What does the word green mean to you? A mixture of two primary colours, blue and yellow? The green of photosynthesis, plants growing and spreading across the earth. Or green (ecological) politics, trying to get us humans to realise we need to take more care of the world?

If its the latter what small things can we do to help?

You could try growing some of your food from seed. Maybe some tomatoes  or a pepper plant. Even if you don’t have a garden you can try growing things on a bright window ledge.

A bit more space and you could grow a tree. You can buy miniature fruit trees which grow masses of fruit on a small plant. This is done by a process of grafting where the fruit you want to grow is grafted onto a rootstock which tends to be more vigorous than the top of the tree. You can buy ones which bear two or three different types of fruit on one trunk. Or grow some potato’s or other vegetables. Maybe get an allotment?

More green ideas include recycling. The planets oceans are becoming clogged with plastic. That useful but ubiquitous molecule that seems to have over taken modern living. We don’t choose to let turtles choke on plastic bags, but they are doing, mistaking them for jellyfish which they naturally predate.

Green also means letting animals alone. Letting dwindling populations of Lions, Tigers, Elephants, Rhino, Zebra, Polar Bears, and others survive. Not hunting them to extinction. I dread getting images on my Facebook page showing hunters glorying over the death of a giraffe or lion they have just shot.

Why do we do it? There are scarce resources on this planet but we seem bent on destroying or feasting on everything we see.

Where are the inventors who will improve technology and cut our massive use of fossil fuels? When are we going to realise that global warming is real, whether it is created by man or other means. It doesn’t matter what you blame we still need to try and do something about it. We should share clean technologies with less advanced countries so we all gain an advantage.

About a week ago I saw a news item. Children around the country taking a day off school to march and protest against global warming and point out that they are the ones who will inherit our mess and mistakes.

Green must be on all our minds, green should be the first colour we think about. I hope green is the future..