could place on your door or window that notified trick-or-treaters that their upcoming treat would be healthy?’ This way, parents could seek out those homes and turn trick-or-treating into a scavenger hunt – a hunt for treasures rather than treats.” And thus, a community movement was born.

Green Halloween® launched in 2007 in the Seattle, Washington area. Local businesses jumped on the bandwagon, asking to use the Green Halloween® logo for their products. “[We want to] make our logo a recognized symbol which will be used on holiday products such as for trick-or-treating, birthday and holiday gift bags items, and stocking stuffers,” says Colwell-Lipson. “[In 2007, you saw] our logo on a few items. [Now], we hope that our logo will be meaningful to the masses: when parents see our logo, they’ll know that the item they are buying meets our standard of child/planet/people friendliness. In addition, whenever our logo is used, a portion of the sales of that product will go towards helping others and or our planet.”

Colwell-Lipson was encouraged by the response she’s received from other parents, local organizations and businesses. She decided to tackle other holidays next. She and her mother, Lynn Colwell, co-wrote Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Traditions and Celebrations for the Whole Family and launched the Celebrate Green! website in 2008.

“The use of petroleum, palm oil and non-recycled tree products are examples of unsustainable practices that we hope to change,” she says. “All traditional holidays, including Halloween, make ample use of products made from these unhealthy or environmentally unfriendly materials, and yet numerous alternatives exist. Our planet has a limited ability to regenerate itself. [We seek] to reduce our eco-footprint by using our collective creativity, flexibility and common interest in the planet to create new holiday traditions while maintaining the heart and soul of our holidays.”

She adds, “My broader goal is to integrate easy, affordable, fun, kid and Earth-friendliness into all holiday traditions such as birthdays and Christmas. I hope that being ‘green’ all year long will become a notion embraced by mainstream America.”

So, how can you get started this Halloween? Here are just a few ideas from Green Halloween®:

* Make your own bags to take trick-or-treating.

* If you are hosting a party, keep your focus on fun rather than treats. You might dunk for apples or build your own scarecrow.

* Hand out items to trick-or-treaters that are environmentally sustainable, healthy for kids, and made using fair work practices. Think spinning tops, stickers, or seashells over candy.

* If your heart is set on handing out candy, Colwell-Lipson suggests Endangered Species Chocolate (a portion of the proceeds go to charity) or Yummy Earth’s candy drops.

Colwell-Lipson says, “Putting some green into your Halloween does not have to be difficult or costly. In the continuum of being green, all families can hop on board! You can start wherever you already are. For example, if your family already eats organic and shops mostly locally, Green Halloween® offers additional ways you can make your holiday even healthier and more green … If your family has yet to try healthy alternatives, this is a great year to start!"

"The Green Halloween® website offers even green-newbies fun, easy and affordable ways to start new holiday traditions your whole family will enjoy,” says Colwell-Lipson. Visit Green Halloween® and download a Guide for Parents (this is a .pdf file) or stop by Celebrate Green! for other green holiday ideas. Happy Halloween!

Fortieth anniversary of landing on the moon

We're very busy right now with guests, but we just couldn't let this day go by without comment. Forty years ago today (July 20, 1969), two human beings (Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin) landed a spaceship on the moon, and eventually got out and walked around a bit. A third astronaut, Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon.

It's always seemed strange to me that we don't celebrate this day (July 20) as a holiday, along with April 12 (when Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth). I like to think that centuries from now, when only serious historians know who John Kennedy or Barack Obama were, or for that matter who George Washington was, school children will still know who Neil Armstrong was, and what he did.

Putting people on the moon with 1960s technology was right on the edge of what was even possible. The Soviet Union never managed it, despite having a space program that was in close competition with ours. Nobody else has even come close.

NASA has a photo album of the Apollo 11 mission, and a nice history of Apollo 11. And there are many more resources, no further away than your favorite search engine.

There are some great documentaries about the US space program out there. An excellent place to start is by watching the movie Apollo 13, about a later mission to the moon that didn't go quite so smoothly. Or you might just look up at the moon, and remember that once, people walked there. I wonder when people will walk around up there again.


Image Credit: NASA

OT: Happy Cinco de Mayo ... with cake!

I hope that everyone had a great Cinco de Mayo. :)

Photo credit: nyflygirl76, through a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Photo taken by Dick DeMarsico

Source: Library of Congress


"Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control." -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Contest: LEGO® Holiday Building Challenge

Have you been working on a holiday-themed LEGO^® sculpture? If live in the U.S. and you are age six or older, visit the LEGO^® Club to learn about their latest contest. You could win a trip for four to the Carribean on Norwegian Cruise Line! Build any size holiday-themed model using only LEGO^® pieces, take a color photograph, and then submit your entry form along with a short (50-word) essay describing your design. Winners will be picked from each age group: 6-9 years, 10-14 years, and 15 and older. But you need to hurry! The entry deadline is January 9, 2009. Good luck!

P.S. If you live outside of the U.S., you might want to visit one of these regional LEGO^® Play Sites: Great Britian, the Netherlands, Germany, and France.

Add a little science to your new year!

Happy (almost) New Year's, everyone! While you're making your New Year's resolutions, why not plan to add a little science to your life in 2009? You could enroll in that geology class you've always wanted to take (oh, wait, that's one of *my* goals), read a science journal, or keep up with a nature program on television. Or, you could try one of these ideas we talked about in 2008:

**Collect and examine seashells

**Watch some movies with science themes

**Study the stars

**Collect science stamps

**Write science poetry

**Visit a science-based website

**Get creative by making 2-D and 3-D snowflakes online or learn about the scientific benefits of origami

**Keep a science journal

**Take a hike

**Clean your mental closet

**Take a field trip through the produce section of your local farmer's market or grocery store

**Write some science fiction

**Enjoy some roadside geology or

**Study the clouds

And don't forget, small additions to your life can have a profound impact, like my boys and their flying potato!

Celebrate safely tonight! See you in 2009!

Holiday greetings to the Earth and beyond!

We're getting ready for Christmas here at Mama Joules and some of our close friends are celebrating Hanukkah. At our house, it's a wonderful time of preparation and joy. So, imagine if you were stuck 220 miles above the Earth at the International Space Station. That's the situation of Expedition 18 Commander Mike Fincke and Flight Engineers Sandra Magnus and Yury Lonchakov. So, NASA has created a special webpage so that we can send holiday greetings to the crew. Visit NASA Postcards to the International Space Station, pick from one of four designs, and send your message into space! (To learn more about the space station, check out What is the International Space Station?).

The International Space Station, taken from the Space Shuttle Discovery on Oct. 25, 2007Photo credit: NASA

Happy Holidays to all!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mama Joules and Itinerant Cryptographer want to wish you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving! We're spending the rest of the week with family, so we'll catch up with you again next week. :-)

Thinking of those in need ...

In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., I thought I'd post a couple of links to benefit those less fortunate (snopes.com says both are legit!):

The Hunger Site gives free food daily if you click a button on their website. Mercy Corps and Feeding America distribute the food to those in need.

Free Rice gives 20 grains of rice through the UN World Food Program for every question that you answer correctly on topics ranging from vocabulary to math, geography, and chemistry. (I liked playing the games on this site; I donated 1,460 grains of rice!)

Cyberchase: Spheres of Fears

I received this information today from Donna Williams, Senior Publicist for Thirteen/WNET (thanks, Donna!):

"On CYBERCHASE this Halloween, join Digit and the CyberSquad on [Monday] October 27 as they try to evade the eerie creatures called the Creepers. Yikes! ..." (This new episode, Spheres of Fears, will be repeated on PBS on Halloween day!)


"Want to host a CYBERCHASE-themed Halloween party?" asks Ms. Williams. If you'd like .pdf copies of a coloring page and invitations, drop her a line at williamsd [at] thirteen.org or let me know and I'll forward the copies I received to you. You can also download CYBERCHASE face masks (But where's the mask of Slider? He's my favorite!).

CYBERCHASE also has tips for parents to sneak a little math into Halloween -- things like having the kids decide how much candy your family should buy using an estimate of the likely number of trick-or-treaters to visit your home multiplied by the number of pieces of candy you plan to hand out (Good idea!). To check out more tips, download the .pdf file here.

Mark your calendar for Make Tracks!™ 2008!

This year, the National Wildlife Federation is sponsoring the first annual Make Tracks!™ Family Trail Week-end over the Columbus Day holiday -- October 11-13, 2008. Get out of the house with your family, hit a trail, and enjoy nature! There's a link to NatureFind where you can enter your zip code (in the US) and find a trail near you. The NWF also has some nifty ideas for making your time out-of-doors more special.

(My thanks to my friend Kim for letting me know about this event!)

It's almost time to have a Green Halloween®!

Corey Colwell-Lipson, founder of Green Halloween®, has started a new blog to help keep us motivated to celebrate our holidays in an eco-friendly way!

Green Halloween® began as a regional movement last year in Seattle and is rapidly spreading across the U.S. As Colwell-Lipson has said, her goal is to get people to "think outside the candy box." The Green Halloween® website provides some great ideas for adding some green to your holiday, such as handing out trinkets like stickers and collectible cards instead of candy. And before you buy that Halloween costume, Green Halloween® suggests that you ask yourself some hard questions: Can this item be used after Halloween? Can it be recycled? Does it contain earth-friendly materials or is it made of synthetics wrapped in yards of plastic?

Colwell-Lipson recently announced the launch of Celebrate Green!, a new book co-written with her mother, designed help us celebrate green year-round. Be sure to stop by the Celebrate Green! blog for even more ideas!

What does "celebrating green" mean to you? The easiest holiday for me to envision "green" is Christmas. I love to find our Christmas boxes and I get so excited as I carefully unwrap the nativity scene from my childhood, complete with the tiny wooden manger and the shepherd with his real metal crook. I even like the plastic reindeer (certainly not originally part of the nativity scene!) that come to inspect the manger. Isn't that what treasured holiday rituals really are -- reuse at its best?

[UPDATE (10/8/08) -- Check out Escape to Books' October 7, 2008 interview with Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell here!]

Happy Labor Day!

To all of you who have outside jobs, work at home, are looking for work, or finally have retired, I salute you! Have a happy Labor Day!

P.S. I'm off to the furniture store to spend. I wonder if that's the right way to celebrate Labor Day?

Happy Fourth of July!

Celebrate your freedom today! Feel free to be a science geek! ;-P

Photo credit: Leon Brooks, BurningWell.org

Happy Earth Day!

(Can you tell that I'm enjoying my new copy of Adobe® Photoshop®?)

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

Today is a good time to reflect upon the life of Dr. King and remember his goals of justice and equality for all...

You have a unique contribution to make to the scientific community. Scientists come in all races, all ages, and all nationalities. The stereotype of the wild-haired, fair-skinned, eccentric male professor is just that -- a stereotype.

Don't let someone else define you. I had the unfortunate experience of having a respected professor refuse to work with me during my time in graduate school because I professed a desire to start a family. My guess is that he believed -- wrongly -- that you can't be a mother and a student at the same time. I could have trusted in what he told me, but I chose not to. Instead, I found new professors to guide me through school (both are dedicated dads) and I carved my own path as a pregnant graduate student (I believe that was a first for my program).

Don't be afraid to turn some heads. That's where scientists go -- to the crux of the problem, the heat of battle. Roll up your sleeves and dive in. The world is waiting for you.