You’re standing in your Mother’s kitchen and she hands you a sweet, homemade cookie. It looks and smells delicious: melty semisweet chocolate chips surrounded by flaky, chewy cookie-goodness. In her other hand: a tall glass of (insert your favorite type of milk here). You look at her kind expression and… snatch the cookie, chug the milk, and then ransack the kitchen, leaving nothing but the tiles on the floor and a shocked mother standing in the middle of them!

Okay, that’s crazy, right? Well, there are some that say that is how Mother Earth can feel sometimes. But this isn’t a gloom and doom, “tsk tsk” blog post. No, this is a closer look at how we can all choose to treat Mother Earth the way our human mothers want to be treated: with love, kindness, respect, gratitude… and presents!

To explore this, I interviewed local entrepreneur Laura Oldham, founder of Return to Sender in Upper Arlington! The following interview was conducted via Instagram and has been edited for length and clarity:

First question: Introduce yourself! What should we know about you?

I’m a mom to Violet, small business owner (x2!), wife to Doug, and earth-lover. I have a 10-year-old beagle mix, Eleanor Roosevelt Oldham and a 2-year-old cat, Rosie The Riveter Malala Oldham. (Rosie was named by my daughter.)

I started my digital marketing business, Starburst Media, 13 years ago. I formed Return to Sender in 2022 as an excuse to play with plants and explore sustainability.

I’ve loved converting our yard in Upper Arlington into a paradise for pollinators. We live on a visible corner of UA with a lot of foot and car traffic, so I use our little chunk of the world as an excuse to spread plant propaganda to all who will listen to me ramble about the virtues of murdering turf lawns in favor of more productive, biodiverse options.

When I’m not building websites, converting nuisance algae into biodegradable pots, upcycling homework into seed paper and getting my hands dirty in the soil, I enjoy creating and consuming comedy.

So let’s focus in on Return to Sender: I love the name! What was your “spark” moment that inspired you to even want to get into “returning to sender” (returning materials to mother earth)?

We bought our house in 2013 (10 years ago this month!) and were completely ignorant of anything plant-related. Our split-level home was built in 1953 in Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style. The landscaping surrounding the home followed the same design principles as Wright, and we wanted to be good stewards of our new land.

During the first year of the pandemic, our house produced SO. MUCH. PAPER. My husband would go through reams of paper every week via his law firm. Online kindergarten was me and Doug acting as teachers and printing out so many worksheets. Just piles and piles of paper, and I realized it would be wonderful if I could use that paper to put nutrients back into the soil.

A lot of my friends have been intimidated by the idea of anything other than turf lawns, so I realized that upcycling all of this paper into a way to make sowing seeds less daunting would be a way to ensure that it would go to good use. [I combined that with removing] grass to swap it with more productive options.

Let’s zoom in on “stewarding the land”, have you always had a connection to the land you’ve lived on?

Yes, I would say that I've always had a strong connection with the land where I've lived. I grew up in a very rural part of northwest Ohio and helped out on my grandparents' farm. When I was two, I'd be the "weight" on the plow while my cousins and I helped Grandpa plant potatoes. My dad always enjoyed helping us catch tadpoles and watch them grow into frogs. Some of my earliest memories are exploring the woods and streams, and I know that impacted how I felt about the world I inhabited. I've always been extremely empathetic towards animals.

Love that. Amen. So then, I want to focus on some of your individual products. First: seed paper! I think most people are intimidated by seeds, as you say on your website. Does seed paper… actually work?

Yeah! Seed paper works super well. (I'm biased!) So, first for some additional context: While we were producing these piles and piles of paper, I also spent a lot of the early portion of the pandemic watching documentaries. Kiss the Ground has haunted me since we watched it in 2020. Since watching that, my brain's been ruminating on how to easily regenerate soil. I looked at these piles and piles of paper and saw their upcycling potential. Simultaneously, I was reading and learning more about seed saving and native plants.

To make the actual seed paper, it's relatively simple and mostly just takes some patience. I shred paper, then I soak it in a tub of water, then blend it, and then reshape it into new paper via a mould and deckle. Then I add seeds, petals, leaves, whatever. Seed paper is basically a vehicle for organic material to efficiently (ahem) return to sender.

Then, what time of year and *how* do you plant it?

You can throw the paper on some soil in your yard and put a bit more soil on top of it, and nature does the rest. It's a great way for people new to plants to watch the process of germination. In addition to the paper acting as compost to regenerate the soil, it also keeps the seeds safe from being eaten or washed away.

As far as what time of year, it depends upon what you're planting. If it's native and needs cold stratification, then I'd recommend "planting" in the fall. If it's one of my easy-to-grow options that are great for pollinators, like zinnias, then any time after the last frost works! I like to start a lot of my seed paper in milk jugs via winter sowing to help make them hardier.

So your seeds are all great pollinator flowers: zinnia, coreopsis and coneflower (natives!) cosmo and sunflowers… why a focus on pollinators and, as you put it, “beevangelism”?

I firmly believe that within the next decade we'll see a giant shift in attitudes related to the American lawn. (I mean, I have to hope!) Most people don't realize how grave our insectageddon is, but I believe that's about to change as climate change deniers watch storms get more extreme. If we can share easy ways for new beevangelists to plant for pollinators, it's more likely that they'll be willing to shift their behaviors. And maybe we can inspire them to get in on some good old fashioned grass removal.

When some people see bees, they think “ah! Scary!” although you and me know they only sting when directly attacked. When you see a bee, describe your feelings/thoughts?

I suppose I feel grateful mostly when I see a bee. I'm grateful that the bee has chosen to make a home in my yard. I'm grateful that I have this small corner of the world where bees and I can have a mutually beneficial and supportive relationship.

There's quite a bit of wonder and awe as well. Like their waggle dance: so smart!

I've begun reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's amazing book Braiding Sweetgrass. In it (the parts I've read so far) she's very much focused on the concept of reciprocity: acknowledging all the bounty that mother nature gives us, and then giving back to her in return. Can you highlight for me: what gifts from mother nature are you consciously grateful for?

I'm consciously grateful for so many gifts from mother nature. That gratitude is the foundation for most decisions I make in my life. And it's very much the motivation behind me starting Return to Sender. How can I, just one person, use my actions to give back to the earth that's given so much to us? How can I amplify what I've learned through reading every book I can find on sustainability?

Yesterday, between meetings and work calls, I'd look outside to watch the Cardinal families in the Serviceberry trees outside of my office. I watch the Goldfinches that are still chomping down on the Black-eyed Susans and Evening Primrose from last fall. I guess I just appreciate how everything is connected. It's all such a precarious symbiotic world.

So, reading between the lines a bit, would you say you're grateful for the community of beings? Sounds like you very much enjoy just seeing birds and bees etc. go about their business, sharing space with you?

Yeah, I think that's right. I enjoy watching them live their lives, and I'd like to think they enjoy how I've chosen to live my life in a way that intentionally benefits them. People? Meh. But I love hanging out with birds, bees and butterflies.

So I want to respect your time and wrap this up, but I can't leave without talking about your nuisance algae products! You've got some hilarious products available... I personally love the fist! So do you 3D print with algae?!

Yeah! I love that you like the fist. That's an idea I dreamt up with the folks at Good Land Brand in Franklinton, and they'll be carrying that soon.

So, one of my other obsessive thoughts (one of many) is wondering how we can work within capitalism to undo some of the damage caused by capitalism. And how we can take products that were already created but have outlived their usefulness to transform them into new products. So that's where 3D printing came in. I bought my first printer last August, and I've LOVED playing around with it.

So how does that even work? Are you out there scooping pond scum?

I have the filament made with nuisance algae and bioplastics, and that's created by a company on the east coast. They pull the algae out of the ocean, lakes and ponds and turn it into filament. Soon I'll have the equipment to make my own filament. Which is what I'm really, really jazzed about. I'll be able to say pull nuisance algae out of Buckeye Lake and turn that into filament. But I'll also be able to play around with turning food waste into filament. And, I'll be able to take single-use plastic containers and recycle those into filament as well.

So for example, say at a BFA location you go through a gallon's worth of single-use yogurt containers in a day. I could turn that into filament and print it into something useful for the teachers or students.

I adore the idea of a circular economy model within schools especially. How can we take garbage that would go to a landfill and instead transform it into something that we would have bought new?

I 1000% want this at our schools!

Yeah! I would love that! It's such a powerful way to understand garbage and reducing, reusing, recycling. And the students and families would be able to see, say, this birdhouse that they know was created out of yogurt containers or whatever other object we would decide to use.

So then, what note would you like to end this interview on? Is there a closing thought you’d love to end with?

Well, I want to thank you for this interview. It's given me an excuse to think about things that I've never really stopped to consider.

(I'm usually so busy working or momming that an excuse to take a break from those things is nice.)

I guess in general, I'm grateful for where my path has taken me. Return to Sender has been a very fun excuse to play. In general, learning more about sustainability has helped me evolve into being more intentional in my consumption and purchasing choices. The more time in nature I spend, the more mindful I've become about how I impact it. I know all of the negative ways that humans affect the planet and its beings, but it's refreshing to consider the ways that we can be good stewards.

Yes! We can choose to do good right where we are!

So rather than being a constant doom and gloomer about climate change, it's been a very nice change of pace to focus my thoughts and efforts toward what I can control.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for your creative and fun ways to give back to Mother Earth, and thanks for your time!

Be sure to checkout Return to Sender’s website and Instagram and consider what valentine (like these amazing cards!) you can share with your Mother…Earth!