Signs of Spring and Celebrating Trees!

Yesterday I joined my friend Miss Corinne to celebrate Arbor Day with her organization The Thousand Islands Land Trust.  It was a really excellent event held at their Zenda Farm Preserve  just outside of Clayton, NY.  Admission was free and included information about planting and caring for trees, local wildlife, and local conservation efforts.  Volunteers were able to help plant trees throughout the preserve.  Children (and the young at heart) were able to see live animals from the local zoo and organic farm, participate in a community art project, and make seed bombs and peanut butter pinecone bird feeders!  Those last activities were what I volunteered to help with!  It was messy but a lot of fun.  Not many people knew what seed bombs are (Miss Corinne shared some information about that on her blog if you don’t either) so it was really exciting to share that with adults while the little ones played with the clay.  I think it’s a great activity to get children excited about gardening, and it can spiral up into a greater awareness of creating habitats for pollinators, urban renewal, and even permaculture!  Several boy scouts in attendance made as many as they could! Kudos to Miss Corinne for putting together a great activity table!

If you live in the North Country, you should definitely bookmark The Thousand Islands Land Trust’s event calendar.  There are hikes, kayak excursions, gardening, and wildlife viewing opportunities for young and old alike.  They’re ways to connect to and even help with local conservation – something that I feel should be very important to Druids.  Many are free to attend which is wonderful for people (like myself) who struggle with money over the summer but still want to have fun along the beautiful St. Lawrence River.  I can’t wait to sign my little one up for some of their exciting kid treks!

While at the Arbor Day event, I saw many signs of spring.  Nature called, as she frequently does to pregnant ladies, but the farm preserve’s toilet was out of order.  I took a little hike into the forest to find a special tree, and along the way I noticed several trout lily leaves and even some trillium leaves!  They’ll be blooming soon!  Those are always a sure sign to me that winter is definitely over.

After returning home, I saw another sign of spring in the form of a stowaway.  That’s right – I had a tick on me!  I discovered it when I itched my expanding belly.  The darn thing was hiding on the underside of my stomach where I can’t easily see!  In all my years of running around forests, I’d never been bit by a tick before, and I naturally freaked out because I don’t want to get Lyme disease – especially while pregnant!  Weretoad carefully removed it with tweezers but, because we were both new to this, he killed and removed it from the house.  I guess it’s recommended you put it in a bag just in case you need to test or identify it.  He thinks it was a dog tick rather than deer, and my father agrees based on the description. It was still flat, thus it hadn’t been on long enough to engorge itself – which, from what I read, is when you’re at risk of catching the disease.  I hope and pray everything is ok!  This pregnant lady doesn’t need that extra worry…

Yet there’s a sign of spring in Northern NY if there ever was one – the ticks are awake.  Just a little reminder that, along with the beauty, there are those who we consider outsiders.  They’re an essential part of creation but boy, they can be a pain!