Green Awareness

Green Awareness,

Hey we are Detroit, the Motor City.  The city that once had the Detroit    

River shoreline dotted with smokestacks that billowed acid rain.  We burned everything here leaves, waste, and even for a few years they burned the city itself.

But Detroit and it's suburbs has grown up.  We have gotten smarter about resources and not wasting them.  We got tired of throwing our money out the window.  So we got smarter here and started putting better windows and insulation in the homes.  We have insulation blown in the older homes even.

But the biggest thing we don't do in Detroit and the Detroit suburbs is xeriscape. We love the big fancy lawn, tons of shrubs and flowers.  Even the cities won't let us xeriscape.  In most cities we can't have grass that grows over six inches long.  It has to be manicured or the neighborhood association is going to yelling at you.  We are still cavemen when it comes to xeriscaping.   

For those of you that don't know what xeriscaping is... xeriscaping is landscaping by using natural drought resistant plants and water conservation practices that reduces landscaping maintenance.   In other words landscaping that uses less water, less fertilizer, less trimming, less cutting.  More natural.   

We are surrounded by great lakes and fresh water so we take it for granted.  Even the water bills are high it is not unusual to see sprinkler systems running when it is raining.  Metro Detroit and its suburbs need to take water conservation, pesticide application, and fertilizer application more seriously.  We have the Great Lakes to protect.  By pouring excess fertilizer and pesticides on our lawns and yards it runs off into our cities and streams.  We as consumers need to spend money on Rain sensors, and take a little more time programming the sprinkler system.  We need to step back and not worry about having the perfect lawn that has been cut both ways.  That is edged and perfect.  We need to get back to nature to help preserve our great lakes.

Think Green for the sake of bunnies

 Have a great St. Patricks Day and Easter.  For lots of great holiday trivia, poems, history about St. Patrick's Day and Easter go to my website www.RussRavary.com and click on holidays at the very bottom of the home page.   Russ Ravary