Unexpected Ideas

These ideas are unexpected, for my anyway, and were not what I had planned to blog about today, but sometimes ideas just pop in your head. And sometimes you get an idea  by something seen on TV that inspires you.

Yesterday morning as I was drinking my coffee and getting ready to run some errands, I was flipping through the TV stations trying to find something to watch other than infomercials and "whose my babies' daddy" shows and I came upon the local metro council and the sustainability committee. Who knew they had a sustainability committee? Naturally I started listening as I was getting ready, unfortunately I only got to see about 15 minutes of it, but what I heard got me to thinking.

They were talking about "urban heat islands", which translates into "it's always hotter in the city than in the country". After listening to what the council was saying and looking on Wikipedia, it seems this problem has been going on for quite some time. In a nutshell it's how the roads and highways, the sidewalks and the concrete and brick buildings hold onto heat, even in the winter. I'm sure you've heard your local weathercasters say the temps in the county are colder at night than in the city.

Then there are the lack of green spaces in urban areas. A lot of the old trees have been cut down to make room for more buildings or houses. Some trees are damaged by weather or get a disease then are taken down without another one to replace it. We have some wonderful parks, but can that outweigh all the concrete and blacktop that radiate heat. It seems we need the trees and green spaces  to help evaporate some of that heat that gets soaked up by all the structures. I know this is a simple explanation for what is probably a complicated issue.

I'm lucky in that I live in an older neighborhood where there are still lots of very large trees. I have a large tree in my yard and my neighbors have several and I can really tell the difference in the summer, the front porch is shady and cool. The backyard gets all the morning and early afternoon sun which will be good for my garden this summer. Sometimes when I go through new neighborhoods I'm always taken aback to see no trees, sometimes not even the small decorative ones put in by the landscaping companies. It kind of makes me a little sad to see such barrenness.

There seem to be lots of cause and effect of an urban heat island, but just one of the solutions seem to be adding more green space. Whether it be planting more trees, roof gardens, building materials that don't hold so much heat and of course controlling auto emissions. So what can I do about any of this, overall maybe not much, but I can take care of my tree, make my greenspace healthier and maybe add more natural and/or native plants to my yard. Maybe we need a modern day Johnny Appleseed to go around planting trees. I just really found this whole subject interesting and food for thought.

My other inspiration came this morning when I was throwing away my prescription bottles, because they cannot be recycled as we have found out. Suddenly I thought that maybe I could use them for something, I'm not sure what yet, but the idea is to reuse. So I carefully picked them out of the garbage (here I go again) washed them and set them to the side. I have to think about this for awhile.


Kathy