It’s been one of the hottest and driest Julys in New Jersey history, and it shows. Mother Nature has been scorching the lawns at the public buildings in Glen Ridge, throwing a swath of burn across Bloomfield Center and brush stroking autumn hues upon the grassy fields of Brookdale Park.
How’s your little patch of green brown?
The Grass Isn’t Greener In Our Towns
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Straw colored lawns and a black Commander in Chief.
Not a good summer for those who prefer their lawns green
and their Presidents white.
I’m against watering lawns- I think it is an incredible waste of water. (And don’t get me started on fertilizer…)
Grass has been here a long time, it knows what to do when it gets hot- it goes dormant.
When I see a patch of golf-course like green grass, I think the the homeowner is a vain, fool who knows nothing and lives with a total disregard for the environment.
But that’s me. I compost too. And am one of those idiots who goes ballistic when a light, tv or other appliance is left on in an empty room (except my kitchen radio, I always like to enter “my” area to music!).
I’m with the Prof.
My weeds are doing very well. From a distance, our yards look lush and green. I hope the Prof doesn’t think me vain and foolish for that; we’ve done very little watering and almost no fertilization.
Save the political comments for more pertinent discussions please. I’ve had my mower set to the tallest height since early May, and only have been mowing every couple of weeks. Besides a few spots outside the range of the sprinkler (yes… omg I water my lawn!) it all is pretty green. I attribute this to keeping it long.
Well trimmed weeds are beautiful!
We’ll use some organic stuff on ours if needed, but I just keep ’em mowed and all is well.
Watering is, for whatever reason, a selfish waste. The heat killed the lovely flowers I have hanging from my porch. I’ll replace them with a certain type of flower that ALWAYS looks great, NEVER needs watering, and STAYS in perfect bloom ALL YEAR LONG…
Though I still have to plant two apple trees… But where on the estate shall they go?
Decisions, decisions (oh, payday!).
Sorry petieg, but so proudly announcing you water your lawn is decidedly political, eh?
Why?
So you’re neighbors or people driving by can exclaim: “By George, petieg has some lovely lawn… He must be RICH!!”?
Really, what’s the point of watering grass that wants to go dormant and will come back when the weather cools?
Do you glue leaves on the trees in winter too?
Prof..that brought back a very early visual…I think it was first or second grade…we made trees with a black magic marker on the walls, and glued the Fall leaves all over…boy did that look cool..:)
I water my tomatoes every day. Otherwise they’d die.
Watering flowers, (new trees), veggies, etc. is different. They die. (Which is why I have those “special” flowers that NEVER DIE…)
Grass doesn’t. It comes back as soon as the weather cools.
It’s a wasteful aesthetic. Especially, those who water mid-day for HOURS… No. Need.
Thank you prof for eloquently putting the idiocy of landscaping like the British royalty into a sane context. Indigenous plants do well in their climate without watering or the even worse practice of fertilizing.
Water is going to be the thing of wars in the not to distant future and I see sprinklers running while it’s raining. Totally false glitter in the minds of those trying to impress the neighbors.
Water your vegetables, compost and wake up to how fast the population of our world is growing and how little you really need to live.
That’s not to say you need to limit your technocracy either, there are just better ways to be free and share the resourses.
Water grass or lawn weeds? Not me. Just too much trouble and a waste of money.
We have decided to allow all the grass on our lawns to die. Instead we are cultivating the weeds. Why not go with the flow?
In the summer, i don’t understand why every house doesn’t have one or more of those rain barrels you hook up to the gutters. When there’s a bad wave of hot, dry weather in between these crazy rain and thunderstorms, and the town is begging people to use less water, it makes a lot of sense to save that rain for tomorrow.
Watering the veggie garden is different – it’s food. Watering the lawn? Wasteful, especially considering all the hundreds of thousands of people in this world who have no access to water whatsoever.
prof,
Your special “flowers” shouldn’t be on your front porch… even for medicinal purposes. Use a grow light and keep them in your attic
The ground is so hard this time of year that watering is a waste of time anyway. It just lands and runs off.
“Watering the veggie garden is different – it’s food. Watering the lawn? Wasteful, especially considering all the hundreds of thousands of people in this world who have no access to water whatsoever.”
So if we refrain from watering our lawns here does the watertable in the Congo rise?
Or is it a suffer “in solidarity” kind of a thing?
Interestingly, you can’t really “waste” water. it’s not like it’s destroyed in the process. it’s (as they say) a closed system.
The water which seeps below your lawn goes to the aquifer. The water evaporated off your driveway rains down someplace else.
Maybe Africa!
In fact maybe it’s a good thing to water your driveway if your worried about droughts elsewhere!
Thank you, ROC. That’s exactly what I was thinking.
I water my lawn between 4 AM and 5 AM. I’m horribly vain and want my neighbors to be envious of my beautiful grass! If they don’t drool over how lovely my lawn is I’ll just die! Die!
I water my lawn. Suck it.
i was feeling particularly bad about the Sudan, so I just left the sprinkler on the drive way for an extra hour.
I water the veggies almost daily since they are in containers, but they get a cover of compost to keep the moisture in. The lawn gets watered just enough, by hand, to keep it from complete brown. My lawn is about three postage stamps wide though so I have little water guilt. I conserve water in other ways.
I had a rain catcher system set up a few seasons back but it never worked very well. I saw a rain barrel for sale a the Home Depot in Florham Park a few weeks back for about $100. I’m waiting for the end of the season markdown.
It is possible to overexploit groundwater from an aquifer. And it does cost energy/money to treat the wastewater. And water that evaporates would likely fall over the ocean and not be usable at all.