Above we have the "Bear's" response to Grandpa from yesterdays blog. Perhaps Hayden will be the next generation of Rotary Gardens horticultural staff? Crazy day today with lots of juggling of small projects. I finished another four seed orders and continued the laborious task of putting all of our ordered annuals in to a master spreadsheet that we will use for handouts and other publications. So many of our annuals are trialing varieties that have very little information about them (hence the "trial" designation I suppose!). We like to have a comprehensive list of what we order as it allows us to better sift, sort, organize, label and locate our hundreds of varieties. Dr. Gredler was here (despite operating at 90% as he put it after his sickness yesterday) painting and priming while Vern came in to prepare some carpentry projects. Little Jerry was out in the gardens collecting lights and bringing in the temporary white pines (Pinus strobus) that we used for the lights show. These pines will eventually be chipped up on site and used for mulch out in the gardens. Maury was in for a bit and Bill took over for Jerry with an afternoon shift of work out in the gardens. Janice popped in today to talk about some of her projects; specifically our 2010 gourd collection. Below is a picture of Janice from yesterday as she worked on some of these research projects. She made me take this picture a dozen times to appropriately capture her award-winning smile...
I've not been on my recycling rants recently so thought I would bring up aluminum recycling. A previous posting mentioned one of our volunteers (Chuck) who recycles our aluminum and donates the money back to the gardens. Of course aluminum goes well beyond cans but it always amazes me to see aluminum cans out in the environment or in garbage containers. I always hand pick them out. I've read that only 50% of all aluminum cans are recycled. Unreal. See below for some very interesting aluminum factoids and please do what you can to encourage proper recycling of aluminum (and all other recyclable materials for that matter!). I feel all places of business should have appropriate containers out for such easy recycling. Most of these facts refer to aluminum cans but consider all the other items made of aluminum as well. I read just recently on a blog that "More than 80 million Hershey's Kisses are wrapped each day in foil. Placed end to end, those foil wrappers would stretch 3157 miles -- and it's all recyclable." WOW.
*Aluminum is a sustainable metal and can be recycled over and over again
*Aluminum is the only material that is endlessly recyclable
*If we recycled all of our existing aluminum, we'd never have to make more
*Making new aluminum cans from recycled cans takes 95% less energy than using virgin materials
*Recycled aluminum cans can be back on the grocery store shelves in 30-60 days
*An aluminum can out in the environment will take 400 years to break down naturally
*Every three months, Americans discard enough aluminum to rebuild every single commercial airplane in America
*The process of creating aluminum from raw bauxite ore creates significant pollution
*By doubling our annual recycling rate of aluminum, millions of tons of pollutants could be avoided
*Every minute, an average of 113,204 aluminum cans are recycled and 350,000 aluminum cans are made
*Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for 4 hours or to keep your TV on for three hours
*Tossing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as disposing half that can's volume of gasoline
*The energy saved by recycling 1 ton of aluminum equals the amount of electricity used by a typical home in 10 years
*In 2007, 54 billion cans were recycled, saving the energy equivalent of 15 million barrels of crude oil
Recycling aluminum makes sense on so many levels so help stop the senseless disposal of a renewable resource. Talk the talk and walk the walk. Nice shot below of 'Fly Your Colors' iris (Iris germanica) from Tina.
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