Early in the week, I realized that the county disc mower that trims the growth along the side of the road had not come by yet this year.

The chicory started to flower. We won’t get the full blue effect right now because the cutter came.

But chicory is a sign of the resilience of nature: it will grow back from the stem that remains producing a beauty that will wash (our) eyes in chicory blue, from a song by David Sereda. Cut it to the ground, and the root can still generate a new shoot.

In a climate engagement tool developed locally, tuning in is one of the things we can do to act on the issue of global warming.

This summer, as I tune in to the wildflowers, I keep asking which are native and which have naturalized. I am learning to nurture native plants. The questions our observations spark can lead us to learn more about what is happening and what we can do. Learning is another piece of our climate action.

Living Green is something we can all work on. From small things like sweeping rather than vacuuming to bigger things like recycling and choosing not to buy plastic to really big things like retrofitting our homes, there are ways each of us can make a difference.

At one time, wildfires were something that affected Alberta, Northern Ontario.

Then, on Tuesday, we could smell the smoke.

Everyone was talking about air quality and what has caused it. In casual conversation, people are talking about the effects of climate change. Talking about global warming is one of the things we need to do in order to shift our community’s behaviour, in order to change policies in all three levels of government.

The amount of conversation about the wildfires is affecting community awareness. It feels like together we are concerned. Concern alone is not enough, of course, but it can be a motivating influence.

At the event Imaging Green – a series of readings about the grief and the hope in the context of global warming – someone afterword asked what Owen Sound was doing about climate change.

It happened that a couple people who have worked with the city on its climate action plan were present and could answer the question. What struck me though was that the evening had inspired this woman to get more involved.

Across our area, Climate Action Committees have sprung up. In part, the film Resilience: Transforming Our Community sparked conversations that led to people gathering to take action.

In many townships, there is now a committee that is working with council and staff. There is also a climate forum that gathers speakers once a month and a network that co-ordinates the work. People have gotten organized.

Another ad hoc group that pulled me into their work is working on ways to encourage climate engagement. During the pandemic, we learned to run zoom workshops that helped people think about what they were already doing and what more they might do.

This group created a tool that identifies the different kinds of work that can be done called the What To Do Wheel. In this piece, I’ve been using the wheel to talk about different hopeful actions. I started with tuning in and learning, moved to choosing to live green and talking about the issue. Then, I moved to organizing.

The wheel identifies areas of work, and it’s a hop-on and hop-off tool. We don’t have to work our way around it. In fact, it is good to go back from talking to tuning in as things change around us. And sometimes our organizing work raises questions that send us back to learn more.

The other two sections of the wheel are participating and going public.

The Imaging Green event had seven readers, but we were a group of twenty in total. Despite the weather on Earth Day, Owen Sound’s event generated a crowd. That’s participating. Going public is harder for many of us, but there are voices out there that are inspiring and motivating  us all.

It is important to acknowledge the grief, to take in the devastation of forest and human community this summer’s wildfires have caused and will cause.

But noticing the hopeful signs, signs of resilience and change, is also important. Hope moves us.

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation.

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