Just Sayin': Replacing grass has plenty of benefits
The gate entrance to a front yard without the traditional green lawn om Blue Point. The alternative lawn was designed for color and texture for all four seasons. Credit: Newsday/Tony Jerome
Earth Day, which took place Friday, is a time to consider that our lawns, which can give us so much pleasure, are killing us. The chemicals used to keep them lush poison Long Island’s underground water source. The equipment used to keep them trim pollute the air with noxious fumes. Leaf blowers’ noise is like living under a jetliner flight path to Kennedy Airport. A lawn doesn’t provide the habitat necessary to attract birds, bees and other useful insects to keep the environment in a healthy balance.
I have replaced my lawn completely, replacing most of the grass with myrtle, which stays green all year and needs no watering, mowing or fertilizing. In the spring, it displays hundreds of blue flowers for a month. I also have low-maintenance rose bushes, several different flowering plants, a butterfly bush, and a few tomato plants. All of this provides a pleasing picture that is also nature-friendly.
A bonus is that it requires less work and is cheaper to maintain. This isn’t just a win-win but a win-win-win-win.
Arthur Dobrin, Westbury
The writer is a professor emeritus of university studies at Hofstra University and leader emeritus of the Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island.
Celebrate Earth Day for more than 24 hours
Let us celebrate Earth Day all year long. Recycle newspapers, magazines, glass, plastics, old medicines, paints and cleaning materials. Leave your car at home. For local trips in the neighborhood, walk or ride a bike. For longer travels, consider many public transportation alternatives already available such as trains and buses. They use less fuel and move far more people than individuals in cars.
Many employers allow employees to telecommute and work from home full or part-time. Others use alternative work schedules, which help staff avoid rush-hour gridlock. This saves travel time and can improve mileage per gallon. Join a car or van pool to share costs of commuting.
Use a hand-powered lawn mower instead of a gasoline or electric one. Rake your leaves instead of using gasoline-powered leaf blowers. A cleaner environment starts with everyone.
Larry Penner, Great Neck
A place to leave our troubles behind
Like many of my fellow Long Islanders, I’ve felt besieged by bad news of late and surprised by the actions of those around me who protested school mask mandates to protect their children and refused to get vaccinated to ensure safety for themselves and others. Where were the polite, neighborly people I knew? Could anything bring us together after all this disagreement?
I have been pleased and relieved to see that nature can still unite us. Massapequa’s Caroons Lake, at the southern end of Nassau’s Greenbelt trail, is a small oasis in a crowded suburban area. The fall foliage reflected in the lake draws visitors who soak in the sight. And in winters when the cold weather lasts long enough, young people gather, and a hockey game is sure to break out (despite the "No skating" signs warning risk-takers). The lake is working its magic again. A bald eagle has built a nest on the small island in the lake’s center, and people are stopping to point it out, to share telescopic views, and just to enjoy the miracle of this majestic creature. The eagle indeed has landed, and we’re enjoying it together.
Kathleen Conway, Massapequa
My life is disrupted now in plane sight
Recently, I have become fixated on the never-ending conga line of airplanes flying at low altitudes over my home, which is 13 miles from Kennedy Airport's runway 22L. This is not new, but the pandemic had one side effect in that it cut down the noise from those planes. Now that the pandemic appears to be waning (maybe?), the planes have returned with a vengeance. I have become a weatherman, calculating wind direction, wind speed and the distance of the offending plane from my home. If the winds are southerly, the airplanes make a huge turn over Long Island. Having planes cross over the entire island at low altitudes from south to north and then north to south in a giant sweep somehow should be addressed vocally by those who live underneath the patterns, and whose lives are seriously disrupted by the continuing din of noise.
Alan M. Richards, Roslyn
