DEN Enews

Welcome to the DEN Enews. IN this Issue:

• Coastal Protection Rally news summary

• Make a difference Week

• Save Our Old Forests Newsletter

• It’s Time - A Chance to Change

• 5 Petitions

• Grandma deters deer, prunes roses and makes oat cakes

The Coastal Protection Rally was a great success. Read more here:

Make a Difference Week is an annual week-long event hosted by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), a global non-profit organization that works to advance the science, practice, and policy of ecological restoration to sustain biodiversity, improve resilience in a changing climate, and re-establish an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture. Click in the link above for more info or email us for some fact sheets.

Click on SOOF’s link for their latest newsletter. There you will find info on:

• a presentation on May 13th on how to protect our forests as a defence against fire and climate change

• a Medicinal Plant Walk on May 18th

• Birding by Ear on June 8th

• SOOFstock Music Festival in August

It Is Time - A Chance to Change - Zoom Book Launch!
 Tuesday May 14, 2024   7:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST
Pre event slideshow with music starting at 6:50 pm EST.

For those who live afar or can’t make it to an in person event the artist warmly invites you to attend.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89722599061?pwd=K1FtYmd0MDk1MldTa0lPcmxTRG93Zz09
For folks in the Halifax area there will be a presentation and book signing in the Central Library Rm. 301 on Monday June 10th at 7 pm AST.

_{You may have heard of Lululemon, a manufacturer of leisure and athletic garments. In 2020 it launched the "Be Planet" campaign and claimed that sustainability was one of its core pillars. Since then Lululemon's climate emissions have doubled (its leggings are still made in factories burning piles of coal for electricity). In 2022, its climate pollution was the equivalent of adding more than half a million cars to the road. A complaint has been filed with Canada's greenwashing regulator (the Competition Bureau) and exposed Lululemon. So now it has hired Edelman – a PR firm known for cleaning up Big Oil’s messes – to save it from this reputational catastrophe. But now we need to make sure this complaint results in a federal investigation. Please add your name to this petition in support of Stand.earth’s complaint to the Competition Bureau of Canada accusing Lululemon of greenwashing.}

Across the eastern Brazilian Amazon, oil palm plantations are spreading like wildfire. Local communities are faced with land grabbing, forced evictions, and the constant threat of massive violence. Many of the land parcels in the rainforest are ancestral lands stolen from local Indigenous and Quilombola communities. Two of the largest plantation owners are Agropalma and Brazil Biofuels. They control 2,400 square kilometers of land; 1.5 times the size of London. Private security guards, local police, and criminal gangs are often involved in operations, but the companies involved deny all allegations and continue to claim the area. Stand with the people and the Amazon by telling the Brazilian state to fulfill its constitutional obligations, ensure security and rule of law, and recognize land rights.

Canada’s single-use plastic ban only tackles about 3% of the plastic waste generated nationwide. This obviously falls short and does not match the urgency nor the scale of the worsening plastic pollution crisis. Recycling will never be the solution to our growing plastic problem. Curbing plastic pollution requires curbing plastic production. If we are planning on fulfilling our goal of beating plastic pollution and achieving zero plastic waste by 2030, then we need more action; we need an expanded ban on plastic! Add your voice to this message going to our Health Minister and Minister of Environment and Climate Change.

Millions of birds flock to lakes such as the Great Salt Lake in the Western U.S. They use these lakes for food and fuel on their epic migrations. However, water diversions and climate change are pushing these salty lakes toward ecological collapse. Wilson's Phalaropes are a charming little shorebird species who are dependent on saline lakes. They weigh about the same as a slice of bread and it is the male who acts as primary caretakers over the young. Wilson's Phalaropes breed in the prairies of Western Canada and the U.S, and they spend their winters in inland salt lakes near the Andes in Argentina - a flight of some 10,000 kms! These birds have been losing their habitat and are especially at risk of extinction. This petition is going to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking to protect Wilson's Phalaropes under the Endangered Species Act.

Microsoft is known as the world’s most valuable public company. This title should come with an example of that value in tackling our world’s accelerating climate crisis. Sadly, Microsoft’s emissions are on the rise. A few short years ago, the tech giant made a commitment to reduce its emissions to carbon negative by 2030. Rather than working towards this, their emissions have increased by 43%. They could be investing in lasting renewable energy solutions, but Microsoft’s suppliers are at best resorting to trading carbon credits, and at worst they continue relying on coal and other fossil fuels to power their operations. Send a message saying Microsoft needs to take responsibility for its climate footprint and end the string of empty promises, vague net-zero commitments, and other greenwashing tricks.

Repurpose

It is the time of year when all my searches end up with examples of re-purposing. There is so much more than the cute kid's rubber boots with plants coming out the tops.

Repurposing reduces the amount of waste sent to the landfill, which in turn saves the gasoline to get items there, reducing the gas emissions.

Grandma is a fan of starting where you are, using what you have, do what you can. (Theodore Roosevelt) First, a few pictures to see.

An old ladder changed to a bookshelf

A Desktop Computer into a Mailbox

Old chair into a swing

Here is another way to repurpose to help a community. This time it is a bunch of veggies that would have been thrown to the landfill.

Chester, Nova Scotia has a great Food Bank. Every church, every grocery store, and every community event brings food donations.

Grocery store owner Jason Spidle and “retired” French chef Didlier Julien (of the former Julien’s bakery) decided to go one step further.

Any veggies that are starting to look a bit old are put aside and sent to Julien. He turns them into soups which are frozen in one-liter containers. Then they are delivered to the Chester Lighthouse Food Bank.

They are diverting food from green bins, feeding hungry folks besides promoting healthy eating.

How much soup did they make? This week alone, 85 litres went to the Food Bank.

See what can be done by just “starting where you are, using what you have and doing what you can”

Congrats to John and Didlier!

Roses

It is a rose pruning week here in my yard. I dislike this job almost as much as cutting back the blackberries. Still, it needs to be done and my yard has been neglected.

First, get rid of all the bushes you don’t want. If possible pull them out. If not I keep trimming them back to the ground and they eventually get discouraged.

When left with the clump of rose bushes you want to keep, the fine-tuning begins.

The easy part is to get rid of all the dead wood in your rose clump.

Next, look at the middle of the bunch or bush where branches are rubbing against each other. Remove a few to prevent damage from overcrowding.

Then look for the skinniest branches and get rid of some of those.

Look for buds or bumps on your branches that will turn into buds. Cut above these bumps. After that, it is general pruning and shaping.

Some books will tell you to try to make your rose bush have an hourglass shape. I am way past the hourglass shape myself and refuse to attempt to force my few roses in that direction. My roses smell just as nice as long as they are healthy.

Roses like high nitrogen in their fertilizer. You can purchase rose fertilizer. I usually do a bucket of compost but add a couple of handfuls of Epson salts.

If you have a cluster of wild roses or a large bush, a little pruning now makes for a great display later

Deer Deterrents

Just a reminder that it is time to make or get out your bottlecap mobiles. Mine are made from bottlecaps, beads and anything hollow I can string together including parts of Lorn’s inhalers. They blow around with little breeze to scare deer. The deer are at my hostas already. Last year’s mobile pictured below.

I may annoy my neighbours but I have added one more deer deterrent to the yard. We all know about the tin pie plates tied to tree branches. If you have a few metal washers or old bolts or nuts, tie one to your pie plate before hanging the plate on tree branches. Every little breeze will clink the metal object against the tin pie plate even if it isn’t enough breeze to blow the pie plate against a bush. Rather noisy!

Something to eat

Many Nova Scotians were raised with an oat cake in their hand to “stay their stomach” till the next meal. My family were more into hand pies but a good many oat cakes came my way.

For years I tried to get a recipe that tasted like my grandmother’s. This week a friend found the recipe.  Made the old way without a cookie cutter, smelling like roasted nuts, these are so good.

Oat Cakes

3 cups rolled oats

1 1/2 flour

½ cup brown sugar

½ tsp salt

½ tsp soda

1 cup shortening

½ cup cold water

Cut the shortening into the dry ingredients and add enough water to make the mixture sticky. Divide in half. Shape each half into a rectangle and put on parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Score the dough into squares (cakes) Bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes.

I am adding this recipe to my list of things to be grateful for tonight. If we keep thinking of all the good things in the world like an oat cake, and just be happy crunching on an oatcake, the troubles of the world are a bit less heavy. Grandma is sending hugs.

 To the Moms Who Are

_{To the Moms who are struggling, to those filled with incandescent joy.
To the Moms who are remembering children who have died, and pregnancies that miscarried.
To the Moms who decided other parents were the best choice for their babies, to the Moms who adopted those kids and loved them fierce.
To those experiencing frustration or desperation in infertility.
To those who knew they never wanted kids, and the ways they have contributed to our shared world.
To those who mothered colleagues, mentees, neighborhood kids, and anyone who needed it.
To those remembering Moms no longer with us.
To those moving forward from Moms who did not show love, or hurt those they should have cared for.
Today is a day to honor the unyielding love and care for others we call 'Motherhood,' wherever we have found it and in whatever ways we have found to cultivate it within ourselves.}

_{- Hannah Kardon, Pastor at Elston Avenue United Methodist Church}

 Thank you for joining us this week