photo by: Elvyn Jones

Ian Emerson hands bananas to Melissa Volk and her 4-year-old daughter Lauren as Saturday's Earth Day Parade makes its way down Massachusetts Street to South Park. The Merc Co-op made the bananas available to those watching the parade.

When celebrating the planet, you have to accept what Mother Nature offers, the organizer of Saturday’s local Earth Day events said.

photo by: Elvyn Jones

Mark Sowinski, of Lawrence, helps his 2-year-old daughter Petra aim a battery-powered fan at a toy sailboat at an exhibit demonstrating the potential of wind power at Earth Day ceremonies Saturday in South Park.

What nature offered Saturday, one day before the official Earth Day, was another of the cool, gloomy and damp days that have cycled through Lawrence in recent weeks.

Jenica Nelson, waste reduction and recycling specialist for the city of Lawrence Solid Waste Management, said her department, which organizes the festivities, decided to go ahead with the downtown parade and the events in South Park despite a less-than-ideal weather forecast.

“It was a close call, but ultimately we decided to go for it,” she said. “I’m really happy with the level of community support. We have about 40 exhibitors with a lot of hands-on, kid-friendly exhibits and experiments.”

At a booth run by Sue Ann Funk, outreach and education coordinator for the Douglas County Conservation District, children saw soil erosion in action by pouring water into containers that were filled with soil and, in some cases, with plants. When the water flowed out the other end of the containers, there was a clear difference — the water coming out of the containers without plants was muddier.

“We’ve had great traffic,” she said. “The experiment is working like it should, so that’s great, too.”

It wasn’t a great day for all the event’s vendors. Jim Hutson, of Lawrence, said few customers were visiting his brightly colored A.I.R. Summer Snow snow cone cart.

“It’s pretty slow,” he said. “We are here every year. Usually, it’s pretty good, but it’s a hard day to sell snow cones.”