As longtime readers might recall, Earth Day is an important day for our family. First and foremost, it is our youngest daughter Shannon’s birthday. My daughters’ birthdays are always such sweet days for me to remember, the days when we welcomed two darling babies into our family. Really, nothing can compare with this, and their birthdays always give me a happy spark.
On Saturday, we will be meeting Shannon and her husband, Mike, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for a day of festivities. I will be sure to post pictures next week.
Then, of course, there is the actual Earth Day, which to this family of Green Beans is a high holy holiday.
The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, an ardent environmentalist, was one of the organizers, and when I clicked on Wikipedia to fact-check, I came upon a photo of President Richard Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon planting a tree on the White House lawn in honor of the first Earth Day. Back in those halcyon days, the Republicans were on board with Democrats, and they passed significant environmental legislation, “including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act, Superfund, Toxics Substances Control Act, and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. It had seen the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the banning of DDT…”
All this legislation has directly affected Maine in a very good way. For example, when I was young, bald eagles in our state were a rare sight and were on the endangered list. Now, thanks to the Clean Water Act and the banning of DDT, seeing them is not uncommon, especially by our rivers. Truly, a cause for celebration.
But for this Earth Day, I want to narrow the focus and celebrate our very own yard, our one small acre that sits by the edge of the woods. We do what we can to live as lightly as possible. We use organic compost and fertilizers. No pesticides. No herbicides. Life, in all its various aspects, thrives—birds, mammals, insects (some of which we appreciate more than others), and people. After all, we raised two daughters here.
Here are spring snapshots taken in our yard for Earth Day 2026.
A nest I found on the ground,
a black beetle on the patio,
a six-spotted tiger beetle,
and birds at the feeder in the backyard. Sometimes they have squabbles.
In the front yard, I put together a little stone stack to honor my garden.
On our one acre, we have a charger that fuels our car. This has been a big part of our environmental journey.
Do we miss going to gas stations and filling our car with stinking gasoline? We do not. Charging in our yard is much more convenient. It costs us between $15 and $20 a month to charge our EV. As my Yankee husband would say, a pretty darned good deal.
And finally, here is our Chevy Bolt, which I have unimaginatively named “Bolty.”
Bolty took us through an extremely cold winter with no problems. Without hesitation, it started when the temperature was -20. The heater did shave off some of the mileage, but it was still over the 200-mile range, and Bolty brought us where we wanted to go. Once, when we went beyond Bolty’s range, we used a commercial charger, and within half an hour, we were 80% charged and on the road again. (We used that time to go to the bathroom and get snacks.)
A very happy Earth Day to you all! And while it should hardly need to be said, may every day be Earth Day.





























































