Today is Food Day, a national grassroots campaign to celebrate delicious, healthy, and affordable food produced in a sustainable way.

Thousands of events are planned across the country today in celebration of Food Day 2011.

Organizations like the American Public Health Association, Slow Food USA, the Farmers Market Coalition, and The American Dietetic Association are involved in promoting a healthy and sustainable food system.

One of the major messages of Food Day is that we all can take a more active role in selecting the foods we eat–and don’t eat.

It can be as easy as choosing more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains (and fewer sugary soft drinks).

Food Day is coordinated by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The top objectives of the campaign are to:

1. Reduce obesity and diet-related diseases by promoting safe and healthy diets.
2. Support sustainable family farms and limit subsidies to large farms.

Camilla (left) and Cocoa, two ambassador bats from the Organization for Bat Conservation, had fun hanging around during a Live Bats! program at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science last October.

If you’re looking for a special way to celebrate Halloween this year, I have the perfect idea. Adopt a vampire bat.

As most gardeners know, bats play a vital role in our environment and our agricultural economy. They disperse seeds, pollinate crops, and feast on insects. Our world as gardeners—and consumers—wouldn’t be the same if we didn’t have bats.

And bats need our help now more than ever. It’s not just the loss of habitat and over-use of pesticides, but bats are facing a more terrifying prospect called White-nose Syndrome.

This cold-loving fungus is responsible for killing millions of bats over the last four years and millions more could die because of it. Scientists and researchers are working to find a way to stop it, but no solution has been found.

Spending 15 minutes in your garden counting bees is a pleasant way to pass the time while helping with bee conservation efforts.

I’ve been counting the bees that land on the ‘Lemon Queen’ sunflowers in my garden and I’m delighted at the results.

During my latest 15-minute observation, I counted 12 honeybees landing on one large flower–almost one bee every minute.  Many others buzzed around me as I sat quietly counting.

If you haven’t counted your bees yet, there’s still time this summer. Just set aside a little time during the day when the bees are active and pull up a tree stump.

All you need is a watch, paper and pencil. Once you’re done counting, be sure to report your results on www.GreatSunflower.org.

While you’re counting, think about the thousands of other gardeners across the country who are involved in this citizen science project to help bees.

The data that’s gathered every year helps researchers with their bee conservation efforts.

A few years ago I invited our new neighbors over for a get-acquainted dinner. The prickly pear cacti in my front garden were sporting delicious-looking young pads so I decided to make a Nopal Salsa and serve it as an appetizer.

I cut the tender edible cactus pads, called nopales, boiled them in water and removed the spines.

Then I mixed them with other ingredients for a colorful salsa and served them with home-made tortilla chips and frosty margaritas.

The neighbors dug into the salsa and thought it was delicious. But when I mentioned they were enjoying the cactus from my front yard, they both stopped eating in mid-bite.

I assured them the salsa was made with a vegetable that’s an important part of the menu in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico.

Nopales (pronounced noh-PAH-lays) are the tender, edible cactus pads from the familiar prickly pear cactus (Opuntia species). Once the spines are removed, the fleshy pads are cooked and used in many different recipes from salads to salsas. The prepared nopalitos taste a little like a slightly tangy well-cooked green bean.

One of the toughest roses I’ve found that does consistently well in my Zone 5 backyard has turned into something we affectionately call The Rose Monster.

Something most people don’t know about me is that I grew up with a mom who had too many things going on inside the house to be worried about the landscape outside the house.

She didn’t plant flowers. We didn’t have a vegetable garden. There were no colorful containers overflowing with petunias. As long as the lawn got watered and mowed on a fairly regular basis, she was happy with her gardening efforts.

So it’s no surprise I was captivated by the one flowering plant in our yard—a beautiful climbing red rose. Every year that rose grew on its own. It wasn’t lovingly pruned and it certainly wasn’t babied with any special soils or rose fertilizers. It wasn’t protected from freezing temperatures with thick layers of mulch and there was no winter watering.

The Silver Fountain Butterfly Bush is now loaded with purple blooms and I’m not the only one to notice.

I wrote about my Harison’s yellow rose a few days ago…and since then it’s come into full bloom.

One of the toughest plants in my landscape is a vine that has a ghostly past.

A few years ago I picked up a ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’ honeysuckle at the Plant Select annual meeting and planted it next to an arbor in my sunny backyard and practically forgot about it.

This spring, the hardy perennial vine reminded me why I was attracted to it in the first place. Without any care from me over the winter, it sprung to life late last month.

It’s now one of the loveliest, most reliable plants in my garden.

Scott Skogerboe, a plant propagator with Fort Collins Wholesale Nursery, discovered the vine while driving around the city one day. He liked the looks of this honeysuckle, especially its round, silver-dollar size bracts with small yellow flowers. The bracts resemble eucalyptus and turn from green to silver-white and remain on the plant throughout the summer.

Potentilla fruticosa, also known as bush cinquefoil, is a reliable no-maintenance shrub that is one of the 50 Beautiful Deer-Resistant Plants mentioned in a new book by Ruth Rogers Clausen.

The first blooms are showing up on the Potentilla in my cottage garden and I’m so glad to see them.

This shrub looked dead just a few short weeks ago and now it’s covered in fine-textured  grayish-green leaves and hundreds of little blossoms ready to pop like corn.

Seemingly overnight, it turned from brown to green and now has my admiration for making it through one of the driest Denver winters on record.

This native shrub will soon explode with little yellow flowers that will last most of the summer. It usually blooms again in fall. It has a nice bushy habit that retains a somewhat rounded shape without any pruning. In fact I didn’t even touch it this spring because I didn’t think it was going to make it.

‘Harison’s yellow’ rose is one of the undaunted plants recommended by Lauren Springer Ogden in the Summer issue of Zone 4 Magazine.

The Harison’s yellow rose (Rosa x Harisonii) growing in my backyard was a good investment when I planted it several years ago.

This is one of the most reliable performers in my Western garden and it gets more beautiful with each passing year.

If I had to find fault with this hardy bloomer is that it only blooms once a year. I love the small yellow roses covering the thick thorny branches that cascade like a river down the canes.

The flowers are delicate with just a hint of fragrance, but they’re perfect for giving honeybees another early-season food source.

I’ve written about Harison’s yellow before because it’s an old rose that pioneers brought with them when they came west. They just had to have these roses in their gardens wherever they lived and I understand why.