LAYING CARPET ON OUR LAWN...

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers but borrowed from his children. - J.J. Audubon

A series of fortuitous coincidences has resulted in this rather unlikely scenario being enacted in our front yard this morning. Yes, we were laying carpet on the front lawn this morning – isn’t it easier to vacuum the carpet than mow the lawn? Only joking. It all has to do with our drought, of course and the imperative need to conserve our dwindling resources. In the colonial days when our climate here Southern Australia was much different (a lot wetter for one), the British immigrants who arrived wanted to shape this country into a slice of their homeland. So the native plants were uprooted, land was levelled, rivers diverted and huge plantings of European trees were effected on great expanses of manicured lawns. Ashes and beeches, oaks and elms…

We still try and preserve the great historic plantings in Melbourne’s large public parks and gardens, avenues and boulevards (Melbourne still has a healthy elm population, while in Europe, Dutch elm disease has decimated the trees), however, in house gardens it’s a different story. In the recent couple of decades our weather has progressively deteriorated and it is seldom one sees a green lawn. We can only water our gardens two days a week and even that between 6:00-8:00 am. Lawns are not to be watered and people are encouraged to plant native gardens, which tend to require very little water. We recycle quite a lot of our water and more and more people are putting in rainwater tanks.

Now, how did we end up carpeting our lawn? A colleague at work was asking if anybody wanted some river pebbles that he was getting rid of. I immediately put my hand, up as this little windfall of pebbles had given me ideas. On our morning walk, we then spotted the carpet and the rest is history. No more mowing, no watering and it will have a Zen-like effect (I hope) whenever I contemplate it.

The word of the day is apt:

conservation |ˌkänsərˈvā sh ən| noun
the action of conserving something, in particular
• preservation, protection, or restoration of the natural environment, natural ecosystems, vegetation, and wildlife.
• preservation, repair, and prevention of deterioration of archaeological, historical, and cultural sites and artifacts.
• prevention of excessive or wasteful use of a resource.
• Physics the principle by which the total value of a physical quantity (such as energy, mass, or linear or angular momentum) remains constant in a system.

DERIVATIVES
conservational |- sh ənl| |ˈkɑnsərˈveɪʃnəl| |ˈkɑnsərˈveɪʃənl| adjective
ORIGIN late Middle English (in the general sense [conserving, preservation] ): from Latin conservatio(n-), from the verb conservare.

Recycle, reuse, reinvent!