It’s Thursday morning – “yard” day around my neighborhood. The day when trucks arrive, pulling trailers loaded up with lawn mowers, leaf blowers and weed wackers. For most of the day, there’s a constant buzz of machines as the workers busily tidy
my neighbors’ lawns.
We, too, have a lawn mower that gets pulled out when the grass is high enough that our pet rabbit gets lost in it. We, too, have a leaf blower that languishes in our shed. My husband knows he uses it under threat of divorce or dismemberment, depending on my mood. We have no weed wacker, except for me.
The message seems to be MIA. Ya know, the one about how the planet is heating up, rendering polar bears homeless, islanders looking for scuba equipment and the rest of us shooing away malaria-carrying mosquitoes. While we’re all gripped by flu fears, economic woes and So You Think You Can Dance, environmentalists (by which I mean those determined to save us from ourselves) carry on their thankless work of convincing us – and those we’ve voted for – that we really do need to do something. Like now. And it’s not as hard as we might think.

Like, for example, give up the gas-powered lawn mowers. Put aside the leaf blowers. Let the grass grow a little longer. Mulch the leaves and let them nourish your lawn.

While you’re at it: hang-dry your clothes. Cold-wash your clothes. Air dry your dishes. Walk. For more simple ideas, click here.

And let me know what else we can do…