For this year’s Earth Hour day, our activities involved us being outside. After brunch, Sean and I headed to Queen Elizabeth Park, hoping to walk under cherry blossom trees. To our surprise, they had not bloomed yet, although they had started popping up around the city. Also, my beloved bluebells and daffodils were also not out yet either.
I was hoping to re-create our polaroids from when we first got together. Yes, I’m a nerd.
Since our walk in the park was cut short due to lack of flowers, Sean and I headed to Southlands to visit the horses. It had been a while since our last visit. And since we got tickets to Cavalia in a couple of weeks, that got us excited to see our equine friends.
When we walked up to this riding club, the horses immediately came over to us. I think the horses were shaved in much the same way a sheep is shaved of its winter coat. I believe this is called a ‘blanket clip’, where only the hair on the neck and belly are shaved.
We found this big black mare at another stable. This one was not only friendly, but slobbery as well. He couldn’t get enough of licking our hands and moving his snout right into our faces to check us out. I never had a horse drool all over my palm before.
Such a majestic creature. So gentle and yet powerful. I feel so small standing right in front of him, with his big chompers and him getting so excited by us.
He even had white whiskers.
The past 2 years, Sean and I had marked earth hour by staying in with dinner and lots of candlelight. We wanted to mix it up this time. We had dinner out at a lil’ Japanese restaurant near his house.
After dinner, we walked around the neighbourhood, seeing whose lights were out and whose were not. Putting them on our mental naughty and nice list. We’re so judge-y, that way.
Surprisingly, there were a lot of offenders, residential and businesses. Starbucks, Blenz, Park Theatre with your marquee all lit up – I’m talking to you. Choices Market had some lights still on. Smaller businesses were putting them to shame. Flying Wedge Pizza and Neko Cafe were serving customers by candlelights.
I know there’s detractors to the Earth Hour initiative because of the argument that it does nothing beyond just conservation awareness for that one hour. Then everyone goes back to their regular scheduled programming. Or that powering down for one hour is a wasteful gesture, perhaps not even being environmentally beneficial.
It might be a solid argument, but for me, participating is standing with like-minded people on how you feel about your earth and your place in it. And one hour in the dark is not going to kill you.
We took delight in tsk’ing at houses who were or chose to be oblivious to Earth Hour. like, the house who looked like it was making a statement by not only having all the lights on in all of the rooms, but also to kick in for good measure, the front porch lights too. I mean, the house could be seen from space – that’s how bright it was. Like I said, judge-y McJudge.
We ended Earth Hour on a very good note. On the walk home, a kitty ran across the dark street to meow at us. And regardless of whether it’s light or dark, we never pass up the opportunity to stop and play with a furry face.
More photos on my Flickr album.
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