Judy Dearden, President
2023 CAMPAIGN: “Nature and Us”
We have an exciting line-up of presentations and community events scheduled for 2023, and we would like to invite the
community to join us.
February Speaker Series Presentation: Preserving Seeds
We kicked off HHGTF’s 2023 campaign, “Nature and Us”, with our February Speaker Series presentation of that same title. Our presenter was Danielle Jacobs, who is the Cleveland Seed Bank’s Education Coordinator. Dani educated us about the Hummingbird Project and the Seed Bank, a Cleveland-based non-profit that operates a number of initiatives domestically and globally in an effort to promote and educate communities about ecological regeneration. Since its founding in 2011, The Hummingbird Project has grown to include an international network of volunteers, collaborating organizations, and projects on three continents. Visit the website for more information: www.hummingbirdproject.org.
April Speaker Series Presentation: Landscaping for the Future
Our next Speaker Series will be on Wednesday, April 5 and the topic is “Landscaping for the Future”. Our speaker
will be Botanist and Cuyahoga Soil and Water District’s Watershed Coordinator, Kate Chapel. We invite you to join
us…and bring a friend!
Communicating Trees?
Regarding plants…….did you know that trees communicate with each other through a vast subterranean network
linking trees and fungi…sending messages and resources? Suzanne Simard, forest ecologist, professor, and founder of The
Mother Tree Project at the University of British Columbia Research Forest has been studying this arrangement for
decades. A thin, white filament, “Mycorrhizal fungi,” she says. “It’s joining all these trees together.”
Suzanne advises that current forestry habits will need to change in order to save our forests. From Suzanne:” Change is necessary to avert dangerous warming that threatens both trees and humans. What it comes down to,” she says, “is we have to save our forests, or we’re done. It comes down to whether we value our environment as something to take from or something to tend.”
To learn more visit this article written by Sarah Kaplan that appears both in the Plain Dealer (2/12/23) and The
Washington Post, or read Suzanne’s book “Finding the Mother Tree”, available new or used online.
Clean Up Day!
Mark your calendars for the second annual Highland Heights’ “Community Clean-up Day” – Saturday, April 22, 2023, which is Earth Day! 9 am-1 pm. Meet at City Hall.
Last year we had 40 people of all ages (8-80’s!) turn out for the first clean-up day…help us make it an even bigger and more successful event….come and bring family and friends to help us eliminate trash from our landscape!
Freecycle & E-Waste Day
Freecycle/E-waste will be held on Sunday, June 25 th at the barn in the Highland Heights Community Park. As with past years, no Freon, CRT monitors or tube TVs….$20 fee for flatscreen TVs. No fee for flatscreen monitors. And please only donate usable items to the Freecycle, no junk…thank you!
Our New Website
HHGTF Over the past year, students in the Tri-C web design class have redesigned our HHGTF website. Learn more about the team that designed and built the site here: www.highlandhtsgreen.org/about-the-site/. Note that the calendar for 2023 is on the home page.
New for Recycling
I recently attended a presentation by Carin Miller from Cuyahoga Solid Waste District about current recycling policies for Kimble and learned that Kimble will now take frozen food boxes (think Stouffer’s), however, they no longer take cartons that contained milk, almond milk, soup, etc.
Thank You
To all of you who continue to be interested in our shared environment and how to keep it and ourselves healthy. Please do what you can to stay safe and healthy!
For more information, contact Judy Dearden @ hhgreentaskforce@yahoo.com or call 440-646-9820 for more information.