Homegrown-Water-Fun

For me, summer is about fresh food, warm sun, and wholesome fun. Savoring the garden harvest and frolicking in sunshine are enjoyable in themselves, but having a good time doesn’t always coincide so nicely with our environmental values.

Toys ‘R’ Us is a big box of plastic-molded and battery-operated diversion. Big-boy toys gulp diesel. Eyes of all ages are glued to electronic screens of personal entertainment devices.

Our pleasure comes at the expense of consuming natural resources.

As environmentally-conscious consumers, if we overbear our conscience with guilt for enjoying our planet’s resources, those “shouldn’ts” will suck all the fun out of it. Can we find the fine line between “carefree” and “careless”?

Thankfully, there are ways to limit, compromise, and multipurpose.

I’ll share a few tips on how to lessen our burden on mother earth while still letting down our hair and enjoying ourselves like human children.

If your own kids are starting to whine about being bored, take it as a challenge to be as cool as their school and turn the next four weeks into memorable amusement during Family Fun Month.

Enjoy your August of water play, road trips, state fairs, music festivals, and camping.

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Water Play

During these dog days of summer, sometimes I want to step outside of the sauna that is this non-air-conditioned house and submerge myself in enough humidity in which to least splash and flail around.

Backyard Water Park

Moms are queens of multi-tasking. I propose, rather, multi-functioning: combining pragmatic household tasks that require water with the sheer delight of drenching yourself in water on sultry days.

Wee ones
No one minds a naked baby bathing in the backyard. If you live in the country, you can push this practice until the child develops a sense of self-consciousness.

Safely remove the child, then throw out the dirty baby-water onto your roses, oak tree, or compost pile. Some suds won’t hurt these, though certain plants are more suited for greywater irrigation. As the baby outgrows the bathtub, graduate to these designs for laundry to landscaping and shower to shrub systems.

Bigger kids
If kids want to drench the lawn with a slip n slide, garden hose, or water balloons, wait until the lawn needs watering anyway and schedule the outdoor fun early in the morning to not lose it all to evaporation.

Stage a watergun fight with repurposed spray bottles. Your parched vegetable garden is the battlefield. Let all those stray bullets rain down on thirsty plants. Keep the rambunctious action in limits by fencing your garden first.

Hold a limbo contest using a stream of water. Change the aim so that first you drench your squash patch, then beans and other water-hungry summer plants.

These adult alterations on traditional water games are great if you hydrozone your garden, so that plants with the highest water demand are conveniently grouped together. Even better if you’ve xeriscaped your landscaping to X out exotic species like tropicals that require more water than native plants.

Lakes, Rivers, Beaches, and other Recreational Areas

My idea of fueling up to practice water sports is dining on freshly-caught fish and wild blueberries, basically the life of a bear.

For me, exercising is about spending up human fuel, not pouring a gallon of diesel into a metal tank.

I want to get a work out and maintain my figure, not keep a machine in working shape.

I want to smell crisp pine-filtered air, not petro exhaust fumes.

I want to hear the loons on the lake, not the roar of a motor.

Afterwards, I’ll want to have worked up enough of an appetite to finish off the fish, and who would want to have a picnic at a monster truck rally? That’s what your precious waterside vacation spot reeks like with all the speedboats and jet skis.

Take the sport of waterskiing. You can unhook yourself from the engine and still enjoy the adrenaline and aerobics with alternative water recreation.

If you waterski for the thrill of speed > try wind/kite surfing

If you waterski for the challenge of balancing > try standup paddleboarding, then add yoga as a twist

If you waterski to skim over water > try canoeing/kayaking/rowing

Give your upper arms a workout and save from pumping at the tank.

 

CarrieCarrie is an environmental educator, anthropologist, and translator. She took her passions for ecological, health, and women’s rights advocacy from the offices of Washington, D.C. to the streets of South America. Now in Colombia, she is slowly opening women’s eyes to the wonders of “la copita de luna” (Moon Cup) and Keepers.

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