weaver park clean up, take 1

I decided to cancel the Weaver Park clean up project last night when there was more than a 60 percent chance for rain this morning. Well, it just goes to prove that you can't always depend on the weather forecasts. Although it was a tad bit windy, it was a fine day to go to the park. So, Baby J and I decided to go ahead and do a little spring cleaning at Weaver Park.

I decided we'd tackle just the area between our car and the playground as well as the sand within the playground area. Oh. my. goodness. Just in that little area, we picked up one can, several bottle caps, broken bottle pieces, three Tim Horton's cups, lots of used tissues, lollipop sticks, candy and granola bar wrappers, an egg carton (wierd), plastic wrappers, various peices of unidentifiable broken blue plastic and cigarette butts galore!

I decided this trip would be all about Baby J and a fun learning experience. We talked about what things belonged in the park and what things didn't belong in the park. I told him, "Someone has dropped their garbage in our park, and wouldn't it be nice if we picked it up and threw it in the trash for them? Then we'd have a much prettier park to play in." 

I asked if he could find some things that needed to go into the trash.  He picked up a pine cone.  "Pine cones come from trees," I said. "They belong in the park."

Then he spotted the first Tim Hortons cup, rushed over to pick it up and smiled.

"Yes, that is someone's dirty old cup that they must have dropped on accident. (Yeah, right.) Let's put that in the trash for them," I said.

He picked up several things. He was absolutely thrilled to haul the big egg carton over the trash. Isn't it strange that a one year old can identify things that don't belong in the park, but some adults cannot?

When we made it to the swingset, I told him that I was going to see how much trash I could find in the play area. I'd swing him three times and then I'd run and pick up as much as I could before he stopped swinging. 

"One, two, three!"  Then I scrambled around picking up candy wrappers as he giggled. "Are you still swinging? Have you stopped yet? Here I come. One, two, three."  I pushed him three more times and then made a dash for the trash.

I wasn't sure how much I'd be able to pick up with my 17-month-old in tow, but I was amazed. I weighed the trash (because I'm oddly curious like that) and we picked up 1.4 pounds of trash between our car and the playground and back during our little 45-minute excursion.

Sadly, there's a lot more to do at Weaver Park and other areas of the city. But, we felt good about cleaning up one little corner of the world and we had fun doing it.