One day in late Spring, I was doing a little weeding in front of our house. An old lady was walking slowly along the sidewalk. She stopped to admire the flowers. She said, “You know that God loves you, don’t you? When you see flowers like that you have to know that there is a God and that He loves us!”

Adrianne L. Blank, RLA, explaining rain gardens and swales

I’m talking about rain gardens and bioswales. Rain gardens and bioswales can be introduced into a landscape to help slow down the flow of water, allowing more of it to soak into the ground. This helps clean the water and alleviates flooding and improves ground water tables. A bioswale is basically a shallow ditch that slopes gradually down from the source of the water, whether that is a parking lot, a roof downspout, a roadway or a driveway. It can be lined with rocks or coarse gravel or eight to twelve inches of leaf compost and sand. It can include some native plants, but not solidly planted. It can be built up slightly on the low end to form a dam to allow two to four inches of water to remain in it and soak into the ground over the course of about two days after a rainstorm. This first level of filtering can remove most of any metals in the water and allows the water that doesn’t run over the low end to continue filtering through the ground.

The next stage of water purification and detention can be accomplished with a rain garden. For many years, building codes and zoning regulations have required detention basins for commercial developments and multiple unit housing developments. These help some, but not nearly as much as they could if they were planted and maintained as rain gardens. The average residential yard could help the water supply by using just 60 to 100 square feet for a rain garden (about the footprint of a mini-van). If commercial, church and development detention basins were to have their sod removed and replaced with a rain garden; it would go a long way to improving suburban and urban water tables and water quality.

A rain garden contains native flowers, bushes and sometimes, trees. 70% of water pollution comes from runoff. 80% of water that falls on a lawn runs off. The idea is to slow down the flow of the water to allow more of it to soak into the ground. Soil and plants filter out toxins to purify the water. Larger plants use more water. Local native plants help purify the air, moderate temperature and provide habitat for birds, butterflies and other creatures.

To build a residential rain garden, first, choose a suitable location. It should be where water flows to naturally, or you can create a bioswale or extend a downspout drainpipe to it. The finished ground level of the rain garden should be eight to twelve inches below surrounding grade level, with gentle slopes into it all around, if possible. It needs to be graded in such a way that the water enters it gently and is evenly dispersed, so it doesn’t erode and the full area is utilized to treat the water. The area needs to be dug down at least a foot deeper than the desired finished grade in order to mix compost into the soil. Then the area is planted with native flowers, bushes and trees. It is important to choose plants which tolerate wet conditions, yet tolerate drought. Local natives work best for this. A few sedges or ornamental grasses may be included in this, but so much that the ground is covered. Remember to choose plants that are appropriate for your sun conditions.

If only local, native plants are used, the rain garden should be very low maintenance. It should not be mowed more than once a year, in the fall.

For photos and more information on rain gardens, visit the following links:
Passive Rainwater Harvesting
Landcare Research (New Zealand), then click on A home raingarden for more detailed instructions and do’s and don’t's.

Terry & Rain Barrel Kit

Last Saturday  I went to a rain barrel workshop at Edge of the Woods Nursery put on by the Saucon Creek Watershed Committee. For $35, they provided the tools, the materials and help to build a 55 gallon rain barrel. Rain barrels help slow down the flow of water off of roofs. Suburban sprawl with its McMansions, additional roads, big box stores, big parking lots and lawns have caused many areas to become flood prone that never had this problem before. Rain showers now cause flooding, erosion and water pollution. 70% of water pollution in our lakes and streams comes from rainwater run-off. 80% of water falling on grass lawns runs off. Anything we can do to slow the flow and allow more of this water to filter through plants and soil will help to prevent flooding and pollution.

The simplest step that we can take to slow down the flow of water is to place rain barrels on our downspouts. This reduces the amount of rain flowing across the ground by catching the first 55 gallons in a rain event, saving it to be used on dry days. This reduces the amount of nonpoint source pollution. Rain barrels provide some additional benefits as well. 30% of our water is used for lawns and gardens, on average. If you use captured rainwater to water your garden and lawn you reduce your water and sewer bills and save drinking water resources. Rainwater is better for your plants than city water that has been chlorinated.

Mosquito screen attached to bottom of PVC toilet flange with duct ring

Now you can buy fancy, good-looking rain barrels from various gardening catalogs and some big box stores; or you can make them fairly inexpensively from a salvaged, food additive barrel and a few parts from the hardware store. The thread taps are pretty expensive, so try to borrow these from a plumber or join a gardening club or watershed association that can buy them corporately to sponsor events like the one I attended on Saturday.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 food grade plastic 55 gallon drum. (SCWC gets theirs from a local recycling center.)
1 PVC toilet drain flange
2 sel-tapping 3/4″ hex-top, slot screws
1 dryer vent duct ring
about a square foot of nylon window screen
1 brass 1/2″ hose spigot
1 nylon 3/4″ thread, garden hose coupler
epoxy putty

Tools:
Electric drill
handheld jigsaw
Adjustable wrench
4-5/8″ hole saw
3/4″ garden hose thread tap
13/16″ hole saw
7/16″ drill bit
thread tap for 1/2″ hose spigot
scissors
screwdriver or hex driver bit

Directions:

Top of Rain Barrel Complete

Use 4-5/8″ hole saw to cut a hole in the top of the barrel, leaving enough flat surface around it to place the toilet flange. Attach screen to bottom of flange using the dryer duct ring.  (See photo above.) Trace and cut space on the side of the hole for the tightening screw to fit, so the flange lies flat, screen side down in the barrel.

Drill hole for spigot near the bottom of the side of the barrel using the drill bit. Consider carefully how you want to place this according to how the downspout will enter it, so you will have convenient access to use the water. Tap the threads and screw in spigot. Near the top of the barrel but still on the flat part of the side of the drum, cut the hole with the smaller hole saw for the overflow fitting. Use the larger tap to thread the opening, then screw in the hose coupler. Work the two parts of the epoxy putty together until it is a uniform color. Partially unscrew the spigot and the hose coupler. Work the putty into the threads and retighten, packing it all around to prevent leaks.

Your rain barrel is complete!

Threading the the hole for the spigot

Don’t drink the water from your barrel. If you have asbestos shingles (very old roof) or treated wood roof or a copper roof with a zinc anti-moss strip, do not use the water on edible plants. It is fine for flowers and lawns, though. Clean the bug screen periodically. In the winter, either take it in or leave the spigot open with no hose attached to avoid freezing and thawing from splitting your barrel.

Attach a hose to the overflow with the outlet somewhere like a soaker in a flower bed.

Spigot sealed with epoxy putty

Why go native? The answer to that is manifold.

The Audubon Society is reporting a rapid decline in bird populations in America, by as much as 80% of some of the most common backyard birds since 1967. Ornithologists attribute this to the disappearance of natural habitat with suburban sprawl with its eradication of the native plant species on which these birds depend for food and shelter. Another problem is the use of chemical herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers that poison birds. So landscaping your yard with native plants and encouraging your neighbors to do the same can recreate attractive habitats for birds. There is no fauna without flora.

Native plants are well adapted to natural conditions, so do not require the artificial life support of chemical salt fertilizers or the ‘protection’ of weed killers or insecticides. This can save you money and make your habitat safer and less polluted. Choose your plants to match your conditions and you don’t need to water much, if at all. This saves water, which saves energy, which is better for the planet and your bank account.

It is easy to propagate most native plants, so, if you are willing to wait, you don’t have to buy so many. The Virginia Sweetspire that I planted last Fall has already put out rooted runners that I was able to transplant to a second location. These plants are not patented or copyrighted, so you can’t get into trouble for propagating them to plant, trade, give or sell.

If you have acreage, and you plan carefully, you can restore habitat to a wild enough state that it sustains itself with little care and provides habitat to native animals of all sorts. You cannot just stop mowing to let land return to the wild. In fact, mowing or plowing can permanently destroy some fragile natural ecosystems. In all of the Great Plains, some estimate that less than 2% are still virgin prairie. I recall as a child in Minnesota that they determined there was less than a quarter of an acre in the whole state that was still virgin prairie. Restoration can only go so far, but wouldn’t it be fun to closely restore a place to how it may have looked, felt and smelled like 400 years ago.

Going native will help you escape the cookie cutter, McMansion look. There are very interesting native plants in every region of the continent. As Europeans started to settle and explore the East coast of America, they were amazed with all the beautiful, native plants. In fact, one of the advantages of going native on the east coast of the US is that you can have a traditional, English, country garden! That’s right! The English were so taken with all the new, exotic plants from North America that they filled their gardens with them in a more naturalizing way than those stuffy, manicured French gardens. It’s a fascinating story. You can read about it in Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners.

We are using naturalizing, native ground covers, flowers and bushes to eliminate mowing in front of our house. We hope to be able to eat whatever blueberries the birds and the neighbors leave for us, as well.

An added benefit to growing more bushes, flowers and trees is that it provides more habitat for birds, butterflies and other creatures. These are fun to observe and beautiful and soothing to watch and hear. I had the thrill of watching an alley cat crouching behind our daylilies snatch a bird under the neighbor’s azalea. It was like a little National Geographic predators special, live, right here next to the driveway!

Vegetables and fruits have synergistic environmental effects. Replace some of your lawn with vegetables and you increase oxygen production, eliminate some lawn mowing pollution and reduce food miles. Instead of planting ornamental fruit trees, plant actual, fruit producing, fruit trees; and you may harvest some tasty fruit from your own yard. At the very least, you will provide added habitat and food for wildlife. You can plant edible cauliflower and cabbages, other vegetables and herbs as ornamental accents in your flower beds. A new specialty has even arisen among landscapers providing edible landscapes and planning.

If you really, truly enjoy a large lawn, get some sheep. I remember reading in  the Mother Earth News, about thirty years ago, about a rent-a-sheep mowing service in West Germany.

Then there is the whole issue of fertilizers. We use over 3 million tons annually on lawns. Over $5 billion per year is spent on fossil fuel derived fertilizers. Then there is the problem of gas powered mowers. The average gas powered mower emits as much pollution while mowing an acre of grass as driving a car 50 miles. Lawn mowers accounts for 7% smog causing particulate; and you are walking right behind it. 800 million gallons of gas are used each year for mowing lawns, of which an estimated 17 million gallons are spilled on the ground. (The Exxon Valdez spilled 10.8 million gallons, just for comparison.) According to the EPA, America uses an average of 7 billion gallons of water each day to water its lawns; over half of which is wasted due to overwatering and overspray. It always frustrated me, as a kid growing up in Golden Valley, that the more we would fertilize and water the lawn, the more we would have to mow it. It seemed to me that we could save all kinds of time by not fertilizing and watering. 

How about the dangers to life and limb? A number of these pesticides and fertilizers have been shown to increase risk of asthma, childhood leukemia, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain cancer, pancreatic cancer, birth defects, fetal death, etc., according to the Ontario College of Family Physicians: Pesticides Literature Review. Every year, about 75,000 people are seriously injured in lawn mower accidents in the US, including 10,000 children. 25,000 accidents result in an amputation. OK. Have I scared you enough? Just leave the lawn alone for a while.

I’ll get back to it with some positive, greener alternatives. I promise.

At any rate, never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The point of this whole ramble through Golden Valley is that the valley still had some golden fields when Steinbeck may or may not have travelled through with his poodle in 1960. By the summer of 1961 my dad had built our house in a subdivision of the last one. The fields of wheat were gone. We had a clean, new suburb with lots of green lawns.

But how green are lawns? 

Before we get into the whole chemical fertilizer, gas power mower, crabgrass killer end of things; let’s take a look at just the idea and physical presence of lawns and see how things add up.

Why do we have lawns, anyway? Years ago, in a magazine called Country Journal, there was an essay on lawns on the next to the last page. From it I learned that the idea of the individual lawn came from English and northern European aristocracy. It was a sign of great wealth. It indicated that you had so much land that you could afford to mow some of it. You already had more than enough for your crops, more than enough for your livestock, more than enough, even, than for your herbs and flowers. You had so much land, in fact, that you could afford to intentionally waste some of it. It was the epitome of conspicuous consumption. This idea was carried forward to American farmers. It was a sign of prosperity and overabundance to have a small lawn around the farmhouse. 

Then came the mechanization of farming with its accompanying great migration into cities. Those who managed to benefit from industrialization and centralization chose the same sign to advertise their prosperity. They had enough wealth to have a piece of ground that they could mow without even having to farm at all. On top of that, came the expanding middle class with the idea of a consumer society. Then came the cold war with its xenophobia which led people to want to have a buffer zone between themselves and their neighbors, as well as enough space to build a bomb shelter in the backyard. Then came the urban race riots of 1965 and 1968 that caused more people to be afraid of cities and flee to the perceived safety of the suburbs. Television evening news with its “If it bleeds it leads” policy combined with the economy of showing all the news that is convenient (i.e., urban) only reinforced these fears. White flight from the cities has caused so much urban sprawl that on a night time flight from Philadelphia to Minneapolis in 2000, I saw only suburbs below.

Just the fact of lawns existing, increase the need for transportation, because they increase the distance between us. Paradoxically, lawns cause more land to be paved as we need more and longer roads to get around them all to get anywhere. The more paved land there is, the higher the incidence of flash floods with its damage to life and property, not to mention the accompanying erosion. Lawns take land out of agricultural production and deplete wildlife habitat.  By the lawns being clipped short, they do not produce as much oxygen and sequester as much carbon as would a farm, pasture, meadow or woods with undergrowth.

By taking land out of possible agricultural production, we have limited our opportunities for energy independence by means of biofuels. Although I have looked into the possibility of replacing my lawn with switchgrass or poplar trees to produce home heating fuel.

The bottom line is: No matter how green they appear to be, lawns are not green.

Next time, I’ll talk about the effects of lawn maintenance and some greener options.

Old window interior

Last month we turned off cable TV. Comcast’s digital on demand was costing us about $85/month. There was nothing on. Well, almost nothing. We will miss Keith Olbermann and some of the DIY programs, but $85?! 

The new part of our house was built around 1845 and most of the windows are original construction. They are all single pane. Most are pretty drafty, rattle in the wind and need to be propped open. Fifteen of the windows are just slightly larger than 28″ x 46″. I didn’t want to replace them with the typical replacement windows, because we would lose too much glass area and damage the look of the house. So I researched sash replacement kits. In the reasonable price range there are two choices. Jeld-Wen Zap Pack sells at Home Depot for between $200 and $300 per window, depending on options, and comes in custom sizes. MW sells at Lowe’s, 84 Lumber and some independents and sells for $80 to $120 depending on options, but only comes in “standard” sizes.

Fifteen of our windows are close enough to the 28″ x 46″ standard size to use the MW kit. I ordered the basic wood window for $80.88. I am planning on replacing a window a month until the job is done. Wood is the better environmental choice. Vinyl or vinyl clad utilize some pretty toxic production processes. Wood looks better on this old house. And I figure some of the existing wood windows lasted more than 200 years and still look OK. No one knows what 200 year old vinyl looks like.

The sash kit came in two boxes. I had failed to specify low-E, argon glass, and I didn’t order it exterior primed, but it came with all of those options. I am not complaining. The instructions were thorough, with the exception of trimming the excess off the foam strips. I had to move both the exterior and interior sash stops. Nowhere in the literature or instructions did it mention that the sash tracks are 3-3/8″ deep. This is much deeper than our antique sashes. Thankfully, the sill lip was shallow enough I was able to finesse this. I had to add 1/2″ plywood filler to either side of the opening. I still have to shave down one side of the window sill a bit so that it will seal across the bottom.

MW only offers a full screen option at a pretty hefty price. We prefer a half screen, since we don’t like to strain our vision. I hope to add that myself on Saturday. It took a total of about three hours to install. I haven’t painted or varnished it yet. The next one should go faster, since I won’t have to spend so much time scratching my head over how to solve the thickness difference.

old window exterior

demolition complete

new window

new window exterior

 The cardboard packing and instructions will be recycled. The old sashes will be used as part of a room divider in the barn. The plywood spacers were made from salvaged scrap. Well that’s one more thing I can no longer say I never did before.

August 6th
Troparion (Tone 7)

Like at His Baptism, all three Persons of the Trinity were revealed. The voice of the Father spoke to the disciples saying “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.” The Holy Spirit appeared as the dazzling Uncreated Light. Christ is shown on top of the mountain surrounded by a huge sun-like design representing the Uncreated and Great Light. Moses, to Christ’s left, is holding the Law showing that Jesus is the Christ, the fulfillment of the Law. Elijah, to Christ’s right, is supplicating God. Below the disciples, Peter, James and John fall to the ground in amazement. They too will be transfigured by God and granted to gaze upon the Light of all. This should be our hope as well.  

God used earthly things to reveal the Trinity to us, thus reminding us that the earth is still holy.  Despite man’s corruption, the earth remains as good as the day He created it.  We must remember that and care for the earth, preserving the earth and the air that contains the light. 

This Icon is by the hand of Nicholas Papas. It is from St. Philip’s Antiochian Orthodox Church in Souderton, PA.

Mounted prints are available from www.comeandseeicons.com.

Mix equal measures of Borax (Twenty Mule Team or not) and Washing Soda (most likely Arm and Hammer) together. Label your container. It is environmentally friendly. That doesn’t mean that you want to eat it.

Use two tablespoons per load in the dishwasher. We keep a plastic spoon in the container and put two teaspoons in the closing dispenser and two in the open one.

Use white vinegar in the rinse aid dispenser. It is much cheaper than brand name rinse aids and it does just as good a job.

Yesterday, I used this combination to wash our cars. I used one tablespoon of the Borax/Soda mix with a few drops of Ivory dish soap in a bucket of water. I scrubbed the cars with that. Then I put some white vinegar in a used Pepsi bottle; attached it to the TerraCycle sprayer instead of the bottle of worm poop, and gave the cars a spot-free rinse.