adventures of a midwesterner: May!

Well things are going well here and the spring weather is WONDERFUL!! I've spent some good time at the beach and I love that it doesn't get dark until 8:00 now! Lately for our group projects we have started doing shellfish projects again, which are always fun. Yesterday we got up 4:00am to work with oysters. The reason for the crazy early work time was due to the schedule of the tides. Gotta beat that high tide when you're working in a harbor! It was a beautiful day on cape cod, and these days I constantly think to myself, "wow, I can't believe I live here". The time here is flying by and I want to make sure I appreciate it every day. I do not appreciate the increasing number of tourists, however. This weekend is when the tourist season essentially starts and it's definitely a different atmosphere. I kinda liked the low-key atmosphere of the Cape but I understand that tourism keeps the Cape alive and most business and people's jobs depend on the crowds of visitors.

Some of the major Ameri-events lately have been AmeriCorps Week and RecycleFest. AmeriCorps Week is a week of service at one location that is organized each year. These projects occur all over the country, and this year the project we organized was helping with a coastal mitigation nursery for the town of Barnstable. Basically they wanted to start a nursery to keep and grow native plants that they can plant at town properties/conservation areas/beaches. Having a nursery makes buying these plants more financially sustainable for the town. We had various volunteer groups come out to plant, and there were education lessons for kids about native plants.

Another major event for me was RecycleFest, which was with my IP in Chatham. For the event we had a lot of educational booths (Compost, rain barrels, etc), and electronic waste recycling, which involved collecting items like TVs, computers, CD players etc, that people didn't want anymore. We partnered with an environmentally-friendly, certified e-waste recycler, so we knew that the items would be reused and recycled in the proper way. If e-waste isn't recycled correctly it can be shipped to China or other developing nations where it's parts (lead, mercury, and other toxins) can leach into the environment or have negative health effects for workers. Overall the event went well and we sent about 100 e-waste items to be recycled.

An exciting thing for me currently is watching my plants grow in the garden & greenhouse! My friend Dan and I are currently growing greens (spinach, arugula, romaine, mustard greens), peas, cucumber, kale, radishes, tomatoes, and broccoli. So far things are looking great and the greens are almost ready to eat! I love watering them and checking on their progress every day. I can't wait to learn more about vegetables and have a bigger garden in the future.

This evening I'm off to a Dave Matthews concert which will should be awesome. I'm pretty pumped as he is my favorite musician and the DMB concert I went to in high school was full of jamming and dancing, which I love!