Pine trees in the desert

Before I start, let me mention that I am guilty of what I'm about to rant about. I'm not trying to be a hypocrite, I'm just ranting :-p

So here it is: What's the deal with people trying to maintain mid-west yards in the desert? We should be afraid of running out of water, and we should stop dumping it on plants that shouldn't naturally live here anyway.

I have large trees, lush bushes, and a green grass in my yard, so I should be the last one to talk. When I was young, and slightly more ignorant, I thought it was great. It was so green. But over the years, I've been becoming more of a naturalist, and I'm starting to feel really guilty about it. A few months ago, I had some issues with my irrigation system, so I turned it off, and would only water manually, and that month, I used 19,000 gallons less water than most months! That is so much water.

We waste all this water on these plants, that grow like crazy, then we collect their droppings, and we trim them, and fill our landfills (or if we're lucky compost them) and the water just goes into the air as they decompose.

But worse than all other plants, (and here's where I really rant) is the PINE TREE.

My neighbor has pine trees in his back yard, and all year long, they shed needles. Pine needles are pretty unique. They are highly acidic, so they take really long to decompose, and they actually prevent other leaves from decomposing. They are also really thin, but quite strong, so they will fit perfectly through the baskets in your pool system, and proceed right into the pump where they, being as strong as they are, jam it up great.

Pine trees also drop pine cones. Pine cones are pretty, but they are also light enough to get sucked into my leaf hog, and strong enough to shred the fan that causes the suction :) So when I try to suck up the pine needles, I tend to wreck my leaf hog.

Last weekend, I decided that I had had just about enough of all these pine tree droppings, so I racked them all up, and sorted them out from all the rocks, that I wanted to keep in my rock garden, and filled the trash. Then I put the rest of them in a pile so I could throw them away after the trash was collected. Here is a quick photo of the second trash bin full of pine needles. Keep in mind that this is the second bin full of them, and this bin was completely empty when I started:



So if you are building, and you have the opportunity to make this choice without spending a ton of money, please consider keeping it natural. Plant plants that are native to the region, and avoid throwing away our water.