Whine to water

My four-year-old son is addicted to the hose at our house. I swear, I could offer him the choice of eating a bowl of ice cream with candy poured over it, or 15 minutes watering whatever he wanted with our hose, and 15 minutes later I’d have a wet driveway, lawn and everything else.

My wife and I have even used it to bribe him to get out of bed when he was going through a whiny “I don’t want to go to school” phase.

But, let him water the plants, and that kid was dressed and ready before I was out of the shower. His little brother is also showing a love for watering everything in sight, so we may have to resort to that technique in a year or two.

Unfortunately, I have to tell him no most of the time because I hate wasting water, which wasn’t how I used to think.

I never thought much about water conservation until I started working at Lawn & Landscape in 2010. I knew water wasn’t an infinite resource and some parts of the country experienced drought. But, here in Ohio, we were setup pretty well, so it was always someone else’s problem.

Now, I’ve become so aware of wasting water that I was even worried readers would send emails to us pointing out that John Taylor, the main feature of our Water Issue, is wasting water in the photo on pages 48 and 50.

Maybe that’s over analyzing it too much, but it’s the right direction to go in. We’d be better off across the country if everyone thought before they used water. And that’s what Taylor is doing at his company, Taylor Irrigation Services.

That’s why it shouldn’t surprise me to hear from Taylor that the X-shaped piece of sod was a series of pieces that were positioned to form an X.

After the shoot, they were pulled apart and placed in on two different properties that needed a small patch to make use of everything. He threw it in at no cost to those clients.

Taylor’s not simply installing a system and then moving on to the next customer. Instead, he’s working with the property manager or homeowner to manage the water use at the location. He’s thinking about how he’s using the water, which is one way to fix the drought problem.

So, next time you turn on the faucet or the hose, or install an irrigation system, think about how you’re using that water. I’ll even look for better ways to get a crabby kid out of bed in the morning. – Brian Horn