Author: Lisa Mungovan

A movement called No Mow May, is spreading. All you have to do, is let your grass grow in the springtime, to give bees a chance to dine on lawn flowers like violets, dandelions, and clover. Post a sign in your yard, so neighbors know you’re feeding the bees, not neglecting your yardwork.

If your name is May or Ray, this day is extra-special for you. As for everyone else, get outside in the sunshine and catch some rays! It’s May Ray Day! It’s also Devil’s Food Cake Day. Do you know how the chocolate cake gets so moist? The recipe calls for hot or boiling water.

After a herd of European wood bison, were reintroduced into Romania’s Tarcu mountains, they multiplied and improved the entire ecosystem. Bison break up soil with their hooves, disperse seeds with their fur, and help the forest store more carbon. Other countries, like Norway and England, are also rewilding bison, to improve woodland habitats.

Scientists working in techno-agriculture, find ways to combine technology and farming. They’ve been experimenting, by covering fields with canopies of translucent solar panels. The red light plants need for photosynthesis has longer wavelengths, and can pass right through. The blue light, with shorter wavelengths, is absorbed by the panels, and creates solar energy.

Every year, more than 18,000,000,000 diapers are discarded in United States landfills, taking hundreds of years to decompose. HIRO diapers aim to change that. They are designed to be eaten by fungi. Each diaper comes with a packet of fungi, to be tossed with the used diaper. The fungi turn the diaper, into soil.

Today is No Dirty Dishes Day. First things first: clean all the dishes in the sink! Then don’t use any dishes, utensils, or cookware all day. Try cooking things on a stick, over a fire. It’s also Museum Day. Whether you like history, toilet seat art, airplanes, or mustard, it’s in a museum somewhere!

16-year-olds Vivaan Chhawchharia, Ariana Agarwal, and Avyana Mehta won the Earth Prize for Asia, by creating a new way to remove microplastics. Their creation, called Plas-Stick, uses powdered tamarind seeds as the base for a clumping agent. It causes plastics to form a mass in water, which can then be removed with a magnet.

Today is Pack Rat Day! Do you pick up shiny objects and cool trinkets to save forever in your house? You’re just like a packrat! They collect treasures for their nests, or middens. Packrat middens are valuable to paleobiologists because they can preserve plants, pollen, and artifacts for 50,000 years. Will they study your midden someday?

Did you know, it’s Take Your Parents To The Playground Day? Gather some snacks from the kitchen, and a ball or frisbee, then surprise them with your plans for a picnic at the park! Be sure to push them on the swings, and catch them when they come down the slide, haha!

Today is Mushroom Hunting Day. Explore in the woods, to see how many different mushrooms you can find. Take photos, and learn to identify them. Don’t eat any, unless you have a mycologist with you, which is someone who studies fungi. They know which mushrooms can kill you, and which ones are delicious.