Give us your butts

I came across this site this week - Terracycle - you send them cigarette butts to the tune of at least three pounds in weight, and they give money to a charity of your choice. Interesting concept, and does encourage clean up of the dreaded cigarette butts on the streets and side walk  I find it a little disturbing somehow that a major tobacco producer is sponsoring the process, but maybe I am being a bit cynical. Maybe they should just ship product directly to Terracycle without involving the consumer.

I am still collecting litter in our neighbourhood each week. I keep quite close to home as there is enough garbage out there to easily fill a couple of bags. I wear gloves and use a picker upper bit like this one which can pick up a penny on the ground quite easily. In the past week I have found drug needles, socks, a pair of plastic gloves, old tshirt, condoms, plastic sandwich bags, besides the chocolate bar wrappers, and fast food containers. I frequently find the discarded plastic gloves in the gutter, I think the previous owners of said gloves were up to no good.

I have been trying for many years to get hummingbirds to visit our garden. Friends of ours have hummingbirds year round, I have seen them come to the feeder at Christmas, with the snow around. It is an amazing sight, as they dart in an out, hovering in mid air. Not so in our neighbourhood, I think I have seen one in ten years. I am still persisting, changing the feeder solution and occasionally the position of the feeder. I'm also looking to plant some more hummingbird friendly flowers, like fuchias. We are in an urban setting, there are lots of traffic noises, and lots of predators, particularly crows, so I can understand why Mrs HumBird is put off.