Tap water and the aphids. A gardening and life technique
water water everywhere but not a drop to drink
A rant on our "drinking" water.
Gardening is one of the most meditative pass times known to man. The practice provides awesome health benefits. This has been true conceptually since the "garden of Eden", And for sure since the hanging gardens of Babylon. The entire globe and thousands of years of history tell the truth of this concept.
I have five favorite types of gardens -- but first let me rant about our drinking water.
Our water is not safe to drink out of the tap. It will not kill you, at least for a few years but it will harm you and consistently make you sick. The two primary reasons for this is excess chlorine and excess fluoride. I will leave it at that. Check with HP watergeek for further explanation.
The excess chlorine kills bacteria. It does it very well. The problem is that our bodies have human microbiota -- and this is a fair assessment of what they do: is the aggregate of microorganisms that reside on the surface and in deep layers of skin, in the saliva and oral mucosa, in the conjunctiva, and in the gastrointestinal tracts. They include bacteria, fungi, and archaea. Some of these organisms perform tasks that are useful for the human host.
The point is that we need many of them. This level of Chlorine kills them if ingested or overexposed to them.
So I have a wonderful rose garden. It fills our front window with beauty.
This year I cut back in my winter/spring garden the mallow plant. Aphids love mallow. By cutting back I cut back the food for the aphids. So they sprang unto my front rose garden. My shipment of ladybugs, arrived dead. I don't use chemicals as a repellent.
But I had to do something as the aphids can destroy a rose plant. My accross the street neighbor Mary has great roses. So my boy and I gathered some spring cherry tomatoes and went to seek advice. Mary refused the tomatoes -- something to do with her husband Johns gout? But she offered up free advice and a bag of winter oranges -- sour, but we love em.
She laughed at my dilemma. She said; of course you do not spray the leaves and buds of your roses with the horrible water, do you? I said "no way". Mary patted my boys head, produced a fresh baked cookie and said that is exactly what you must do. Our water is so bad that it acts as an insecticide. So we waited until dusk and sprayed all the roses --- the aphids are gone, dead.
I am not entitled to great water or a rose garden.
So there are lemons in life. But we can find uses for them.
My little unincorporated village is called Spring Valley. We have subsidence problems with land because of a very high water table. We have drinking water that burns your eyes with chlorine during a shower.
So what. We are lower middle class. But as you walk down my street every single home has a garden, palm date tree, Jacaranda, Juniper, flowers galore and most have at least to fruit trees.
Now my biggest worry is if this water will harm dragon flies, butterflies and lady bugs.
So we learn in our lessons. From the Rose and from the lemon.
Some Sweet things have thorns, other sweet things actually taste sour.
I suppose we say not to fit square pegs into round holes, and I suppose we should not judge a book by its cover, and we should not prejudge what someone or thing is good for. But we do. Perhaps we should find wisdom from the bad water and the aphid.
Five favorite types of gardens.
1. Over 100 years old
2. Natural -- like blackberries and rasberry patches with volunteer type fruit trees, just nurtures along and trimmed with a few fruit trees or local exotics
3. Perfect. Straight rows of things and cleaned pathways and drip systems for water and a swing or hammock. Perhaps two fountains and scented plants.
4. Abandoned 40 years or so. But still with enough water and sun to be overgrown.
5. Temples and Churches, spiritual type places with out to much glitzy.
Well please think about your "Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett