Scouts for a Million Trees

Today our girls joined a huge number of volunteers to plant trees in Floyd Bennett Field. They learned how to carefully pull the trees out of the pots, tease the roots out and how to securely plant them without getting air pockets in the hole. 

This event was wonderfully organized. The volunteers were divided into groups (our girls chose sparkly gold!) and given a "color captain" who demonstrated what to do. Holes were pre-dug with the potted trees dropped into each hole. It made the process amazingly quick, and our troop planted around 200 trees!! Altogether, the volunteers planted over 6,000 trees.

What was really wonderful was how our girls really understood the impact their trees would make. 

Sara said, "When I grow up I want our troop and our kids to go to the place and it will be a forest."

Beach Clean-Up

We had a perfect day for our beach clean-up! Our girls joined a school group to clean up the beach that is just behind Aviator's Sports Complex at Floyd Bennett Field. The event was organized by the American Littoral Society. As they got started we had the happy surprise of seeing one of our former Brownie friends Alyssia. She was taking a class at Aviators and just happened to wander over to the beach with her family.

Our girls and parents got busy picking up garbage. It was pretty amazing how much garbage littered this small stretch of beach. We were asked to log in what we found, which goes towards mapping quantities of trash collected along NY State's coast. We found several car tires, drink bottles, broken glass, building materials and an overwhelming amount of plastic bags. It reinforced the need to bring reusable bags to the grocery store! Let's all talk to our girls about the impact of all these disposable items and how they impact the environment.

We were really proud of our girls! They were so tempted by the water, and sometimes strayed, but ultimately they did an amazing job. We collected many bags of garbage and recyclables.

Besides finding really gross things, we found plenty of beautiful nature as well. There was a flock of brandt geese as well as barnacles and various crab shells.