We live on 13 acres. Even the land near to the house is difficult to keep tidy so when Jean and I saw this TED Talk given by Rebecca McMacin we were overjoyed. For having a tidy garden does much greater harm to wildlife than keeping it wild.
Before I get to the TED video, I just want to show you some photos I took last Saturday.
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Now to the TED Talk
Here is the description of the talk.
Many gardeners work hard to maintain clean, tidy environments … which is the exact opposite of what wildlife wants, says ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin. She shows the beauty of letting your garden run wild, surveying the success she’s had increasing biodiversity even in the middle of New York City — and offers tips for cultivating a garden that can be home to birds, bees, butterflies and more.
Here is Rebecca’s background.
Rebecca McMackin is an ecologically obsessed horticulturist who helps people create and care for beautiful gardens that provide habitat for birds, butterflies and soil microorganisms.
Why you should listen
Rebecca McMackin spent a decade as director of horticulture at Brooklyn Bridge Park, where she employed organic principles to manage 85 acres of diverse parkland. During her time overseeing the park’s ecology, stick bugs, rare mantids, threatened bees and lady bugs all returned to the park. The park’s urban biodiversity and successful use of ethical management strategies influenced thousands of people and other urban parks to adopt similar approaches.
In addition to her work designing public gardens, McMackin writes, lectures and teaches on ecological landscape management and pollination ecology. She recently installed an 8,000-square-foot native wildflower garden for the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum. She was a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, while her work has been published by and featured in The New York Times, the Landscape Institute and on NPR and PBS.
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The video is just 12 minutes long and I encourage you to view it.
To my mind, nothing beats the sights of the World’s oceans.
In the past, I spent four years living on a yacht, a Tradewind 33, out in Cyprus. During that time I cruised to Turkey, to Greece, to Algiers, and loved it.
Here’s an extract from World Oceans day website.
Why Earth’s oceans are so important
Earth’s oceans are critical to human survival. Indeed, more than half the oxygen in our atmosphere is generated via photosynthesis by phytoplankton and seaweed in oceans. In addition, millions of people depend on fish and other marine animals for food. Research on some marine organisms has led to the development of new medications. Moreover, ocean currents, known as global conveyor belts, help regulate Earth’s climate.
Sir David Attenborough has produced a film Ocean and the trailer follows:
There is so much more to view on the World Oceans Day website. Please go to it.
A series on Meditation(not the first but this one seems better)
Listen. The first episode, broadcast on the 10th May, 2022, is about the benefits of Meditating. It is a reminder that a short, daily period of Meditation, just ten minutes a day, is so valuable. Here is the link:
The link to the first of the Ten Minute Meditations comes shortly. Here is the description:
Deepak Chopra leads a guided meditation to help us understand how we can adapt to change and make consciously informed choices. Deepak is a physician, world-renowned speaker and author on integrative wellbeing and spiritual intelligence who encourages us to welcome transformation within us. The music that soundtracks Deepak’s guided meditation was composed by Erland Cooper and recorded by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and violinist Freya Goldmark.
Check out the full episodes of The Music & Meditation Podcast now, the ultimate therapeutic podcast and your self-care toolkit for modern life. Violinist, writer and mum of three Izzy Judd welcomes expert guests to share simple guided meditations, support and advice, all soundtracked by a beautiful mix of classical music. Whether you’re just starting to meditate or you’re a seasoned meditator, this is the perfect podcast for you.
Want to know whether “talking” dogs like Bunny are for real? When UC San Diego Professor Federico Rossano first saw Bunny’s videos, he was a skeptic. After all, he knows all about the complicated and messy history of animal communication studies – like the woman who tried to teach a dolphin to speak. But after studying these button-pushing pups for years, his team has published some research that will make you rethink just how much dogs are capable of telling us. Federico’s study is still looking for participants! Sign up here: https://cclab.ucsd.edu/pet-cognition-…
How then do we practice gratitude during such times?
I am a social psychologist who runs the Positive Emotion and Social Behavior Lab at Gonzaga University. I teach courses focused on resilience and human flourishing. I have researched and taught about gratitude for 18 years.
At the best of times, awareness of the positive may require more effort than noticing the negative, let alone in times of heightened distress. There are, however, two simple ways to work on this.
Generally, negative information captures attention more readily than the positive. This disparity is so potent that it’s called the negativity bias. Researchers argue that this is an evolutionary adaptation: Being vigilant for life’s harms was essential for survival.
Yet, this means that noticing the kindnesses of others or the beauty the world has to offer may go unnoticed or forgotten by the end of the day. That is to our detriment.
Gratitude is experienced as a positive emotion. It results from noticing that others − including friends and family certainly, but also strangers, a higher power or the planet − have provided assistance or given something of value such as friendship or financial support. By definition, gratitude is focused on others’ care or on entities outside of oneself. It is not about one’s own accomplishments or luck.
Thus, it may assist in counteracting the negativity bias by helping us find and remember the good that others are doing for us every day − the good that we may lose sight of in the best of times, let alone in times when Americans are deeply stressed.
But it’s also clear that gratitude can be cultivated through practice. People can improve their ability to notice and feel this positive emotion.
One way to do this is to try a gratitude journal. Or, if the idea of journaling is daunting or annoying, perhaps call it a daily list instead. If you have given this a try and dislike it, skip to the second method below.
Gratitude lists are designed to create a habit in which you scan your day looking for the positive outcomes that others have brought into your life, no matter how small. Writing down several experiences each day that went well because of others may make these positive events more visible to you and more memorable by the end of the day − thus, boosting gratitude and its accompanying benefits.
While the negative news − “The stock market is down again!” “How are tariffs going to affect my financial security?” − is clearly drawing attention, a gratitude list is meant to help highlight the positive so that it doesn’t go overlooked.
The negative doesn’t need help gaining attention, but the positive might.
A second method for practicing gratitude is expressing that gratitude to others. This can look like writing a letter of gratitude and delivering it to someone who has made a positive impact in your life.
When my students do this exercise, it often results in touching interactions. For instance, my college students often write to high school mentors, and those adults are regularly moved to tears to learn of the positive impact they had. Expressing gratitude in work settings can boost employees’ sense of social worth.
In a world that may currently feel bleak, a letter of gratitude may not only help the writer recognize the good of others but also let others know that they are making a beautiful difference in the world.
I like the suggestions for practicing gratitude and I am going to reproduce that last sentence from Monica, namely: ‘In a world that may currently feel bleak, a letter of gratitude may not only help the writer recognize the good of others but also let others know that they are making a beautiful difference in the world.
I would add sending an email to that person as well is a good move.
Every week, millions of Americans toss their recyclables into a single bin, trusting that their plastic bottles, aluminum cans and cardboard boxes will be given a new life.
But what really happens after the truck picks them up?
Plastics are among the biggest challenges. Only about 9% of the plastic generated in the U.S. actually gets recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some plastic is incinerated to produce energy, but most of the rest ends up in landfills instead.
A breakdown of U.S. recycling by millions of tons shows about two-thirds of all paper and cardboard gets a second life, but only about a third of metal, a quarter of glass and less than 10% of plastics do. Alex Jordan/University of Wisconsin-Stout
So, what makes plastic recycling so difficult? As an engineer whose work focuses on reprocessing plastics, I have been exploring potential solutions.
How does single-stream recycling work?
In cities that use single-stream recycling, consumers put all of their recyclable materials − paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal − into a single bin. Once collected, the mixed recyclables are taken to a materials recovery facility, where they are sorted.
First, the mixed recyclables are shredded and crushed into smaller fragments, enabling more effective separation. The mixed fragments pass over rotating screens that remove cardboard and paper, allowing heavier materials, including plastics, metals and glass, to continue along the sorting line.
The basics of a single-stream recycling system in Pennsylvania. Source: Van Dyk Recycling Solutions.
Magnets are used to pick out ferrous metals, such as steel. A magnetic field that produces an electrical current with eddies sends nonferrous metals, such as aluminum, into a separate stream, leaving behind plastics and glass.
The glass fragments are removed from the remaining mix using gravity or vibrating screens.
That leaves plastics as the primary remaining material.
While single-stream recycling is convenient, it has downsides. Contamination, such as food residue, plastic bags and items that can’t be recycled, can degrade the quality of the remaining material, making it more difficult to reuse. That lowers its value.
Having to remove that contamination raises processing costs and can force recovery centers to reject entire batches.
Plastic bags, food residue and items that can’t be recycled can contaminate a recycling stream. City of Greenville, N.C./Flickr
Which plastics typically can’t be recycled?
Each recycling program has rules for which items it will and won’t take. You can check which items can and cannot be recycled for your specific program on your municipal page. Often, that means checking the recycling code stamped on the plastic next to the recycling icon.
These are the toughest plastics to recycle and most likely to be excluded in your local recycling program:
Symbol 3 – Polyvinyl chloride, or PVC, found in pipes, shower curtains and some food packaging. It may contain harmful additives such as phthalates and heavy metals. PVC also degrades easily, and melting can release toxic fumes during recycling, contaminating other materials and making it unsafe to process in standard recycling facilities.
Symbol 4 – Low-density polyethylene, or LDPE, is often used in plastic bags and shrink-wrap. Because it’s flexible and lightweight, it’s prone to getting tangled in sorting machinery at recycling plants.
Symbol 6 – Polystyrene, often used in foam cups, takeout containers and packing peanuts. Because it’s lightweight and brittle, it’s difficult to collect and process and easily contaminates recycling streams.
Which plastics to include
That leaves three plastics that can be recycled in many facilities:
Symbol 5 – Polypropylene, PP, used in products such as pill bottles, yogurt cups and plastic utensils.
However, these aren’t accepted in some facilities for reasons I’ll explain.
Taking apart plastics, bead by bead
Some plastics can be chemically recycled or ground up for reprocessing, but not all plastics play well together.
Simple separation methods, such as placing ground-up plastics in water, can easily remove your soda bottle plastic (PET) from the mixture. The ground-up PET sinks in water due to the plastic’s density. However, HDPE, used in milk jugs, and PP, found in yogurt cups, both float, and they can’t be recycled together. So, more advanced and expensive technology, such as infrared spectroscopy, is often required to separate those two materials.
Once separated, the plastic from your soda bottle can be chemically recycled through a process called solvolysis.
It works like this: Plastic materials are formed from polymers. A polymer is a molecule with many repeating units, called monomers. Picture a pearl necklace. The individual pearls are the repeating monomer units. The string that runs through the pearls is the chemical bond that joins the monomer units together. The entire necklace can then be thought of as a single molecule.
During solvolysis, chemists break down that necklace by cutting the string holding the pearls together until they are individual pearls. Then, they string those pearls together again to create new necklaces.
Other chemical recycling methods, such as pyrolysis and gasification, have drawn environmental and health concerns because the plastic is heated, which can release toxic fumes. But chemical recycling also holds the potential to reduce both plastic waste and the need for new plastics, while generating energy.
The problem of yogurt cups and milk jugs
The other two common types of recycled plastics − items such as yogurt cups (PP) and milk jugs (HDPE) − are like oil and water: Each can be recycled through reprocessing, but they don’t mix.
If polyethylene and polypropylene aren’t completely separated during recycling, the resulting mix can be brittle and generally unusable for creating new products.
Chemists are working on solutions that could increase the quality of recycled plastics through mechanical reprocessing, typically done at separate facilities.
One promising mechanical method for recycling mixed plastics is to incorporate a chemical called a compatibilizer. Compatibilizers contain the chemical structure of multiple different polymers in the same molecule. It’s like how lecithin, commonly found in egg yolks, can help mix oil and water to make mayonnaise − part of the lecithin molecule is in the oil phase and part is in the water phase.
In the case of yogurt cups and milk jugs, recently developed block copolymers are able to produce recycled plastic materials with the flexibility of polyethylene and the strength of polypropylene.
Improving recycling
Research like this can make recycled materials more versatile and valuable and move products closer to a goal of a circular economy without waste.
However, improving recycling also requires better recycling habits.
You can help the recycling process by taking a few minutes to wash off food waste, avoiding putting plastic bags in your recycling bin and, importantly, paying attention to what can and cannot be recycled in your area.
Even engaging in what’s known as “informal helping” – lending a hand to friends, neighbors or community members in need, without getting paid or participating in an organized program – can help you in similar ways.
There are also health benefits for those who start volunteering much earlier in life.
Children and teens who volunteer tend to have better health and lower levels of anxiety and fewer behavioral problems than those who don’t volunteer.
Changing demographics
The number of U.S. adults at least 62 years old – the earliest age at which you can claim Social Security retirement benefits – has grown by nearly 35 million since 2000, while the number of children and teens under 18 has fallen by nearly 1.5 million. There are now about 76 million Americans over 62 and 71 million under 18.
This change has been gradual. Following a long-term demographic shift, record numbers of Americans are reaching retirement age.
Benefits for society and the economy
The benefits of volunteering aren’t just for the volunteers themselves.
And participating in community service programs can lead to better job prospects for volunteers, that same agency has found.
AmeriCorps Seniors, which focuses on engaging volunteers ages 55 and older, runs programs that offer major benefits to their communities. These include the Foster Grandparent program, which connects older adult mentors to children, and the Senior Companion program, which connects volunteers to older adults seeking some help to continue living independently in their own homes.
People of all ages can get together through volunteering. Some organizations intentionally encourage this kind of intergenerational cooperation, including CoGenerate and Generations United.
Rebuilding communities
Researchers have also found that volunteering may increase trust within a community, especially when it brings together people from different backgrounds.
It can strengthen “social cohesion,” a term researchers use to describe how much people bond and help each other, and reduce prejudice.
Volunteers’ views on social issues may change through their work, too: More than 4 in 5 adults over 55 who tutored public school students to strengthen their reading skills in the national Experience Corps program, for example, stated that their views on public education evolved as a result. Those volunteers expressed more support for public education and said they’d be more likely to vote in favor of spending on schools.
An American pastime
Our findings are backed by science, but they also have roots in American history.
Alexis de Tocqueville – a French philosopher and diplomat who arrived in the United States in 1831 to study the new nation’s penal system – was so impressed by the scale of volunteering in the U.S. that he wrote about it in his 1835 book “Democracy in America.”
Tocqueville observed that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds” were likely to unite in many kinds of groups or associations.
More recently, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has said that volunteering can strengthen communities, and that “community is a powerful source of life satisfaction and life expectancy.”
If you aren’t volunteering today, here are a few ideas to help you begin.
Start small. Try joining an organization or association in your community, taking part in neighborhood cleanups or volunteering at your local senior center, animal shelter or museum. Love gardening? You can take care of local parks, conservation areas, community gardens and more.
And consider a more extensive level of commitment to organizations or causes you care deeply about. This might include joining a nonprofit board of directors, volunteering more hours, or taking on a volunteer leadership role.
At a time when trust is eroding and divisions seem insurmountable, volunteering offers something rare: an evidence-backed way to reconnect with communities, institutions and each other.
Reach out to your favorite nonprofit, visit Volunteer.gov or VolunteerMatch.org, or connect with a nonprofit resource center, a regional United Way or a community foundation to find volunteer opportunities near you.
The challenge is I no longer have a driver’s license. Plus Jean has Parkinson’s Disease. But if there is a way to overcome these obstacles and doing some volunteering then that would be a very positive way ahead.
Learning from Dogs 
