Native gardening

A couple of years ago we began covering half of our back lawn with leaves and wood chips and planting a woodlands area with mostly native Michigan species. This year we have seen the fruits of our labors. It has been a show all summer, and we have never watered once. Now, I'll admit that it has been a pretty wet year, but even so, or annuals still need watering. But not our native area! I can honestly say it has been maintenance-free. I know I can say that because I hold a special attraction for mosquitos, so I don't even go out to weed after early July.

The picture below shows the border between my 'traditional' perennial bed on the left and the rain garden on the right. I don't know if you can see it from the photo, but the rain garden plants are about 2-3 feet taller than the traditional ones. Our milkweed plants must be 7 ft this year. We're loving the rain!

Wall-E and the watch

Can I tell you a story from my honeymoon? I promise, it will relate to Wall-E and the watch. 30 years ago, right about this time of the year, my husband and I were motoring down to Florida for our honeymoon. He had just purchased his first new car - a Dodge Omni - and he decided that he wanted to see what kind of mileage he could get if he left the air conditioning off. Which was fine until we entered the 'hot' states of Georgia and Florida. No pleading from his new wife could dissuade him from testing his new vehicle. Why, oh, why, I thought, did I marry an engineer? And a stubborn Irish one at that.

Fast-forward 30 years. Improbably as it may seem after that story, we are still married. The Dodge Omni and the mileage experiment are gone, but, in its place, is a new project: adapting to a greener lifestyle. It may not surprise you that he is going full guns, and I am limping along, sometimes begrudgingly. I don't mind experiments and changes, but if they impact my lifestyle, not so much. So I'm hoping I sound like the typical consumer, and you can relate.

Anyway, here's where the watch comes in. I have had the same $39 Fossil watch for many, many years. The leather band has broken twice (worn through), and both times when I suggest that I can just throw it away and get a new one, Tom has said, 'No problem! We can take it to the watch repair shop and get the band replaced.' Which we have done. Now, however, I have noticed that the little number 9 on my watch has dislodged and is resting next to the '12'. Uh-oh! Time for a replacement! When I made the mistake of mentioning this to the stubborn engineer, he of course said, 'No problem...' and you know the rest. This time, though, I thought he had gone too far. We are not impoverished! We can afford a new $39 Fossil watch!

Then we went to see Wall-E, a movie about the a trash-compacting robot alone on a desolate earth (except for one cockroach) in the year 2700. Humans have been evacuated to a temporary space station, because the earth is covered with trash and the skies are so polluted they cannot sustain life. Watching the movie, I thought of all the landfills I have passed that are the size of small mountains. I though of the phrase: There is no 'away.' And I thought that the movie may not be all that presumptuous in its premise.

So we're heading to the watch repair shop - again. The dump doesn't need another piece of electronics, and maybe the watch repair man could use the business. The engineer was right again. But just don't push me too far.