Welcome

We are happy to introduce a new resident to our Whispers From The Woods blog.

Kat O’Lone and Miss Bonnie are already known to our community. Miss Bonnie became our mascot in August last year, and together with Kat, has been helping the Global Tree Initiative in many ways.

Thankfully, Kat and Miss Bonnie have accepted to join our blog and share their adventures on a monthly basis, just like our friends Jorge and Jennifer used to do. Their blog is called Miss Bonnie, in a Nutshell.

For their first article, Kat and Miss Bonnie were eager to share about a recent workshop they attended – they learned how to build a water barrel, helping them to conserve water!

Join us in welcoming our two friends from the United States.

We hope you enjoy reading their stories and we invite you to leave your comments below.

Becoming Water Ambassadors

by Kat O’Lone & Mis Bonnie

Recently in March, we observed World Water Day and one of our GTI coordinators, Dipen Mehta from India, shared a very interesting presentation on Water which he called “The Blue Gold”. The aim of his presentation was to raise awareness about the importance of water conservation through behavior change, recycling, and harvesting rainwater.

After watching the presentation Miss Bonnie and I felt inspired and motivated to become Water Ambassadors. After all, water is crucial to ALL forms of life, and humans need clean water to survive just as much as other animals and plants.

Even though Bonnie has access to clean drinking water, she chooses to drink rainwater from buckets or flower pot dishes.

Did you know that only 1% of the Earth’s water is fresh surface water available for consumption? That’s crazy considering that 70% of our planet’s surface is covered in (salt) water!

Many countries and regions are facing water scarcity, and since we cannot create water the best we can do is to conserve it. In his water presentation, Mr. Mehta shared the 3Rs policy: Reduce – Reuse – Recycle

In our ongoing efforts to reduce our water consumption, Miss Bonnie sent me to the rain barrel workshop sponsored by a local non-profit organization, We Plant it Forward.

Rain barrels are a great way to help save water AND money! The founder of We Plant It Forward, Maggie Bailey, has been offering these workshops for nearly 20 years now. All the materials and tools were provided and took us less than an hour to complete. Plus, we had a lot of fun in the process!

Previously, I tried to collect stormwater runoff in buckets but that wasn’t very efficient and attracted lots of mosquitos. With my new rain barrel, I will be able to capture about 50 gallons (227 liters) of rainwater and store it safely for later use. The top has a mesh cover that will keep mosquitos out and prevent them from breeding inside.

For more information and video instructions on building your own rain barrel checkout, We Plant It Forward’s tutorial on Youtube.

If you have any ideas on how to save rainwater, or if you build your own rain barrel, please tell us about it!

* * *

If you have any questions for Miss Bonnie or Kat, you can reach out directly to them with the following email address: bonnie@plantgrowsave.org

Thank you for being here. Looking forward to hearing from you!