If I had known about the National Day of Service on September 11, I would have been right there amongst them being patriotic and productive. But 'they' waited too late to tell me about it, and I spent the morning yesterday doing hot, sweaty, dirty stuff on my own, unsupervised, with no noticeable effect or value to the greater good. No flag waving for me :(... but only because I didn't know about the option/opportunity until the day was well underway.
But I did donate my time on September 12. So I guess the Choppy-ism I heard all my life: 'a day late and a dollar short' still holds true. Spent four hours at the local botanical gardens hanging around in the woods. There was a group of home-schooled kids, and parents, who came to have a series of 'walk and talk' lessons, incorporating science, nature, wildlife. Most of my day was spent with a magnifying glass in hand, helping little people to see mosses and lichens up close in an area of the property now called the 'moss garden'. Most of the tree trunks have lichens of varying types growing on the bark, and there are lots of little patches of different types of mosses growing in the leaf mulch in the dense shade of the decidious trees. We helped the kids identify several types we had photos of and then just creep around looking at things up close: bugs, ants, caterpillars, seeds, leaves, what ever crossed their path on their hands and knees or caught their attention.
There were volunteers doing other workshops: looking for bugs and identifying birds, learning about different types of herb plants/parts of plants used for traditional medicines as well as currently used in kitchens. The 'job' was from 10:30 until 2:00, which was pretty much perfectly timed for me feeling completely funned out.
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