33° and Mist
This Facebook status from 10 years ago:
“You know you see the world differently when you realize raking leaves has everything to do with your compost pile and nothing to do with a neat lawn.”
Our compost is not nearly how I would like it but I am still trying. I even grabbed bagged leaves from a neighbor. The city, sadly, sends the leaves it collects to the landfill. It could compost them and make the product available to gardeners for free and even sell some to landscapers the way most communities do.
Reality is we can grow things here now that take a month more time than we used to have because that’s how radically the climate has changed in the last 20 years.
The majority of what we send to the landfill remains food packaging from Wegmans.
We live in a community where chickens and bees are unwelcome because they are environmentally unfriendly but toxic chemicals are used to treat our wastewater, we pay more for water than anyone and you can set your watch based on how long until the sewage stains the river below the falls.
The city also seems to lack any sort of tree management program.
We paint pretty pictures of a sordid reality because the river flows framed by beautiful walls dotted with Bruce Kershner’s ancient cedars.
