Solstice Greetings from Planet Earth!

Hello Resident Earthlings,

This is your planet writing here... Today's the day all of you in the northern hemisphere have been waiting for; the Winter Solstice! This is a perfect day for you to consider your place in this celestial party that I throw each year. I've done another lap around the Sun now, doing the same thing I have been doing since... well, for a really long time, let's say. You have trusted me to give you pretty much the same old stuff forever and for the most part I do that.

The shortest day and the longest night will be a memory tomorrow as the shadows will be shortening, imperceptibly at first, but cumulatively, as the weeks roll past, there will be a big difference.

Now is the time you'll be getting your seed catalogs in the mail and you will begin to count the days until you can get your hands back into the soil you have been nurturing in your garden beds.

Plant your gardens this year like it really matters, because it does. It matters now more than ever. I see more and more people are converting their suburban lawns to growing beds and adding chickens to their list of pets. There's nothing as good as having pets whose poop you can love.

That's a great step in the right direction to living a more sustainable life. So many of you are beginning to see the importance of adding high quality, home grown produce to your tables and understanding that it's your own responsibility to begin to take on your food security issues with your own two hands, quite literally.

Throughout human existence, there has been an effort put forth by most individuals to create their own food supply. In the last few generations, however, most people have begun to rely more and more on available and relatively cheap factory farmed foods to feed themselves. In that relatively short time, a lot of common knowledge about gardening has been placed in the dust bin of history as people got complacent about their food supplies and put a lot of faith in Governments and big corporations to make sure everything would be OK.

Well, things aren't really working out that well, are they?

Sometimes it seems daunting to take on a challenge like gardening. It's pretty simple, really and it's something you are capable of doing more easily than you might think. The residents of Catal Huyuk and Mesopotamia grew gardens and they were successful about 8000 years before the internet was invented. There's no reason you can't get started now.

Check out a few books from your library and pick up a few important tools that work well for you and get busy this spring.

Your Planet doesn't need you to survive, but you need me. Be good to me and I will return the kindness.

Good soil to you,

Earth