Interconnectedness

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."
John Muir,  My First Summer in the Sierra 1869

I want to talk about lakes, and lawns.  Rain and runoff.  Fertilizer and phosphorous.  I want to talk about consequences, repercussions.  But I'm just too angry.  And disappointed.  We need to do better.  We need to be mindful.  Because everything is connected.

Okay, I'm a little less ragey.  I can use my words now.

Other platforms have more eloquent write-ups about the ecological disaster here in New Jersey.  But this is my appeal to to you, citizens, landscapers, government agencies:  Let's be better stewards of nature.  Let's pay attention to what we pour down our drains, what we wash our cars with, what we melt ice with in winter, what we put on our lawns and gardens.  What we allow our lawn services to sell us.

It's not just a loss of summer swimming, or businesses losing their customers.  The toxic Cyanobacteria that was formed by an over abundance of rain, overuse of fertilizers containing phosphorous, is killing fish that wildlife eat.  Plants that water fowl eat.  Plants that aquatic life take shelter in.  Water that wildlife drinks.  And the web spirals out from there.

This is that "think globally, act locally" schtick. You do have that power to each, individually, effect change.  Be powerful.  Preserve the web.  Ecological Interconnectedness.  You are a part of that.  Be good stewards of nature.  

Do it for the doggies.

"This we know the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
Home.  Screenwriter Ted Perry, 1971
(misattributed to Chief Seattle)