Dear Mother Earth,

despite mankind's heavy footprint

you still find it in your heart to give us treasures.

I pray today that the people of Earth will take

notice, and give thanks. Amen!

The ocean is a treasure in itself supplying us with precious jewels as well as food and sources for healing. But maybe even more importantly it supplies us with half of the earth's oxygen. Did you know that both humans and the planets surface are made up of over 70% water?

{KK 1301}

The ocean also supplies seaweed that washes ashore and dries and blows inland, building sand dunes that protect barrier Islands from hurricane surges and provides habitat to nesting shorebirds and sea turtles and even snakes.  

The honey bee provides us with the very important service of pollination and with the ever increasing usage of pesticides we find them in great danger.  

The dragonfly and their incredible hovering motions date back 300 million years ago. They are not only beneficial to humans by consuming mosquitoes, but extremely important indicators in the health of our ecosystems and the overall quality of our environment. 

Our trees supply us with another source of our oxygen, protection for wildlife, as well as provide us with materials for human shelter. They shade and cool us, and even help control noise pollution.

And as Emerson says, "The earth laughs in flowers." Flowering plants (angiosperms) make up the most diverse groups of plants on our planet. They not only provide shelter and food for the organisms that live on them, but they provide us with our greatest source of food. And did you know. . . 25% of all plant species are threatened with extinction? 

We ALL journey this earth together.

We are the guardians of this planet, but our most required elements have been polluted, wasted and ignored.

We simply cannot afford to take these resources for granted.

It seems simple enough. Instead, we have complicated it....for ourselves.

We need to teach our children to be mindful by educating and encouraging them about what it means to preserve, conserve and protect our beautiful earth if we want them to have a future in it.

"We seek a renewed stirring of life for the earth

we plead that what we are capable of doing is

not always what we ought to do.

We urge that all people now determine

that a wide untrammeled freedom shall remain

to testify that this generation has love for the next.

If we want to succeed in that, we might show, meanwhile,

a little more love for this one, and for each other." - Nancy Newhall, from Earth Prayers

And before I go enjoy this Earth day, I want to share a challenge that Terri from my collaborative blog, Focusing on Life, gave us yesterday (for today). She said, "Take your best shot of our environment -- how you see it, what you treasure about it, the things you would never want to see fade away -- and then share them through our Flickr group." 

So I invite all of you my friends, who also love this earth and take beautiful inspiring photos to grab your cameras and capture some of the beauty around you and share it with us so that we can celebrate it together!! XO

Love, Kim

sharing with Texture Tuesday, Sweet Shot Tuesday