1. Ah, that morning walk with the family dog! Brisk air, blue PNW sky, and all those green lawns.
2. No–wait! Blocks from home we spy a long block of gold! All golden lawns. Is this a thing?
3. Well, yes. You may have seen the signs–from Pierce County–on those golden lawns.
4. Pierce Conservation District, in partnership with Tacoma Water, the City of Tacoma, and Pierce County, is recruiting you for the Golden Lawn Program. Why? To save water by letting your lawn go dormant during the summer months. When the rains return, most lawn types in our region will re-green on their own. Participants who pledge to let their lawn go golden can get a free yard sign to show their support for water conservation and commitment to helping the environment.
5. If you haven’t already traded in your lawn for a pollinator garden, you can be a part of the golden lawn movement in three easy steps:
- Sign the pledge (see site below) to get a yard sign!
- Reduce your watering, and
- Watch your grass go gold!
6. Water bills commonly increase in the summer due to higher usage. A drought-tolerant lawn requires less watering, less mowing, and no fertilizer. Toxic runoff is the #1 source of pollution in the Puget Sound. Reducing or eliminating the use of lawn mower gas, lawn fertilizer, and herbicides on your property means fewer pollutants entering our storm drains, streams, and eventually the Puget Sound. As summer droughts intensify, we need to work together to protect the quantity and quality of our fresh water supplies to help our region respond to changing conditions.
To read more, go to: https://piercecd.org/742/Golden-Lawn
A Meditation on Water in Wright Part
In the summer the sprinkler system is turned on most days across Wright Park, across the street from where Jean and I live. It is on very early, perhaps, so the water will penetrate the grass before the warmth evaporates it. But there may be another reason for the early sprinkling: the caravan of runners and walkers on the trails long before I look out the window. A portion of the street is damp from having been sprinkled on, and cars have run across the dampness and carried the wetness farther down the street. Still another sign of the sprinkler is the small ponds in low places in the trails. They are not large and soon disappear into the sandy trails. I have seen crows drinking from these ponds.
The sprinkler system is not democratic. There are large swaths that are missed. These poor stretches are dry until it should chance to rain, a phenomenon we see less and less these days. One dry sprinkler-less spot lies on our side of a massive tree. The tree shields water from getting to the grass in front of the tree, leaving a dry trail several feet long and about two feet wide. No sprinkling this morning.
William Tudor
