Mother’s Day is this weekend.  Sure you can honor your mother by giving her flowers or a gift, but sometimes it is important to really give a gift from the heart. It may take more time, energy, and thought, but Mom deserves it!  Here are five ideas for giving Mom an earth-friendly gift from the heart:

1.  Plant a Mom a garden:

Whether your mother is old or young, offering Mom garden time is a wonderful gift from the heart. You can take over a flower bed, start a new one, or get mom going on some edible landscaping.  Putting in roots will be a ongoing reminder of your love and appreciation for the life she has given you.

2.  Make a reverse baby book:

Did your mother put together a baby book for you?  Have you ever thought of making a book for your mother?  Think of your earliest memories, and share them with your mother.

3.  Make a charitable donation:

We mentioned this idea last week in a post about Women for Women International.

4.  Share Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation:

Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosum of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God –
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Even Osama Bin Laden had a mother.

5.  Make it truly a Mother’s Day!

When was the last time you spent the whole day with your mother doing everything she wanted?

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