Morph Your Mind Environmental Education

Day Ten – Counting Votes for Climate Change Native Habitat Community Gardens in Shell Lake, WI

http://vimeo.com/7327532 Check out Brighter Planent’s short video of a bee and a daisy.

Happy Tonics Environmental Education Intern Tabitha Brown is a student at Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Community College. She took the initiative to email the entire student body with permission from the college staff. Tabitha is also getting out the word out on her MySpace Blog So what’s up? She is recruiting for friends and students to Sign Up and Vote for Happy Tonics grant proposal at Brighter Planet for Climate Change Native Habitat and Community Garden in Shell Lake, WI. We need your votes at http://brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects/100

Our Morph Your Mind Environmental Education Program teaches about Colony Collapse Disorder and importance of native wildflowers as pollen sources for bees that need our help. Seeing Beyond Ourselves, we hope you too will help our friends the native plants, bees and butterflies and the crops that feed us. All these species are experiencing stress because of climate change. Help us make a difference in our hometown. We are a sustainable city but to plant gardens and maintain a Restored Remnant Tallgrass Prairie and butterfly meadow, we need funds to do so. We are grateful to Brighter Planet for this opportunity.

You are voting for species that cannot speak for themselves. Bless your hearts.

Day Nine – Teaching Importance of Native Crops through Brighter Planet Grant Proposal

A special thank you to Tim Reedy, State Farm Insurance, of Spooner, WI, for voting for our cause. To the countless anonymous voters, we are grateful that you are supporting our grant proposal.

Happy Tonics collaborates with Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Community College to teach that we need to grow local and native crops to support biodiversity of plants and pollinators during climate change. Please Sign up and VOTE for Climate Change Native Habitat and Community Gardens Shell Lake grant proposal at Brighter Planet at http://brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects/100 Your votes may help decide if we are able to secure funding for the Morph Your Mind Environmental Education Program that reaches far and wide to bring Indigenous wisdom of sustainability to the public.

Beautiful corn silks that add flavoring and nutrients to soup.

The Lac Courte Oreilles OJibwe Community College (LCOOCC) Sustainable Living Institute in partnership with the LCO Green Team, Happy Tonics Butterfly Sanctuary, and LCOOCC Library are bringing an Environmental Film Festival to LCO!

February 18^th Event in the Auditorium includes:

Luncheon: Prepared by LCO Elders Association, Student Center $5 – serving starts at 11:30 a.m.
Noon: Speaker: Mary Ellen Ryall, Happy Tonics Butterfly Sanctuary Executive Director.
Topic: Role of biodiversity of native corn and reasons why native crops best survive climate change.
12:15pm Film: “King Corn”
1:45pm Community Discussion: Advocacy to Action!

natcorn — Native dent, flour, flint, popcorn and sweet corn

Almost everything Americans eat contains corn: high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet. Ready for an adventure and alarmed by signs of their generation’s bulging waistlines, college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis know where to go investigate.

Eighty years ago, Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers lived just a few miles apart, in the same rural county in northern Iowa. Now their great-grandsons are returning with a mission: they will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what they—and all of us—are really made of. Visit the movie link to learn more at http://www.kingcorn.net/

Good night dear voters where ever you are.

Day Eight – You did it! You got us over the hump with 100 VOTES

And on the Seventh Day They Rested.

What a great weekend. Thank you one and all for voting on our grant proposal at Brighter Planet. Happy Tonics now qualifies for another chance at the brass ring in the future because we got 100 VOTES. The nonprofit realizes that we are up against some pretty stiff competition. New Orleans is in the lead with their grant proposal. Winning the Super Bowl Sunday was a wonderful success. Well done Saints.

Be sure to Sign up and VOTE at Brighter Planet for Climate Change for Native Habitat and Community Garden Shell Lake at http://brighterplanet.com/project_fund_projects/100

Good news! February 8, the Washburn County Public Property and Land Sales Committee granted Happy Tonics permission to plant a raised bed garden at Friendship Commons, the senior center, in the summer of 2010.

Girl Scout Troop Number 4392 (MN, WI Lakes and Pines) will plant, grow and maintain the garden. Seniors will be partners in this intergenerational activity. A grant from Leopold Education Project and Pheasants Forever are funding the project. Happy Tonics believes that all sustainability projects are accomplished from the ground up. A community that can feed itself is sustainable.

The garden will be a teaching garden. We teach through the monarch butterfly who is the canary in the coal mine. What happens to the butterfly can happen to us.

Even a little grant is a big thing to a small nonprofit. We volunteer for Happy Tonics. Won’t you help us spread our wings to teach others to adapt to climate change?

We offer the Morph Your Mind Environmental Education Program. Our classes, events and two native wildflower and butterfly gardens are nature’s outdoor classrooms where we teach others about the importance of native crops and plants as native host and nectar sources for the monarch butterfly and other pollinators. The natural landscape supports life. Monoculture and invasive species are replacing native habitat. Native habitat is the only habitat can withstands drought conditions and climate change.